The Agency
Marly Rusoff Literary Agency was founded by former bookseller and publishing executive Marly Rusoff, who held Vice Presidential positions at Houghton Mifflin, Doubleday and William Morrow before opening her agency in New York.
With a combination of marketing, publicity, and editorial experience, our staff is well positioned to support authors in all stages of their work, from developing book proposals to overseeing the marketing and promotion of our authors. Years of experience inside the publishing houses themselves allow us to work closely with a wide variety of major presses.
Press Release on establishing Marly Rusoff Literary Agency (September 2001):
Former publishing executive opens “Marly Rusoff Literary Agency”
(Bronxville, NY) Marly Rusoff, a former publishing executive at Houghton Mifflin, Doubleday and William Morrow, and most recently an affiliate agent at Carlisle & Company in New York, announced today the formation of Marly Rusoff Literary, Inc., an author representation agency based in Bronxville, New York.
“In the past year, my wonderful affiliation with Carlisle & Company helped me realize that I am never happier than when I work closely with authors”, said Rusoff. “In my more than twenty years in publishing I have participated in hundreds of book marketing and publicity campaigns and have come away from the experience with a keen sense of what it takes to make a book work. I would like to apply that knowledge in my own agency in both shaping projects and seeing books to market, and to do this in the service of a relatively small list of clients. This is a challenging publishing environment but also one with great opportunities for talented writers and I have been extremely fortunate in so quickly finding a number of them in both fiction and non-fiction.”
Rusoff began her career as a bookseller in Minneapolis while still a student at the University of Minnesota. The store became a gathering place for writers and it was upstairs that she and a number of them formed The Loft, a nationally recognized non-profit organization whose mission is to foster a writing community and an audience for literature. The list of authors with whom she has worked as a publicist and/or marketer includes Margaret Atwood, Thomas Cahill, Ethan Canin, Pat Conroy, Alex Kotlowitz, Tim O’Brien, Dennis Lehane, Bill Moyers, Sena Jeter Naslund, Cokie Roberts and Paul Theroux. At Doubleday she created the yearlong marketing plan for the launch of The Century by Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster. While at Doubleday, Rusoff also created the first Reading Group Guide specifically aimed at book groups, a popular marketing tool now widely used by publishers to encourage both sales and reading through active community interaction with books. Rusoff will continue to consult on marketing issues for a select number of preexisting clients.
Through Carlisle & Company, Rusoff has placed a number of notable six-figure projects by first-time authors, including BAD BOY BALLMER by Fredric Alan Maxwell, SONS OF HEAVEN (sold as BY IRON AND BLOOD) by Terrence Cheng, FREUD’S REQUIEM by Matthew von Unwerth and most recently, PRAGUE by Arthur Phillips.
Emma Parry at Carlisle & Co. will place UK rights for Rusoff’s agency; Lisa Queen at IMG will represent all translation rights.