Celebrating our International Partners on our 25th Anniversary: Livia Stoia Literary Agency (Romania and the ex-Yuvoslavic countries)

In 2017 we are celebrating the 25 th anniversary of our founding. From the very beginning, Berrett-Koehler books have been widely translated to many different languages and wonderfully received all over the world. Over the years, we have signed over two thousand foreign translation rights deals. We could not have done this without the tireless work of our translation rights agents around the globe. As part of our year-long celebration, we will be featuring one of these foreign partners every month.  We asked each of them to provide us with a few words describing their experiences working with BK.

In September we are thrilled to feature the small but mighty team at the Livia Stoia Literary Agency. Founded by Livia Stoia as Sun Literary Agency in 2003, Berrett-Koehler is proud to be one of its first clients. They have an impressive record with Berrett-Koehler -- over 5% of all our translation rights contracts have been negotiated by this team. In addition to the international Frankfurt and London Book fair, Livia personally travels to many of the Eastern European book fairs a year, so we know our books are well represented in that corner of the world. As this market becomes more active in the international rights trading arena, we are glad to be in the excellent hands of Livia, Oana and Daniela. Here is what Livia wrote to us:

I remember the first time I met Maria Jesus at London Book Fair in 2004. A Romanian publisher suggested me to approach her for a possible representation of Berrett-Koehler in Romania. I took the chance right away.

I suppose Maria Jesus liked me (which turned it into a mutual feeling), since she quickly agreed to start our collaboration. I was very happy to take over BK’s front list for my country, starting on a non-exclusive basis.

Next year I spent the holiday with my family in Mallorca. Maria Jesus kindly invited me to have a drink together, as she was there in her holiday too. I was sooo very happy to accept her proposal to become exclusive agent for BK in Romania, especially because that included working on the back-list too.

Later on, after I expanded my business abroad, Maria Jesus and Catherine manifested their trust in me by offering me the chance to explore other territories among which ex-Yugoslavic countries, Albania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, where I could promote and sell the BK titles. 

It’s been already 13 years of excellent business relationship and we enjoy it even more working with such warm and effective persons like Maria Jesus and Catherine, on such a great list of authors.

My colleagues and I have managed to conclude 220 contracts from BK list so far, with 42 important and reliable publishing houses from Eastern Europe. 

Congratulations for your 25th anniversary, dear ladies, and many more years of fruitful business to come!

Warm wishes,

(in alphabetical order)

Daniela Popescu, Livia Stoia, Oana Vasile

Thank YOU, Livia and team. It has really been a pleasure, and here is to many more years of business together.