For agencies with more than one agent

Standardize the pipeline. Not the agents.

LitArc gives your agency one searchable view of every query and submission across the whole team, with roles that match how you already divide the work. Each agent still sets their own rules and reads on their own terms.

  • One view of every query in the agency. Searchable and filterable across every desk, not stitched together from nine inboxes.
  • Three roles, not one flat login. Agent, Query Manager, and Agency Manager, each with a scope that matches the job.
  • Running the same day. Set the agency up, add your agents, and run live queries through it this afternoon.
Set up your agencySee how roles work

LitArc does not use any data to train models. Not your agents' manuscripts, not your clients' work, not anything.

Agency queries

Agency queries

4 in this view

Agency manager
All statuses
All assignees
Newest first
TitleAuthorStatusAssigned
The Salt LineLiterary fictionA. Chen
Submitted
Dana R.
NightjarUpmarket thrillerM. Okonkwo
Under review
Tom M.
A Small ConstellationNonfictionL. Patel
Under review
Kai A.
Housekeeping for GhostsLiterary fictionS. Nguyen
Submitted
Duplicate
Dana R.
Search and filter across every desk. Each query shows where it came from: direct, through the agency, or passed on by a colleague.

Illustrative data. Fictional agents and titles.

How access works

Three roles, because an agency is not one job

The fastest way to make agency software unusable is to give everyone the same login. LitArc has three roles. Pick one to see exactly what it can do.

The working desk. An agent reads, decides, and represents. Nothing about that changes, and the agency layer stays around the work rather than inside it.

  • Their own queries and submissions
  • The agency query view
  • Agency chat with colleagues
  • Pass a query to a colleague
  • Set their own intake rules
  • Their own client records

Roles are set by the Agency Manager and can be changed at any time. An agent can hold more than one role if your agency is small enough that the same person does both jobs.

Built with agents, not guessed at

We paid working agents to tell us what breaks when an agency grows

Two compensated studies and a series of paid interviews with practicing agents at boutique and independent agencies. When we asked what one thing they would change about their work, the answers were submission tracking, better organization, and fewer wrong-fit queries reaching the desk. That is what the agency layer is for.

  • 3

    roles, so nobody gets access they did not ask for

  • 1

    searchable view of every query across every desk

  • 2

    compensated research studies with working agents

  • 0

    data of any kind used to train models

The problem

Growth did not make the agency more organized

Every agent solved the tooling problem privately, and each solution was reasonable. Together they became an agency with no shared memory.

Where most agencies are

Nine desks, nine systems, and a spreadsheet somebody owns

Nothing is broken enough to fix, so nothing gets fixed. The cost shows up as things quietly falling through.

  • Every agent tracks queries differently, so leadership has no reliable view
  • The same project gets submitted twice and nobody notices
  • Passing a query to the right colleague means forwarding an email and hoping
  • Assistants have either no access or all of it, because there is nothing in between
  • A tool decision gets deferred, so the whole agency stays on email

With LitArc

One shared queue, and everyone still works their own way

Structure where the agency needs consistency. Flexibility everywhere else.

  • One searchable, filterable view of every query in the agency
  • Duplicate submissions flagged automatically
  • Pass a query to a colleague inside the platform, with the trail intact
  • A Query Manager role scoped to the queue and nothing else
  • Agency reporting running on live data, not projections

What the agency layer adds

Five things that only work if the whole agency is on them

Everything below is in the product today. We have left out what is still being built, because a landing page is a promise and this audience will check.

Every query in the agency, in one place you can search

A single unified view across every desk, searchable and filterable by whatever you need: genre, status, assigned agent, when it arrived. No more asking four people what came in last week.

Better filtering of inbound queries ranked as the highest-impact feature in our second study, named first by 6 of 10 respondents.

Roles that match how you already split the work

Agents work their desks. A Query Manager runs the intake queue without needing access to everything else. The Agency Manager sees the whole agency and assigns the roles. Add someone, change their role, or remove them, at any time.

Know where a query came from, and pass it on properly

When an agent opens a query they can see how it arrived: directly to them, through the agency, or passed on by a colleague who thought it was a better fit for this desk. Duplicate submissions get flagged rather than quietly read twice.

Referral management and internal routing were both named by agents describing their ideal tooling.

Reporting on live data, not projections

Agency-level reporting that runs on live data from what your team is actually doing, not on projections or sample figures. It is in the product today, working from the moment your agents start using it.

Submission analytics was named among the top three highest-impact features by 9 of 10 respondents in our second study.

Connected to the tools already on your desks

Scheduling through Calendly, signatures through Dropbox Sign or DocuSign, video calls through LitArc's own integration, and email query import so agents can forward what arrives elsewhere straight into the platform. All live.

Set up your agencySee how roles work

Where we draw the line

Nothing is hidden from the agent who has to decide

Asked what they would trust least about technology doing an agent's job, agents in our research answered two things over and over: losing personal judgment, and data privacy. So here is exactly what LitArc does and does not do, including the parts that are more complicated than a slogan.

We do not use any data to train models.

Not manuscripts, not query letters, not your client records. Nothing on the platform is used as training data, by us or by anyone we work with. You can tell your authors that in plain language and it will be true.

Nothing is auto-rejected unless an agent chooses it.

LitArc does not reject anything by default. An agent can set their own rules to auto-decline queries on specific parameters, the wrong genre or the wrong word count, but that is their decision to switch on, and their parameters. We never make it for them.

Submissions are scored, and the score never hides anything.

LitArc does score submissions against an agent's stated criteria, and shows that score as information. By default nothing is penalized, buried, or filtered out because of it. An agent can opt in to prioritizing by score, and even then, every query that reaches them stays findable and reviewable. No query disappears.

The judgment stays with the person.

Filtering, flagging, and scoring change the order things reach a desk, and nothing more. They do not decide what is good. Where a query is declined automatically, it is because an agent wrote that rule and switched it on. Every representation decision at your agency is made by a person at your agency.

Getting started

Set the agency up in an afternoon

No implementation project, no procurement cycle, and nothing to approve before you begin. Create the agency and the shared queue is running the same day.

  1. Step 01

    Create the agency

    Create the agency on LitArc and add your agents to it. An agent can be added to an existing agency or the agency can be set up first, whichever fits how your team is already on the platform.

  2. Step 02

    Assign the three roles

    Decide who is an Agent, who runs the query queue, and who manages the agency. Takes about a minute per person and can be changed whenever the team changes.

  3. Step 03

    Bring the live queries in

    Each agent forwards their open queries to their LitArc address and the letter, sample, and author details import automatically. Bulk import at agency level is not built yet, so this runs desk by desk.

  4. Step 04

    Let each agent set their own rules

    Genre, word count, required materials, open or closed. Agency-wide you get one searchable queue. On each desk, nothing about how that agent reads has to change.

Set up your agencySee how roles work

Why we built the agency layer

The agency is usually the reason the tools never change

Hi. I'm Michael, and I run LitArc.

One line from our research has stayed with me longer than any other. An agent told us a proper query system would help enormously with their admin, and then added that the agency decision is to continue using email, for now.

That is not a technology problem. That is someone who already knows the answer, working inside a decision they did not get to make. And I understand the decision. Changing how nine people work is genuinely risky, the tools that promise to help are built for sales teams, and there is never a quiet month to do it in.

So we built the agency layer to be the smallest change that still fixes the real thing. Your agents keep their own rules and their own reading process, because we heard clearly that every agent has their own way of working and taking it away is the fastest route to software nobody opens. What the agency gets is the part that was never anyone's job: one place where every query lives, and a record that survives somebody being on holiday.

We are also not going to oversell it. There are things we are still building, and they are not on this page. You will find out what LitArc does by using it, not by discovering later what it does not do.

Michael, LitArc

What agencies ask first

Before you take this to the partners

How do we standardize without losing agent autonomy?

The agency standardizes where the work lives: one queue, one set of records, one report. Each agent still sets their own intake rules, decides what they read and in what order, and keeps their own client relationships. The shared layer sits around the desks rather than inside them.

Can an Agency Manager see an individual agent's queries?

Yes. Agency Managers and Query Managers can see every query and submission that comes to the agency. That is the point of a shared queue, and it is worth being upfront with your agents about it before you roll it out. The Agent role sees their own desk plus the agency view.

Does LitArc filter queries before an agent sees them?

Only if that agent sets it up. Nothing is auto-declined by default. Agents can create their own rules to auto-decline on specific parameters, and can opt in to prioritizing their queue by score. Even with those on, every query that reaches them remains findable and reviewable. Nothing is deleted or hidden.

Do our agents have to leave QueryManager or our website form?

No. Agents forward queries from any source into LitArc and the letter, sample, and author details import automatically, so you can run both while you decide. This import runs per agent. There is no bulk agency-wide import yet.

Can we try it on two desks before rolling it out?

Yes, and we would recommend it. Set the agency up, add the two agents most annoyed by the current setup, and leave everyone else where they are. The shared queue works with two agents on it exactly as it does with nine, so the rest of the team can watch before deciding.

Is there an acquisition editor database?

Not yet for agencies. It is one of the things agents asked for most often in our research and it is on the roadmap, but it is not exposed in the product today.

One queue. Three roles.

Your agency does not need a transformation program. It needs one place where the work is visible, and enough restraint not to touch everything else.

  • Set up the same day
  • Works with two agents on it, or nine
  • No data used to train models
Set up your agencySee what setup involves

Built from paid research with working literary agents