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Ken Wright of Writers House has sold a debut novel by John Corey Whaley to Namrata Tripathi, executive editor at Simon & Schuster's Atheneum Books for Young Readers imprint. Wright signed the 26-year-old Whaley as a client after finding his manuscript on Webook.com's AgentInbox online service that launched in November. Whaley is the first author who has used AgentInbox to land a book deal.

Whaley said he signed on to AgentInBox after receiving the standard rejection letters from several dozen agents. "I was ready to give up," he said. The premise of AgentInBox is to help authors write acceptable query letters and direct them to agents who specialize in the genres they are writing in--in the case of Whaley it was YA literary fiction. After reading Whaley's submission, Wright asked for the complete manuscript, loved it and within a few weeks signed Whaley. "I was skeptical," Whaley said of AgentInBox, "but it worked." Tentatively titled Good God Bird, Whaley's coming of age story is scheduled for release in 2011.

Ardy Khazaei, president of WEbook, said submissions from writers remains steady and the number of agents who have signed on has increased. Although he was not aware of any other agents who have signed writers directly using AgentInBox, he has heard that agents have found clients. The service is set up so that agents can interact with authors without needing to contact WEbook. Khazaei said WEbook has been making adjustments to AgentInBox based on agent feedback. "Ultimately the service will be successful if the agents like it," he said. WEbook takes no cut of advance and at this point is free to authors, but at some point it will charge authors to sign up.

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