Updated March 3, 2023: They haven’t been posting on Instagram for over a year, and some of their newer links are now broken. I’m assuming they are defunct.
Agora Books (UK) is linked to the established literary agency Peters, Fraser & Dunlop. It is very important not to confuse this Agora Books with the one based in Canada, which is a vanity press we do not recommend.
Agora Books is a digital first publisher of fiction and nonfiction. They were established in 2015 and originally named Ipso Books. They have excellent covers and good focused marketing. You can get a feel for what they publish here.
They are currently only accepting fiction submissions. They are not interested in YA or children’s fiction, poetry, nonfiction, novellas or essays. They are interested in a wide range of fiction, in terms of genre.
They are focused on selling books, not on recruiting authors, which is always a good sign. They publish a lot of reprints, but are not open to direct submissions of reprints.
Authors that sign with Agora also sign with the Peters, Fraser & Dunlop Group as part of that. Peters, Fraser & Dunlop had a rough patch in 2007 but they appear to have fully recovered from that. But you can learn a little more about that here. Agencies getting into the publishing business has become rather common. It’s not always appropriate but it seems to work in this situation.
Authors receive 50% of what Agora gets from the retailers, which is a good royalty rate.
They only publish 6-8 new books a year (that isn’t counting backlist/reprints), so they can really focus on editing and promoting those books.
To submit please send them an email including the 50 first pages of your manuscript and a synopsis. Make sure to review their guidelines carefully before submitting.
To learn more or to submit go here.
Bio: Emily Harstone is the pen name of an author whose work has been published internationally by a number of respected journals. She is a professional submissions adviser. She occasionally teaches a course on manuscript publishing. You can follow her on Facebook here.
