The origins of The bks Agency can be traced back to the kitchen of 338 Euston Road in London — which was, at the time, the Head Office of Hachette UK’s publisher Hodder & Stoughton — where Jessica, Jason and James made endless cups of tea and set the industry to rights. Their work within the publishing industry ultimately took them on different paths, but the tea remained a constant.**
What brought them together again as agents was a desire to find talented authors to nurture, collaborate, support, and promote.
At the start of 2021, the agency merged with leading Cultural Communications Agency, Midas in a move that allowed both business to strengthen and grow their collective arts & publishing offerings. They were then joined in May of 2021 by Joanna Kaliszewska (also formerly of the parish of Hodder & Stoughton) as Rights Director & Agent.
In addition to securing deals for their own authors, the agency is proud to partner with a number of publishers and agencies in selling rights on their behalf. These include: Trigger Publishing, AD LIB publishers, Larousse Spain, Liberties Press, Moonflower Books, Nomad, Tanglewood Books, DunnFogg Agency, Craig Literary, Louise Greenberg Agency and The Accidental Agency. If you would like to enquire about this service, please contact Joanna for more information.
** Jason would like it recorded that he was drinking coffee — because he’s American and coffee is better than tea.
JASON BARTHOLOMEW
Originally from America, Jason Bartholomew spent ten years working in New York publishing, primarily for Hachette Book Group USA. He moved to Hachette UK in 2008 where he was the Rights Director across Hodder & Stoughton, Headline Publishing Group, Quercus Books, and John Murray Press.
In addition to the Rights Director role, in 2015, he also became the Publishing Director of Quercus US in New York. At Quercus US, Jason helped publish authors including Peter May, David Attenborough, Pierre LeMaitre, Timur Vermes, Damien Lewis, Louise O’Neill, and John Connolly.
Jason is also the CEO of Midas PR; and he completed a Masters in Business Administration at Imperial College in 2017.
JESSICA KILLINGLEY
Jessica spent 20 years working in Marketing for a number of the divisions within Hachette UK and Penguin Random House, where she ran high-profile & award-winning campaigns across all genres, from debuts to brand names such as John Grisham, Stephen King, David Mitchell, Michael McIntyre and Stephen Fry.
Alongside the agency, she also ran a Coaching & Consultancy business, where she helped coaches and consultants write and publish a book that leverages their influence, grows their business, establishes their authority in their field and turns readers into clients. She is a Master-certified Coach and works with high-achieving women in senior roles. In October 2023 she stepped into running the agency full-time as the Managing Director.
She has hosted the award-winning (and quite sweary) podcast, The AUTHORity Show and is the creator of The AUTHORity Blueprint, a self-study online programme that teaches entrepreneurs how to write and publish a non-fiction book.
JAMES SPACKMAN
James is an alumnus of the Bloomsbury Publishing Graduate Scheme (the post room). From this stellar beginning, his publishing career progressed through sales and marketing roles at Bloomsbury, then at John Murray and Hodder & Stoughton, helping create bestsellers from authors as diverse as JK Rowling, Ben Schott, Stephen King, Freddie Flintoff and Kate Fox. He went on to be MD of Watkins, a division of Osprey Group focusing on personal development and healthy food and drink.
James is Publisher of Pursuit, Profile Books’ cycling imprint, coaches book trade people in presentation skills under the brand The Book Pitch Doctor and is founder of The Spare Room Project.
JOANNA KALISZEWSKA
Joanna started her publishing career in the rights department of the literary agency, Aitken, Stone and Wylie. After short stints at Harper Collins and Gaia Books she settled at Hachette where she spent the next 20 years in a variety of roles in the rights departments of their trade divisions, latterly as the Head of Rights for John Murray Press.
While at Hachette she worked with authors ranging from the Booker short-listed Fiona Mozley to the bestselling spy-thriller writer Mick Herron. Her literary taste is very broad, she is equally happy reading a prize-winning literary novel, reading group fiction or a crime procedural.
She is currently the Rights Director at The bks Agency as well as a Literary Agent looking to develop the agency’s fiction list.
Currently looking for: crime, thrillers, suspense, upmarket commercial women’s fiction and novels by writers from underrepresented backgrounds.
Please DO NOT send: poetry, children’s, YA, fantasy, sci-fi, speculative fiction.