About Alterean
Alterean is a directory of UK literary agents, built for the writers trying to reach them.
Every listing draws on what agents and their agencies publish themselves, from whether they’re open to submissions and what they’re looking for, to how they want to receive work and how long they typically take to reply. It’s collected into one searchable place, and every listing shows the date we last checked it.
It’s free to browse. No account, no ads.
Why it exists
Querying is hard enough without the research being harder. The information writers need is scattered across hundreds of agency websites, and it changes without notice. An agent who was open in summer may have closed their list by autumn. And before any of that, you need to know who’s out there in the first place.
How the directory stays current
Agency websites change all the time. Agents open and close, move, and update what they’re seeking. Keeping up with that across the whole directory is more checking than any person could do by hand, so we built custom software for exactly this job. It does the rounds of agency and agent websites, reads what they publicly state, and records it, with a date, so you can see how fresh every listing is.
Some of what we built uses artificial intelligence, as a lot of software quietly does now. We know feelings about that run strong among writers, so we’ll be plain about what it does and what it never does.
The software reads public pages and records what they state. It quotes its sources. It never writes creative work, never judges anyone’s writing, and never invents information. If a page doesn’t state something, the listing doesn’t claim it.
And people stay in the loop where judgement matters. New agents and agencies are reviewed by a person before they’re listed. We honour websites’ own policies on automated reading, and where a site prefers not to be read that way, its checks pass to a person instead. When the software finds something it isn’t sure about, a person decides.
If you think we’ve got something wrong, please tell us at hello@alterean.com.
Where we stand
On the routes to publication, we’re neutral. Traditional publishing and self-publishing are both first-class ways to reach readers, and we’ll never push you toward either.
On agents and agencies, we’re neutral there too. We don’t offer or accept any paid placements or featured listings. A listing is a fact, not an endorsement.
On writers, not neutral at all. When there’s a choice to make about how Alterean works, we make it in the writer’s favour.
Who we are
Alterean is built and run by Ollinton Ltd, a small independent company registered in England and Wales. Small is part of the design. The directory doesn’t need a corporation, it needs care and good tooling.