Pierre Astier and Laure Pecher on Literary Agents in France
Series: Biblio File in France
Pierre Astier and Laure Pecher are co-founders of their own eponymous literary and film agency.\xa0Pierre represents mainly French-speaking authors and publishers. After working in the art world for ten years, he created the quarterly short stories magazine\xa0Le Serpent \xe0 Plumes in 1988. In 1993, together with Claude Tarr\xe8ne, he set up a publishing house of the same name focusing on contemporary fiction. Laure\xa0represents both authors and publishers. After having studied Byzantine philology, she worked for five years at Le Serpent \xe0 Plumes as rights manager. In 2002, she started publishing classics with\xa0Les Classiques du Monde\xa0at Editions Zo\xe9 (Geneva).
The three of us met in their garden in Le Perche, France where we talked about, among other things, the role of the literary agent, writers festivals and conferences, finding the best most passionate publishers,\xa0Archipelago\xa0Books and Ove Knausgaard, Elena Ferrante, African authors in France, paradise near Paris, commissioning books, writing workshops, espresso, differences between French and American agents, Eastern European markets, the invasion of American authors, lack of diversity, resistance by French publishers to agents, film rights, musical chairs, translation, author-agent relations, differences between pitching publishers and producers, Andrew Wylie's client list,\xa0Asl\u0131\xa0Erdo\u011fan, passion and luck,\xa0Patrice\xa0Nganang, and the most exciting part of the job.\xa0
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