The Cooke Agency represents literary and commercial fiction (including science fiction, fantasy and romance), narrative-driven nonfiction in the areas of popular culture, science, history, natural history, politics, personal reference and children’s books. We do not represent poetry or screenplays.


  
   
What we do for our clients  
   

Personal Attention

Our team is energetic and client-focussed. Our clients never speak to an assistant. We give personal attention, and a lot of time, to our authors as we work collaboratively with them to fine-tune their manuscripts. We submit their material to publishers, negotiate contracts on their behalf and monitor marketing and sales efforts. We want to build careers and we concentrate not just on what is the best offer, but what is the best decision for an author in the long term. We respond promptly and personally to resolve any difficulties or concerns our clients may have in the publishing process.

International Representation

In 2008, The Cooke Agency sold books into more than two-dozen territories around the world for a total of more than $2,000,000 in advances for our authors. We have a full-time dedicated Foreign Rights director and we are effective, efficient, well-known and highly regarded in the international publishing community. We maintain an international perspective by representing clients from Canada, the United States, Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia. Our authors’ works have been sold to independent and large international publishers and film companies, and we regularly travel to major publishing centres and book fairs to foster these relationships and promote our authors’ interests. Our clients are further represented through our extensive network of skilled specialist co-agents. We also represent agents from many foreign territories who trust us with some of their best-known clients.

Our Expertise

Our agency represents many national and international award-winning authors of quality fiction and nonfiction. Our clients are routinely long-listed, short-listed and awarded prizes for the high quality of their work. Each agent has a background in professional editorial and publishing work and we are conscientious and meticulous in our editorial input on manuscripts and proposals. Our clients also share the benefits of our broad network of colleagues and contacts in the international publishing community and the up-to-the-minute perspective we have on the market in North America and the world through daily information gathering and analysis. Our agency is at the forefront of the legal, financial and contractual issues surrounding e-books and will be taking a leading role in shaping this exciting new publishing market. We offer great attention to detail in all our paperwork and financial transactions, which are communicated to clients in a comprehensive, easy-to-understand format. There is always someone available to answer questions in a knowledgeable and timely fashion.

  
   
Who We Are  
   
Dean Cooke, literary agent, has worked in publishing for over twenty-five years, having first started in the warehouse of a small publishing company. He has worked in various capacities for Doubleday Canada, Lester & Orpen Dennys, and Bantam/Seal where he was the publisher of Seal Books. He left Bantam/Seal in 1992 to found The Cooke Agency. Dean’s list reflects his reading tastes: literary fiction, history—especially Russian history and World War II; anything about royalty from ancient Egypt to contemporary Britain; pop culture, historical fiction, business, and popular science. He has probably represented more hockey books than any other agent in Canada, but as a transplanted American, has only recently learned what a hat trick is. Please no self-help or inspirational, he’s not that evolved. Fresh, smart mystery, horror and thrillers— especially historical—are of interest, but no romance or other strictly genre fiction. In 1997, Dean was the founding coordinator of the Book Publishing Immersion Workshop at The Centre for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University, where he is now an adjunct professor. He has lectured in Canada and the United States on a wide range of publishing related subjects.  
   
Sally Harding, literary agent, moved to Canada in 2001 after eight years in sales and marketing, editing, and bookselling in New Zealand and Australia. She began her career as a literary agent shortly after her arrival in Vancouver, and in 2005 started her own agency, The Harding Agency. The fledgling agency’s rapid growth led to the merger with The Cooke Agency in 2007. She has always read widely, and that is reflected in the range of genres she represents. She is particularly drawn to books that present fresh perspectives and ask questions of their readers. This may be narrative non-fiction founded in ground-breaking research or offering a new take on what we thought we already knew. It may be speculative, contemporary, or romantic fiction that asks what-if. It may be children’s books that remind us to marvel. She regularly travels to international book fairs and conventions, and when she’s not at her desk, in transit, or engrossed in a book, you’ll find her in a contemporary art gallery, or in her kitchen cooking enough to feed twice as many as expected.  
   
Suzanne Brandreth, literary agent, has worked in the book industry for nearly fifteen years, first as an academic editor, a bookseller, a junior agent for The Cooke Agency before joining Doubleday Canada as an editor in 2001. In 2003, Suzanne returned to The Cooke Agency as Director of Subsidiary Rights, where she handles foreign and translation rights for the agency’s clients as well her own list of authors. A Frankfurt Fellow (2005), Suzanne works with publishing professionals—editors, publishers, scouts and co-agents—from many, many countries and time zones. Whether she’s hopping on a plane for New York, London, Frankfurt or Vancouver, or curled up in “the reading chair” of her Toronto home, Suzanne always has a stack of books and manuscripts with her. An insatiable reader, Suzanne reads across categories, fiction and non-fiction in equal measure. Be it family sagas, contemporary fiction, literary thrillers, self-help, memoirs, or cutting-edge thinking in the areas of science, or psychology, Suzanne is always on the look-out for a story, perspective or a voice she hasn’t heard before. Suzanne frequently speaks to authors and publishing professionals about reading and publishing trends. A graduate of Simon Fraser University’s Book Publishing Immersion Workshop, Suzanne has acted as the Workshop’s co-director and now sits on its advisory board.  
   
Mary Hu moved to Canada in 2005 after earning her B.A. in English Literature from San Francisco State University and has been with The Cooke Agency since 2006. She is a graduate of the SFU’s Book Publishing Immersion Workshop. Primarily a fiction reader, Mary enjoys contemporary novels, science fiction, fantasy, and literature. When it comes to non-fiction, Mary gravitates towards books about the social sciences.  
Photo credits: Lisa Myers
 
   
History  
   

The Cooke Agency was established in 1992 by Dean Cooke, who operated for several years as the sole literary agent and employee. Seventeen years later, the agency employs four full-time employees and sells to publishers around the world. In 2007 the company merged with The Harding Agency of Vancouver and is now co-owned by Vancouver-based literary agent Sally Harding, and The Cooke Agency’s founding owner, Dean Cooke.

The Cooke Agency represents more than one hundred writers, including award-winning and best-selling authors.

  









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