Betsy Amster

Betsy Amster Literary Enterprises – President

Betsy Amster Literary Enterprises is a full-service literary agency located in Los Angeles, California. We handle publishing rights and all ancillary rights (such as film, TV, audio, electronic, and foreign) for the authors we represent. We work with both first-time and established writers and are known for our expert attention to every aspect of the publishing process. Before opening the agency, principal Betsy Amster spent ten years as an editor at Pantheon and Vintage and two years as editorial director of the Globe Pequot Press. She has been described in the Los Angeles Times as “a dogged prospector of…literary talent” and celebrated in a profile in the American Society of Journalists and Authors newsletter for her “no-nonsense style and whimsical sense of humor.” She has frequently taught classes on publishing at UCLA Extension’s Writers Program and participated in panels at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Her clients include novelists Marisel Vera, María Amparo Escandón, and Joy Nicholson; MacArthur fellow and urban farmer Will Allen; Beard Award winner Kim Boyce; popular historian Margaret Leslie Davis; and bestselling research psychologist Elaine N. Aron.