Welcome to art agenting & airtable. I'm really happy you're here.

Hello! I'm Jessica Saint Jean, a literary agent representing children's book illustrators at Root Literary and an airtable enthusiast.

After working with illustrators in children's publishing for almost 15 years, I've learned a lot that I'd like to pass along. And while I'm by no means an airtable expert, I've figured out a few tricks that I think could be useful to illustrators, other agents – or anyone, really!

So I'm giving this newsletter thing a shot. (Even though I'm not much of a writer¹.) A few times a month, I'll be over here sharing:

• Various information about traditional children's publishing that I want illustrators to know, from querying tips to advice on how to have a long career making books, and everything in between; 

• How I use airtable in my professional life as a literary agent (though I may occasionally throw in some of my recreational spreadsheets to spice things up);

• And interviews with my incredibly talented clients to celebrate their books!

If any of that sounds good to you, have a click around – and please consider subscribing! You can choose to get all my posts delivered right to your inbox, or only hear about certain topics.

More about me.

Before joining Root Literary in 2024, I was an agent at Jill Grinberg Literary Management where I launched a boutique list of children's book illustrators. I represent illustrators and author-illustrators who work across all formats and genres in children's publishing – from board books and picture books to middle grade and graphic novels. I worked in publishing for a decade before becoming an agent, as an editor at Barefoot Books, and in the art department at Candlewick Press.

I'm also a double Virgo2, a serial organizer, and I love any excuse to make a color-coded spreadsheet. This is me in a nutshell:

More about Airtable. 

Airtable is a cloud software that's a cross between a spreadsheet and a database: it looks and functions like a leveled-up spreadsheet, but it's actually a database underneath, so you can do a lot of cool things with it that aren't possible in programs like excel. I use airtable for just about everything, from project management to finance tracking to planning my flower garden3. It's powerful, flexible, and pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it (in my opinion).

More about this newsletter.

There are a lot of smart people who are sharing their knowledge of the publishing industry in various places (including here on substack!), but I've found there isn't quite as much out there specifically for children's book illustrators. So I'm going to write about publishing from an illustration agent's perspective – and since airtable is a big part of how I do my job, I'll be writing about that too.

Truthfully, this is as much a research project as it is a passion project. A number of my clients are substack-curious4, so I want to learn more about this new platform myself too. And what better way to do that than to dive right in? I hope it will be helpful – to all of you reading this, and to me!

Let's nerd out about illustration and fancy spreadsheets together.

More about the AA&A art.

I am eternally grateful to Federico Fabiani for creating all the fabulous branding illustrations for Art Agenting & Airtable – all credit to him for every piece of art, from the illustration above to the three(!) amazing logos to the lovely section dividers you’ll see throughout the newsletter.

Thank you, Federico!!

And if you like his art5 you’ll love his new picture book! Check out I Quit here! (It’s such a cute and hilarious book. You will not regret it.)