Terms of Use

Alterean is a trading name of Ollinton Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company no. 17060543). Its registered office is 128 City Road, London EC1V 2NX, United Kingdom. You can contact us at hello@alterean.com.

By using Alterean you agree to these terms. They’re short and written to be read.

Alterean is a directory of UK literary agents and publishers that is free to browse, with related resources for writers and a paid membership for writers who want more. It gathers what agents and their agencies publicly state about their work, their interests and their submission guidelines, and presents it in one searchable place. Each listing shows the date we last checked it.

Alterean provides information, not advice. The directory doesn’t represent you, isn’t itself a route of submission, and can’t get you published. Listing an agent is not an endorsement, and no agent or agency pays to be listed or gets talked up over another.

We work hard to keep the directory current, and we show our working. Every listing carries the date it was last checked. But agencies change their pages and close their lists, and agents move agencies, all without telling us, and no directory can promise to be complete or perfectly current.

So the rule for using Alterean is the one we’d give a friend. Treat it as your starting point, and check the agency’s own website before you submit. The agency’s own guidelines are always the authority on what that agency wants. If you spot something we’ve got wrong, tell us at hello@alterean.com and we’ll check it.

Alterean is for personal use by writers and people who work with them. You’re welcome to browse, search, link to any page, and share listings.

You may not scrape, bulk-download or systematically extract the directory’s contents, republish the database or substantial parts of it, or use the site in a way that interferes with its operation or with other people’s use of it. UK law gives database rights to whoever does the work of compiling, checking and maintaining a collection like this one. For Alterean, that’s Ollinton Ltd.

Alterean Plus is a paid membership: a workspace with a watchlist, a submission log, and an email when someone you watch reopens or a submission becomes worth a chase. What’s included, the price and the billing period are shown when you subscribe, and the price you see there is the price you pay.

The trial. Every membership starts with a free trial of 14 days. A first trial started on or before 31 October 2026 needs no payment card: we email you before it ends, and if you add a card the membership carries on, and if you don’t it simply ends and nothing is charged. Any other trial needs a payment card to start it, nothing is charged until the trial ends, and we email you before it does. Cancel during the trial and you pay nothing.

Billing and cancelling. After the trial the membership renews automatically, yearly or monthly as you chose, until you cancel. You can cancel at any time from your account, and the membership runs to the end of the period you’ve paid for. Your statutory rights, including any cooling-off right, are unaffected. Payments are taken by our payment provider; we never see your card details.

Your account. An account is for one person. Keep your sign-in to yourself, and tell us if you think someone else has used it. We can close an account that breaks these terms; if we do, we refund any period you’ve paid for and not used.

The site’s own text, design and branding belong to Ollinton Ltd. Where a listing quotes an agency’s published wording, such as submission guidelines or a wish list, those words remain the agency’s, quoted so writers see what the source actually says. Agency and agent names belong to their owners; they appear here to identify, not to imply affiliation.

Agents and agencies can ask us to correct or remove their listing at any time by emailing privacy@alterean.com. Our Privacy Notice explains what information we hold about listed professionals, where it comes from, and your rights over it.

The directory and our resource pages link out to agencies, events, competitions and other organisations. Those sites are theirs, not ours. We’re not responsible for their content, their terms, or what happens there. A link is a signpost, not a guarantee.

We provide the directory free of charge, with care, and as it is. To the extent the law allows, we’re not liable for losses arising from your use of the site or reliance on its contents, including decisions about where and how to submit your work. For the membership, our liability to you is limited to what you’ve paid us in the twelve months before the claim. Nothing in these terms limits any right or protection the law says can’t be limited.

If we change these terms we’ll update the date at the top, and flag significant changes on the site. Carrying on using Alterean after a change means the new terms apply.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction, though if you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland you’re entitled to bring proceedings at home. If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands.

hello@alterean.com.