The Bright idea: an agency founder on plans to reinvent her business
The Bright Agency’s Vicki Willden-Lebrecht is putting creativity back on the menu. The author-illustrator specialist’s CEO talks about refocusing on the basics.
When Arabella Stein announced that she was stepping down as managing director of The Bright Agency’s literary division in the summer of 2023, the company was thrust into a period of uncertainty. Stein had joined Bright as an agent in 2016 and subsequently set up Bright Literary in 2022. CEO Vicki Willden-Lebrecht, who founded Bright in 2003, tells me: “So much of Bright was linked to Arabella, who had such publishing prowess.” The announcement of Stein’s departure was something of a surprise to the trade and it was unclear where the agency would go next.
Back to what it does best was the answer, as Willden-Lebrecht returned from maternity leave to lead the business as creative director, alongside Jersey City-based global managing director James Burns. When she stepped back, she says she felt that “the creative part” of the agency had become less of a focal point. Stein had helped grow the business and prioritised the “operational excellence” of the agency, helping the company become “established” and “a safe pair of hands” for creatives. However, at that point Bright was outsourcing “a lot of editorial help”, hiring consultants and relying less on the expertise of its agents and their ability to develop talent. “What I wanted to bring back was almost putting the creative heart back into Bright,” the founder says.
The agency represents stars, including multiple award-winner Yasmeen Ismail, Chris Chatterton and author-illustrator Benji Davies.
While home to both authors and illustrators, Bright’s unique selling point is its commercial approach to building brands for those who do both the writing and the art for illustrated books. This includes working with previously unpublished creatives who come to Bright with an exciting project; the goal is to guide them to produce submissions that align with what the market needs, and to think creatively about promoting those books once they are published. An example of the type of multi-hyphenate creative the agency likes to work with is Robin Shaw, who approached Bright after being previously repped by David Higham. Shaw’s work includes picture books such as Me and My Dad (Hodder Children’s), animation directing credits, including Mog’s Christmas, the hand-drawn sequences in the Paddington films and a long-term association with Raymond Briggs, including animating the Snowman Irn-Bru commercials.
Hard choices
The Bright Agency’s creative energy and expertise had to be prioritised for the business to succeed, according to Willden-Lebrecht, and this was her priority when she returned to Bright. “The comfort blanket was ripped away and I had to stand on my own two feet,” she says. “I didn’t want to hire anyone because the company was operating in an excellent way, and what it needed was me, my creativity.”
In the past year, Willden-Lebrecht has sought to instil a sense of confidence into the team. “When your intention is to grow a business, you want to hand over power and influence as much as possible, because you don’t want to be holding onto it,” she says. This process has been about building up a team of “assertive and knowledgeable” agents who are able to represent all clients with the same energy and expertise afforded to the big brand author-illustrators. Equally, it has also been about empowering agents to decline taking on projects they do not see potential in.
The agency’s total revenue in 2024 was £12.9m, up a marginal amount from the £12.8m in 2023, following years of growth for the business. The founder says the agency was facing challenges in 2023 – despite revenue having gone up from £12.3m in 2022 – and costs have been cut significantly since then, by eliminating senior roles – including the positions of finance director and MD – and restructuring Bright’s portfolio of artists and its team. Burns, the agency’s global MD, reduced the company’s overheads by £554,000, and the business is now operating with a team of 34 employees, down from 43. The agency has also rolled back its reliance on editorial consultants, and Willden-Lebrecht says this has significantly reduced costs, as well as enabling agents to provide better representation for their clients.
Those financials include the US side of the business, which Bright launched in 2015, where Willden-Lebrecht says Burns “has excelled where others have struggled”. She adds: “The US office significantly amplifies our ability to serve our [clients], and this presence grants direct access to one of the world’s largest book markets, which greatly enhances opportunities for our authors and illustrators.”
Creativity high, costs low
The agency has emerged from this period with a refined sense of direction, and big plans for Davies and the other author-illustrators in its portfolio. The agents will travel to the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, where non-fiction books for teenagers will take centre stage.
Non-fiction and humour books were also particularly popular at this year’s London Book Fair, which Willden-Lebrecht describes as “a first gallop around the paddock” before the “big race” in Italy. Moreover, to address the crisis in reading for pleasure among children, the agents are thinking of ways to make books more engaging for children – something that has always been a part of their work.
Bright is going big on activity books with interactive elements – while being “very clever” about ways to keep production costs low – and looking into new ways of approaching digital tie-ins for print books, including app and audio content. Willden-Lebrecht says building reading habits should be seen as an important part of a child’s “wellness” that will follow them into adulthood. She stresses the importance of making books that children can pick up and put down, while still being able to enjoy the story. “I don’t think children read non-fiction books from start to finish, and I don’t think that is a bad thing,” she says.
I ask about her vision for the next 25 years and then narrow the scope to cover just the next five, but Willden-Lebrecht has no hesitation talking about the bigger picture. “I want us to be able to be the future of children’s properties,” she says. “What we can do as an agency is take an artist’s idea, drive the discoverability of the book, make a difference to the book sales, and then have the right commercial ideas of where it goes next to ensure it stays successful. That’s where I want to be in 25 years time.”
