Mark Gottlieb, Trident Media Group
Literary Agent
Mark Gottlieb Biography
Mark Gottlieb is a literary agent at the Trident Media Group literary agency in New York City where he works within major trade book publishing. He has ranked first across the book publishing industry both in overall volume of deals and other individual categories and genres. The agency he works at ranks number one for book sales across the industry. While there he has worked alongside #1 New York Times bestselling authors and authors that have won awards such as the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the Booker Prize.
Using that same initiative and insight for identifying talented writers, he is actively building his own client list of bestselling and award-winning authors. He has already performed well over 150 book deals, many of which were multi-book deals. Mark Gottlieb is excited to work directly with authors, helping to manage and grow their careers with all of the unique resources that are available at book publishing’s leading literary agency, Trident Media Group. One of his core values is helping writers realize their dream of becoming published authors and in helping published authors become highly successful in their publications. This is all while ensuring their enjoyment of the book publishing experience.
During his time at Trident Media Group as a literary agent, he has represented numerous New York Times bestselling authors, as well as major award-winning authors. He has optioned and sold numerous books to film and TV production companies. Throughout the year, he meets with major studio heads, independent production companies, talent agencies and talent managers in pitching the works of his clients for book-to-film/TV adaptation.
He currently works with authors such as the Allen Adler Forbidden Planet Estate, Ronald H. Balson, James Breakwell, Christopher Brown, L.A. Casey, Jane Healey, Alan Hlad, Andrew Klavan, Kate Moretti, Nathan J. Robinson and Jaimal Yogis in addition to other highly esteemed authors.
He previously ran the agency’s Audiobook Department as an Audio Rights Literary Agent. In that role he helped the Audiobook Department more than double its audiobook deals in revenue and number of deals. This also involved booking talent into audio narration studios.
Prior to that position he served as Executive Assistant to the literary agency's Chairman. This afforded him incredible opportunities to learn from one of book publishing’s industry leaders.
His first role within the literary agency was in the Foreign Rights Department, where he worked closely with the Director of the department, in seeing books sold to foreign publishers from around the world. Mark Gottlieb continues to work in the area of foreign rights on behalf of his clients in continually attending the major international book fairs, such as the London Book Fair and Frankfurt Book Fair. The agency also has a presence at the Bologna Book Fair where children’s books are sold to foreign publishers. All of this is in addition to meeting with foreign book publishers throughout the year.
Prior to his time at Trident Media Group, he worked in Production at Penguin Books, handling production for various book imprints. This involved handling production for authors of the classics that went on to become mega sellers and win huge awards, such as Agatha Christie, W.E.B. Griffin, Edward Gorey, Nick Hornby, Tom Clancy, Hanif Kureishi, Nora Roberts, among others.
Before his start in book publishing, he attended Emerson College where he obtained a degree in Writing, Literature and Publishing with a minor in Photography. While at Emerson College, he was a founding member of the Undergraduate Students for Publishing and later served as the organization’s President. He also co-founded Emerson College’s Wilde Press. While there he was also involved in other publications at the college such as Ploughshares among other publications.
He is also a highly sought-after speaker at writers’ conferences and writers’ workshops. In giving back to the writing community, he has moderated and been a guest on conference panels, led writing critique groups, book publishing business classes and writing workshops. He has also been deeply involved with charitable and philanthropic organizations such as PEN America, the Housing Works Book donation program and Habitat for Humanity.
He has been interviewed everywhere from Writer’s Digest magazine and Inc. Magazine, to LitReactor magazine and The Writer magazine. Mention of his work has been made in Poets & Writers magazine in addition to Publishers Weekly magazine. He has authored countless articles for writing and publishing magazines, journals and online publications such as The Millions, The Bookseller, The Writing Cooperative, Bookstr, BookTrib, among others. Podcasts with him can be found on popular iTunes podcasts such as The Writer Files, diyMFA, The Grim Tidings Podcast and more.
Mark Gottlieb is actively seeking submissions in all categories and genres, whether fiction, nonfiction, children’s books or graphic novels. He continues to look forward to bringing authors to the curious minds of their future readers.