28 Jun 2 Seas Agency Turns Four (And It’s Just the Beginning)

Four years ago today (June 28), 2 Seas Agency’s first e-newsletter went out, which officially launched our foreign rights adventure.

By Marleen Seegers—first posted in June 2015

2 Seas Agency turns four!

On June 28, 2011 I sent out 2 Seas Agency’s very first e-newsletter. A mere three months had passed since I said goodbye to the wonderful team at Editions Stock in Paris where I’d been working as Rights & Licenses Manager for several years, and departed for Ojai, California to set out on a new adventure. Moving away from the hustle and bustle of Paris to a small, peaceful town on the US West Coast meant a huge (and very welcome) change in my life. And now I was also a business owner!

In the past four years I have had the chance to travel to amongst others the Frankfurt and London Book Fairs, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Rio de Janeiro, Sharjah (UAE), Munich, Beijing, New York and Leipzig; all these trips have helped build new relationships and strengthen those that I had started from my years at Editions Stock. We have negotiated over 250 foreign rights deals for titles that were originally written in English, French, Dutch, German, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese. Our activities have shifted from mostly selling foreign rights in our specialty territories as a sub-agent (eg. in the Netherlands, France, and the USA) to handling foreign rights worldwide. In the latter case, we’re supported by a wonderful network of co-agents who help us sell rights in territories we are less familiar with, such as China, Brazil, Russia, and Japan.

We have so far worked with 10 virtual interns who, thanks to our mobile office, were based in cities as varied as São Paulo, Naples, London, Paris and Denver, Colorado—we just started working with Chrysothemis, who is based in Porto, Portugal. Several guest contributors from all over the world have helped us create informative publishing-related content for our website. And most recently we welcomed Melody, our first employee, to the 2 Seas team. Yet another milestone!

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to them, and to all of you, who have helped 2 Seas get to where we are now. This is just the beginning, and I am looking forward to deepening our relationships and discovering more wonderful books from all over the world in the years to come!