Literary Agents
Go Transatlantic
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (OCTOBER 2003)
Wrangling
with what one observer has called “the quickening compression
of the world English-language market for books,” a number
of prominent literary agencies have now rolled out transatlantic
offices, including ICM (which set up shop in
Soho Square last March) and Janklow & Nesbit
(it landed in London over two years ago), while
British agency PFD opened in New York last month
— all of whom join longtime cross-ponders such as William
Morris and The Wylie Agency. The benefits
to these beachheads may be obvious: on-the-ground access
to talent, closer connections to editors, fewer co-agent
commissions, and, for US agencies, a better chance at
selling those midlist titles into a British market increasingly
receptive only to the mega-hits. Yet the recent flurry
of activity also highlights each agency’s particular
angle of attack as they weather the ever-synergizing
global book biz.
In the case of PFD (Peters Fraser & Dunlop), principals
say the jump to New York was not driven by a mere desire
to circumvent co-agents. Indeed, the group’s nine London-based
agents will continue to work with a range of US agents,
depending on the tastes and styles that best suit a
particular project, according to Caroline Dawnay,
who heads PFD’s book department in London. PFD will
share office space with its parent company, sports and
entertainment management group CSS Stellar. The
office will be run by Zoe Pagnamenta, who
had been with the Wylie Agency in New York for six
years, and headed its UK office last year. She’ll be
taking on her own US clients, in addition to handling
certain UK authors in the US. While the London company’s
translation rights are handled by Intercontinental
Literary Agency, which deals direct in most territories,
PFD’s New York office have decided to work with ILA
on a nonexclusive basis for the time being. Rather than
being of a piece with the globalizing business, Dawnay
suggests, the move to New York “is almost an anti-globalization
move” in that it counters the push by large publishing
conglomerates to purchase world-English rights, which
she feels does not serve authors well when they become
just one more title in a bucketful being sold abroad.
“Having a presence in New York which has our name on
it,” she says, “is an attempt to make clear to New York
publishing that we passionately believe in the notion
of books being published indigenously in America, with
the sort of care and attention that is going to satisfy
our British authors, and will satisfy those American
authors we look forward to handling back here in London.”
Michael Carlisle, who represents the UK authors of AM
Heath, Curtis Brown, PFD, and other British
agencies on a title-by-title basis, has long agreed
that authors can best be served by a network of co-agent
relationships rather than a one-stop-shop that represents
a co-agency’s entire list. “We essentially choose the
book on the book’s basis rather than on who’s sending
it to us,” he explains. “The reaction among New York
editors we hope is higher to our submissions, because
the editor knows we’ve asked to handle it.” Carlisle
& Company has sold more than 130 UK titles in the
US over the last three years, many handled in conjunction
with Emma Parry, who has since set up her own
agency with fellow Carlisle alum Christy Fletcher.
Carlisle recently hired George Lucas to coordinate
the agency’s UK co-agenting business, which should benefit
from Lucas’ editorial background at Hodder &
Stoughton, Ballantine, and S&S.
Foreign rights were the initial focus for the London
office of ICM, where department heads Amanda Urban
and Esther Newberg began planning the move more
than three years ago, as they realized that their list
had grown large enough that representing US authors’
foreign rights through sub-agents no longer made sense.
“It was not just a matter of commission,” Urban says.
“It was part of our philosophy that the principal agent
sells the book better than anybody.” Once on the ground
in London, however, it became readily apparent that
selling directly into the UK (and representing the UK
market directly to the US) was the logical next step.
All ICM foreign rights are now handled through London
under the direction of Margaret Halton, who spent
two years at ICM’s New York office. Kate Jones,
a longtime Executive Editor at Penguin who subsequently
consulted for the James Bond estate, heads up
the office’s representation of UK authors, while Tricia
Davey (formerly of ICM’s Los Angeles office) handles
film and television rights.
Janklow & Nesbit, by contrast, set up shop on Adam
& Eve Mews about two-and-a-half years ago with the
chief aim of representing UK authors on their own turf.
“They’ve signed a very literary crew of young-ish English
writers, and it’s going great guns,” says Morton
Janklow of the new operation. “We’re thinking about
expanding.” The office now represents about 75 UK clients,
whose US rights are in turn handled out of New York.
(UK rights for the agency’s US authors are handled either
out of the UK office or directly from the US, depending
on the particular author.) “We have discovered that
many English writers would love to have the power of
the big New York agency behind them, but they need a
presence in town,” Janklow says. Foreign rights are
handled directly from New York, so a second advantage
of the London outpost was “a really thoughtful window
on the UK and the continent,” Janklow adds, bolstering
the agency’s intelligence as it sells translation rights
throughout Europe. “We hand-sell book-by-book in every
market. That gives us total control over the work of
our authors all over the world.” The London office supports
agents Claire Paterson and Tifanny Loehnis,
who spend at least one week per quarter in the home
office, while the agency’s proprietary computer system
adds another layer of connectivity between the two shops.
For some observers, the rise of transatlantic agencies
comes none too soon. “It’s about bloody time,” UK agent
Ed Victor tells PT. “No one can represent
a project as effectively, passionately, or knowledgeably
as the original, primary agent. All too often, sub-agents
deal with incoming books from other agents as ‘product’
— sausages in a sausage machine. It makes much more
sense for the initiating agent to learn the other market
and use that knowledge to sell their clients’ books
in it.” Victor’s agency has long handled its own books
in New York, though he grants that certain titles may
need special handling by someone on the ground. “We
do sometimes use the services of a very bright young
agent in NYC, William Clark, when we feel that
his close focus on that market will reap greater rewards
for our client,” Victor says. For translation markets,
the agency uses Andrew Nurnberg Associates. “One
stop shopping saves on overheads, and Andrew and his
people know us and our clients intimately so that they
can provide a personal, highly focussed service for
us.”
©2003
Publishing Trends
