Option requests: What type of agent do I need to get (and how)?

Post date: 2018-04-27 00:32:16

I've written history pieces for a long time, but recently I've started getting legitimate requests to option my particular historical narratives. Which means I probably need to finally sort out an agent. But what type and how?

I'm a longform writer (with a number of pieces popping up on here before). I do it mainly for pesonal satisfaction, but I finally got around to moving a lot of my main history stuff to a Medium account recently. That seems to be bringing it to a wider audience, or at least eyes that wouldn't normally encounter my stuff.

One of the surprise consequences of that has been the arrival of legitimate requests for the TV or film rights to some of my stuff. Most recently this narrative history of a WW2 journey, for example.

On the one hand - cool beans! But on the other hand these often come with a request to speak to my agent if I have one.

I presume having such an agent would probably increase the likelihood of such requests leading to a decent outcome in future, but this is a world outside of my comfort zone. So I guess my questions are:

- What kind of agent should I really be looking for?
- How does one go about getting one in the UK (I presume the fact that I have offers makes that easier)?
- Is it really going to be worth it for me or that agent, given that finding such deals is more a passive consequence of my writing rather than an actual goal?

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