Representation
We negotiate on our writers' behalf with publishers in India, the United Kingdom, the United States and beyond, and we manage the relationship for the life of the work.
Summerhouse
Literary
Scroll — the sun sets
The most interesting writing is not always done where the publishing is.
Summerhouse Literary represents writers of fiction and non-fiction for publication throughout the world.
The house
We are a small agency by design. We take on few writers, we work on the book before it goes anywhere, and we stay with an author across a career rather than a single title.
Between us we have run editorial programmes across two continents and worked with writers at every stage, from first draft to final proof. We work out of Delhi and London, and we sell into the English-language markets, the translation territories, and film and television.
What we do
Rights
Translation, audio, serial and dramatic rights are handled by the agency, directly or through co-agents in the major territories.
Editorial
We work on manuscripts before they are submitted. A book goes out when it is ready, not when it arrives.
Screen
We work with producers on adaptation, and advise our writers on option and adaptation terms.
The people
Nitin Valecha
Fiction & non-fiction
Nitin Valecha has spent more than fifteen years commissioning, at Pearson, at Elsevier, and at Bloomsbury Publishing India, where he rose to Associate Publisher and built lists across non-fiction, business and trade. He has taken books from first proposal through acquisition and into the market, and knows the Indian trade from the inside. He joins Summerhouse as a senior agent.
Dr Roshan Khanande
Non-fiction
Dr Roshan Khanande is a psychiatrist at one of Asia's largest mental hospitals, where he has spent his career treating the conditions of modern life at close range. He is the co-author of Own Your Mind, a science-backed, story-driven account of how the nature of psychological distress has changed in the last decade. He writes both non-fiction and fiction, and in both is chiefly interested in what a person is actually made of.
Ana Mercer
Submissions
Ana Mercer came to agenting from journalism and humanitarian work. She handles submissions and general enquiries for the agency. She is drawn to reportage that reads like a novel and novels that read like testimony: The Emperor by Ryszard Kapuscinski, Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Voices from Chernobyl, Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger, and anything with the nerve of Sonia Faleiro's Beautiful Thing.
Submissions
We are open, and we read everything that reaches us.
Send
A covering letter, a synopsis of no more than two pages, and the first fifty pages, as a single attachment.
Tell us
Who you are, what the book is, and who it is for. We would rather have the truth than the pitch.
Then
We aim to reply within eight weeks. There is no reading fee, at any stage.