A Message From Our Founder

Hello Tal­ented Person!

Here’s a phi­los­o­phy you don’t hear very often in this industry:  Help peo­ple get their foot in the door. For some rea­son, there’s this idea in pub­lish­ing that any agents who care enough about peo­ple to nur­ture and men­tor them are some­how “unethical.”

That’s just wrong.

It’s wrong because every suc­cess­ful author or speaker got a help­ing hand from a guide, men­tor, book or friend. Every­one was once a begin­ner, whether they were learn­ing to write their ABCs or the lat­est New York Times best seller.  This site is about offer­ing that help­ing hand to YOU as an emerg­ing author or speaker.   You can’t get any­where in the pub­lish­ing or speak­ing indus­tries with­out a “plat­form” - which is a short­hand way of say­ing, “proof that lots of peo­ple are pay­ing atten­tion to your mes­sage.” Most peo­ple think that’s a daunt­ing task, so they do noth­ing at all. But any­thing is eas­ier if you know what to do when. 

Keller Media is all about giv­ing you valu­able advice, sup­port and encour­age­ment so instead of just send­ing you a rejec­tion, you can actu­ally achieve your dream. My com­pany focuses on the big pic­ture: help­ing you build your plat­form before, dur­ing and after pub­li­ca­tion of your book or the pre­sen­ta­tion of your speech.

I’m Wendy Keller, founder of Keller Media.  When I left the agency I was work­ing for to begin my own agency in 1989, peo­ple with a good idea and decent writ­ing skills could get pub­lished pretty eas­ily, even by a big pub­lisher.  Back then, the Infor­ma­tion Age was barely beginning. I sold sev­eral of the first books on using the Internet. (Can you remem­ber what life was like before the Inter­net?  Me neither!)

Two plus decades later, tech­nol­ogy and other fac­tors have changed the world, includ­ing the worlds of pub­lish­ing and paid pro­fes­sional speak­ing. Now, even mediocre pub­lish­ers expect peo­ple to show up with a spec­tac­u­lar plat­form, ide­ally includ­ing some or all of these:

• A big, active speak­ing career
• A lively blog and/or website
• A syn­di­cated column
• Lots of recent media (TV, radio, print)
• Huge fol­low­ings in any social media (Twit­ter, Face­book, other)
• Any kind of celebrity sta­tus (world’s lead­ing researcher, For­tune 500 CEO…)
• AND a fab­u­lous book idea
• AND decent writ­ing skills (or the good sense to hire a ghost­writer to help you)

Edi­tors invari­ably ask me first,  “How big is the author’s plat­form?” They want me to promise them at least 150,000 peo­ple are in your fan base! Only then do they want to hear about the book’s pro­posed content.

Let me ask you something: How in the heck are new writ­ers sup­posed to achieve THAT?

A lot of peo­ple get rejected over and over by agents and they don’t know why.  This is why:  the pre-requisites have changed.

It’s no one’s fault.  It’s the mod­ern age.  But you need to be informed, don’t you? You need to know what’s really going on, not sit around hop­ing, end­lessly churn­ing the stale mis­in­for­ma­tion stuck in your head. You need a way into my indus­tries.  That’s why we work dif­fer­ently than most other lit­er­ary agen­cies, and have done it Our Way since inception.

Here’s how we “roll”:

If you have already achieved a level of pre­em­i­nence in your sub­ject mat­ter and you have a great book con­cept, we’re going to instantly offer you a con­tract and then work hard to earn our com­mis­sion.  That’s the way lit­er­ary agents tra­di­tion­ally worked — until recently.  The only money you’ll spend before you get a pub­lish­ing con­tract is per­haps to come to New York to meet the top pub­lish­ers in the country. See our mas­sive, impres­sive sold list?  90% of all those authors came to us at the ready-to-be-sold level.  (Note: that level has changed a LOT in the last 2 years.)

For those of you who are just start­ing out with a dream and some hopes, you’ve come to a place where that will be honored. The prod­ucts and con­sult­ing this com­pany offers come from a place of faith. Faith in tal­ent, drive and human spirit. Sure, we charge for what we do.  Don’t you charge for what you do, and want to be paid for your books and speeches?  Of course. But the under­pin­ning is con­cern, com­pas­sion and the desire to share the can­did facts so you can achieve your goals.

Wher­ever you are on your jour­ney to sucess as an author and speaker, thank you for con­sid­er­ing Keller Media.  When your voice is heard, your unique mes­sage can help many thou­sands of peo­ple. Let’s take the steps together that will help you become prof­itable, suc­cess­ful and rec­og­nized for your contribution.

Here’s wish­ing you all the best.

Wendy Keller

Lit­er­ary Agent/CEO of Keller Media, Inc.