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Literary agent Rachel Mills has spoken about founding her eponymous agency at a party to celebrate its fifth anniversary attended by many across the trade, including authors, rival agents and publishers. Flanked by her colleagues Nelle Andrew, Alexandra Cliff and Charlotte Bowerman, Mills said that in a "short five years, us four young (ish) women have secured 794 deals for our clients, bringing them over £13m in revenue".
She said she had not expected "a global pandemic, horrific international conflicts, a five month actors’ and writers’ strike, a cost of living crisis, impossible supply chain cost increases", or that she would have to "grow a whole new hemisphere of my brain to understand tax".
"I can’t say I had an elaborately strategic business plan for the agency at that point, but I did have a vision. It was the determination and fundamental belief that it should be possible to build an agency founded on the ideals of community, collaboration and abundance – that authors are stronger together, and to acknowledge that we are all working towards the same goal, of books making a difference in the world. I think everyone in this room agrees that they do."
Mills thanked a number of guests, including investors Sara Curran and Peter Sussman, from Tricyle, "all the publishers we work with", producers scouts, journalists and The Bookseller, yoga teachers, and in particular its authors.
"Society does not encourage most of us to be brave and bold, to forge our own paths, to stand up for what we believe, to discover and be true to our own identities, and to find the words to express our inner selves and put them out into the world," she said. "All of you do this every single day. It is the greatest privilege that you trust us with your nascent ideas, your earliest draft paragraphs – not to mention your career strategy and your income. It is the most precious of responsibilities, and we could not take it more seriously, and with more gratitude."
She also heaped praise on her three colleagues. "The RML team is the best you could ever hope for, and I am so grateful to work with them every day."
Andrew added: "People wonder why our agency has been so successful in a short space of time. The reasons to me are this: 1) You are looking at 4x women who get to use the whole of their brain instead of parcelling it out on company politics; bizarre work policies; infighting and general bullshit. 2) We all like each other, we understand each other and we play to our strengths. 3) We also know what we are not good at, and we don’t try to make each other be something we are not – we celebrate and elevate what we can do and what we are here to do and finally because of the support we have – from our investors who are like godparents gently overseeing and steering without ever infringing; from publishers who always believed in us and from our clients who are fantastic."
On Mills, she said: "Rachel is the kind of boss I wish you could have but you don’t get to have her so sucks to be you." And on her colleagues added: "We have our quartet – our corners of the world and maybe we will expand and change over the next five years, but we started here with you; we laid the foundations of our future with you; and to crib what it says in the paean to agenting that is the movie, "Jerry Maguire", I wish you all this kind of success."