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.”
