Vintage

Richard Curtis , president of Richard Curtis Associates, Inc., is a leading New York literary agent and a well known author advocate. He is also the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction including several books about the publishing industry.

He graduated from Syracuse University in 1958 with a BA in American Studies and from the University of Wyoming with a Masters degree, also in American Studies. He joined the ScottMeredith Literary Agency after graduation, and was foreign rights manager there for seven years. In 1967, he launched a freelance writing career, and has had some fifty books published by many major houses. In the early 1970's, he began his own literary agency, and in 1979 incorporated it. Richard Curtis Associates, Inc. currently represents close to 150 authors in all fields. The agency reports millions of dollars in annual sales for leading authors in every area of nonfiction and in such categories of fiction as romance, westerns, thrillers, science fiction, and fantasy.

His interest in emerging media and technology has enabled him to help authors anticipate trends in publishing and multimedia. He has lectured extensively and conducted panels and seminars devoted to raising consciousness in the author and agent community about the future of communications.

Early in the 1980's, he started writing an advice column for Locus, a science fiction newsletter, and out of his articles several books have been published including HOW TO BE YOUR OWN LITERARY AGENT, BEYOND THE BESTSELLER, MASTERING THE BUSINESS OF WRITING, and THIS BUSINESS OF PUBLISHING. He has testified as an expert witness in several publishing trials.

He was the first president of the Independent Literary Agents Association and was President of the Association of Authors' Representatives in 1996 and 1997. His company served for over a decade as agency for the Science Fiction Writers of America. In 1994, he received the prestigious Romance Writers of America Industry Award for Distinguished Service to Authors. In 1998 he was invited to serve on the editorial advisory board of Writer’s Digest. In 2000 he was invited to serve on the Publishing Master of Science advisory Board of Pace University.

Late in 1998, Richard Curtis announced the formation of e-reads, a publisher dedicated to reissuing, in e-book and print formats, previously published books in such popular categories as romance, fantasy and science fiction, and thrillers. The company commenced operation in 1999 with over 1200 titles, many by famous names in their fields, and concluded strategic alliances with all a dozen major distributors including Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Ingram Book Company. As a byproduct of his e-book activities, he collaborated with a programmer to create the Royalty Tracker, a program designed to quickly convert vast amounts of royalty information generated by e-book vendors into simple royalty statements. In 2002 Writers Digest Books published his HOW TO GET YOUR E-BOOK PUBLISHED co-authored by William Quick.

Richard Curtis is married to author Leslie Tonner and has two children. He currently resides in Manhattan. His hobbies are sports, music and painting.