Services

Domestic & Foreign Rights Representation

Founded in 2011 in Ojai, California, 2 Seas Agency is a boutique literary agency that represents a select number of authors, publishers and agencies in both domestic and international markets. 

With over 20 years of combined experience on both sides of the Atlantic and in Asia, our team has an in-depth knowledge of the global publishing market. Our regular visits to international book fairs and publishing cities allow us to build and maintain close ties around the world with publishers, agents, literary scouts, translators, and the many other people active on the international publishing scene.

Take a moment to browse through our online catalog for an overview of the titles we represent. Our latest deals page lists the titles we recently sold.

2 Seas Agency: A Global Approach

With offices in the US and Europe, 2 Seas Agency has managed to implement a new way of representing authors and selling foreign rights even before the Covid-19 pandemic introduced remote working at a large scale.

We opened our European offices in 2015, headed by Senior Agent Chrysothemis Armefti, and have worked remotely with interns from amongst others Brazil, France, Scotland, and Italy since 2012.

We pay regular visits to international book fairs and publishing cities: besides essential visits to New York City, we travel to Europe at least twice per year to attend the Frankfurt and London Book Fairs, and while we’re on the Old Continent we meet publishers in the most important publishing cities such as Paris, Amsterdam, Cologne, Berlin, Munich, London, and Barcelona. We have also attended book fairs in Beijing, Turin, Guadalajara, Rio de Janeiro, Sharjah, and Leipzig.

Millie the office cat in awe at all of Hendrik Groen’s foreign editions that have been published.

Our global approach goes beyond the geographical level. While we have an important presence in North America thanks to our authors as well as our publisher clients Astra House (NYC) and Catapult/Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press (NYC and Berkeley, CA), several clients whose foreign rights we represent are based overseas. We’ve sold rights to publishers based in all four corners of the globe for titles originally written in English, French, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, German, and Italian.

Our successes include The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83 1/4 Years Old, originally published in Dutch by Meulenhoff. At the time of writing (June 2021), we have sold rights to 37 territories, mostly at auction or in pre-empts, including the UK (Michael Joseph), the US (Grand Central) and most recently Macedonia and Japan.

Another success is Riad Sattouf’s award-winning graphic memoir The Arab of the Future, originally published in French by Allary Editions. It has now sold to 22 territories, again mostly at auction or in pre-empts, including the US (Metropolitan) and the UK (Two Roads-Hodder).

More recently, we sold North American rights in Simone de Beauvoir’s previously unpublished novel Inseparable to Ecco, in a pre-empt, for publication in September 2021.

Read more about our beliefs and why publishing folks love working with us.

PS: Click here if you want to know what foreign rights sales in publishing really is about.

Marleen and Chrys at the 2016 Frankfurt Book Fair

Marleen at the 2011 Beijing International Book Fair

With Dutch publishers Jacqueline Smit (m) and Nelleke Geel (r) in Amsterdam, October 2015