It’s planted as he wished it to be. “I don’t think his [Wylie’s] motives were mercenary at all,” says author David Updike ’79, a longtime client. Wylie acknowledges the late Chilean author as having been a big influence on writing in Spanish. Register Here. independent source of news about the Harvard That’s the way I want to organize the world.”. Wylie & Co. Those who want to keep a book for a long time will buy a physical book.”, The music-industry lawyer John Eastman, who represents his brother-in-law Paul McCartney as well as other musicians, has advised the Wylie Agency in discussions with publishers concerning e-book rights. An international literary agency with offices in London and New York. And that is why the music industry hit the wall.”. I’m basically free of personality. Merwin, Lou Reed, David Rockefeller ’36, LL.D. Authors' agent Andrew Wylie aims for the high end—financial and literary. He expanded and adjusted my notion of what and how an educated person could think; he had a playful, unconventional approach to reality. It’s not of interest whether we think a book will sell thousands of copies. Enter your information in the form to the right for FREE INSTANT ACCESS to the Directory of Literary Agents™. Called “The Jackal” for poaching writers from other agencies, Wylie says his reputation as an aggressive operator during the agency’s first decade came from his efforts to find better deals for writers he perceived weren’t represented well. It’s a critical consideration. Last year Wylie tapped Cristóbal Pera, former editorial director of Penguin Random House Mexico, to head up the agency’s Spanish-language operations—to bring in and retain a new generation of writers described by Pera in October as having having “very diverse international references.”. “There aren’t many literary agents in New York City who can honestly claim never to have lost a client to Andrew Wylie,” wrote Leon Neyfakh ’07 in the New York Observer this year. Listen to an excerpt from the interview with Andrew Wylie, [video:http://harvardmagazine.com/sites/default/files/media/0710-wylie.mp3], In 1979, Andrew Wylie ’70 was trying to get a job as a book editor. Wylie is now working with the Royal Shakespeare Company, a team of scholars, Random House, Macmillan, and digital producers to create a First Folio edition of Shakespeare. ’94, William Kennedy, Henry Kissinger ’50, Ph.D. ’54, Elmore Leonard, W.S. Caroline Buckee: Can Mobile-phone Data Help Control the Spread of the Coronavirus? “A writer sits alone in his room. When he was 6 years old, he was abused by a mentally unstable person, The Observer reported. ... Mark Wylie Founder and Director of Equine Loss and Risk Assessors. More or less the same with [Jorge Luis] Borges. No unsolicited MSS and not accepting new material at present (2010). Literary fiction and non-fiction. And theoretically, agents have a skill to present work in a way that’s appealing to publishers.”, A focus on the Spanish-language market corresponds with a growing interest in Latin American writers. Unimpressed with the target audience analysis tactics the firm had used to manipulate … Roberto Bolaño’s previously unpublished ‘El espíritu de la ciencia-ficción,’ set in 1970s Mexico City, was released in mid-November by Alfaguara. My ability to transmit the writer’s qualities, to persuasively describe them with admiration, is strong because I have this sort of hollow core: I take on the author’s identity. Sarah has 1 job listed on their profile. This year, Wylie moved the author’s body of work from Barcelona-based Anagrama to Penguin Random House’s imprint Alfaguara, which launched Bolaño’s previously unpublished 1984 novel El espíritu de la ciencia ficción in Guadalajara. But publishing is constructed as if the most valuable author is Danielle Steel.”. “If Lewis Carroll and his estate had properly protected his rights, then global vacationers would be headed to Wonderland instead of Disney World and they’d have a more meaningful vacation experience, because Lewis Carroll is more interesting than Walt Disney,” he adds. Class Notes or Obituaries, please log in using your Harvard Yet the frontlist is where the sizzle is, if not the steak. But if that publisher has grown tired of the marriage and has taken the writer for granted, and only offers one-third of what another publisher will offer for the book, then it’s time to end the marriage and change publishers. It was relaxing and enjoyable.” Wylie has always found the presence of books comforting; he maintains nearly identical libraries in his home on Park Avenue and his place in the Hamptons, to which he and his family decamp for the summer--he runs the agency from its fully equipped office. Image courtesy of Harvard Art Museums; © President and Fellows of Harvard College, New York, by Robert Frank, negative 1955-56Courtesy of the Addison Gallery of American Art, “Robert Frank: The Americans,” at the Addison Gallery of American Art. We’re not just thinking locally. “But my uncles were bankers,” he says, “and I wanted to combine the two disciplines.” That drew him toward the business side of publishing; Wylie decided to apprentice himself to a literary agent. His translations include a series of children's books based on indigenous Mexican folk tales. What’s important is to figure out an equitable sharing of risks and rewards. “If you find a hole like this [there was no First Folio in print in English] in the market and make it your own and protect it with a combination of copyright and the trademark of the Royal Shakespeare Company--a definitive performing troupe--then to all intents and purposes, Shakespeare is who you are,” Wylie explains. Mat has 6 jobs listed on their profile. And so the whole system doesn’t work. Wylie was born March 11, 1937, in Hartford, son of the late George S. and Elizabeth (Clubb) Wylie. “I have a nature that’s suited to representation. But those other agencies don’t have time to read the books they’re handling and they’re not talking to people in a position of authority in publishing houses in their respective territories. “We must begin to confront the reality of a past in which academic curiosity and opportunity overwhelmed humanity,” Harvard president Lawrence Bacow wrote. Harvard Magazine? So at the start, you’re talking about a jump of roughly 30 percent. We apply some analysis, and what ordinarily happens is an increase of 300 to 500 percent in revenue.” (The agency charges a 15 percent commission domestically today, 20 percent abroad; it was one of the last to work for 10 percent domestically until that proved unsustainable. All book publishing is divided into two parts: frontlist and backlist. During his twenties, in beret and black leather jacket, he hung out in the New York arts-and-lit world and the avant-garde scene that swirled around Andy Warhol. Julia then returned to New York to start her career in publishing. Your donation today Wylie upends this pattern. Photograph by Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images. Most agencies operate locally and trade off their foreign business to other agencies. Photographer Morgan Smith ’60 documents life on the precarious precipice between Mexico and the United States. Sign up to get our FREE email edition, Monday to Friday! A writer arrives with a fully formed personality and set of beliefs, powerfully expressed. “We went after the most important writers in their respective languages,” Wylie says, “and we brought to those estates the same discipline of properly assessing the value of the writer’s work. independent source for Harvard news since 1898 | SUBSCRIBE, A searing conclusion about sexual harassment on campus. (1 of 8), Photograph courtesy of Berkshire East and Tino Specht, Skiing, snow tubing, and more in Western Massachusetts. But it’s the quality of the writing that is crucial to remaining in vogue, Wylie says, rather than the agency’s pursuit of writers. Wylie is a talented storyteller who has a strong command of producing, writing and editing compelling content. David Roberts: A lifetime of adventures, risks, and rewards. Independent bookstores will come back because they know their neighborhood and are selling to those local readers.”, In his personal reading, Wylie has little use for e-book devices like Kindle, although e-book rights are currently a topic of intense discussion among all publishers and agents. 4 Acer Walk Oxford OX2 6EX United Kingdom UK: +44 (0)345 459 9560 US: +1 (646) 974 9060 Email: Stone, author of The Trial of Socrates. So the writer is idiosyncratic, a-socialized, isolated, insecure. Photograph courtesy of Nancy Boxley Tepper/reproduction by KLK Photography, The campus’s Mr. Green, accessing acronyms, mathematician at work, and a distracted astronomer, Read the Wylie had tweeted details that claimed to expose the British consultancy's work in India dating back to 2003. “We look at the world the same way, in terms of the quality of what we’re working with.” Still, Galassi believes that “Wylie’s strong-arm approach ignores the reality of the publisher’s predicament.” By pushing hard to keep all the works of major authors in print worldwide, Wylie disregards the fact that “There are too many books that don’t have a readership that is constant enough for bookstores to be able to stock them today,” Galassi says. But what he had seen of “literary” literary agents did not appeal. “It’s remarkable, after 36 years in the business, how frequently we find publishers asking in disbelief how we can consider moving an author to another publisher. We do a disproportionate amount of business with [Éditions] Gallimard, for example, though they are far from the biggest publisher in France.”, Wylie generally represents established writers; the discovery of new novelists and poets often rests with smaller publishers who pay small advances and print only a few thousand copies of a book. “We spend 96 percent of our time talking about 4 percent of the business,” he says (e-books’ current share of publishing revenue). These were conveyed to Apple in the deal for iTunes. Elizabeth Wylie. Wherever they were in the world, in this challenging period, they found the time to participate. Despite vaccines, Harvard scientists warn, more-transmissible variants make COVID-19 harder to control. WC1B 3JA. community. He began going to London once a month in 1986 (in 1996 he opened a London office in Bedford Square in a 1775 townhouse with a large garden) and has kept it up ever since, logging a rough total of 1,728,000 air miles to and from England alone. Author Isabel Wilkerson kicks off a Harvard speaker series on storytelling and public health. “They hadn’t ever encountered the author, so there was no personal engagement in what they were selling, and so they didn’t convey the same enthusiasm. independent source for Harvard news since The chains will go out of business--their model doesn’t work. (Wylie’s wife, Camilla, is a serious potter; they have two daughters, Erica, 25, and Alexandra, 16. Craig A. Lambert ’69, Ph.D. ’78, is deputy editor of this magazine. 17 Bedford Square London, WC1B 3JA United Kingdom . T. 212 246 0069 F. 212 586 8953 E. mail@wylieagency.com F. 212 586 8953 E. mail@wylieagency.com He was founder and president of Follis, Wylie and Lane Insurance Agency … As Wylie puts it, “During the boom, Latin American writers received a lot of attention. Mega-agencies like William Morris and ICM have film divisions, which the Wylie Agency does not, but “I believe we have a larger literary agency, in terms of global reach, number of clients, and perhaps also revenue,” says Wylie. And in the corner, with a rake and a hoe, the agent is planting the flowers that the author has accumulated.”. Jeannie Suk Gersen: Do Elite Colleges Discriminate Against Asian Americans? The author, only the third woman admitted to Review membership, stands in the fourth row, at upper left. For the foreseeable future, Wylie says his plan is to continue to build the agency to remain sustainable without sacrificing its quality of representation or becoming financially unstable. For that we are extremely grateful. But publishers often lose money up front and make it up on the back end, if the book sells well. It now represents more than 1000 clients and literary estates. “But we’ve taken steps to address that” as part of the agency’s strategy to focus globally, Andrew Wylie tells Publishing Perspectives at Guadalajara Book Fair. The Wylie Agency (UK) Ltd . But we only look at the quality of the writing. He can be contacted at adamcritchley@hotmail.com, Tags: Andrew Wylie, Guadalajara Book Fair, Latin America, literary agents, Mexico, rights, Spanish. There wasn’t much talking, only reading. Wylie says he now has a clearer idea of that role, and why he’s so well suited to it. Agents References. I’ve always found it easy to concentrate on and appreciate another person. A sensational performance leads Harvard over Yale. The Wylie Agency, founded in 1980, with offices today in midtown Manhattan and in London, is a mighty force in publishing. When a small-press author develops a following, he or she often moves to a bigger publisher with more money, much like major-league baseball stars who leave small-market teams for rich franchises. His literary judgment on his own output: “I figured I wasn’t destined to be a poet.”, In fact, based on his self-analysis, he might be almost genetically destined to represent writers. Though the … And you got the feeling that the best writers had the worst representation, and the worst writers had the best representation. “Shakespeare is more important than Danielle Steel in large part because his work is more lasting,” he explains. We also wish to extend our gratitude to the following fellow-travelers, who have supported our initiative in every… Your “This is what print on demand, online bookstores, and e-books are for.” Furthermore, he adds, “Andrew thinks publishers should pay a higher royalty on e-book sales, since we have no printing and distribution costs with them. The guy has incredible taste.” The Guardian recently described the Wylie Agency as “the most feared and most influential authors’ representatives in the world of Anglo-American publishing.”, Despite the well-documented travails of the contemporary book business, Wylie remains sanguine about its future, both technological and commercial. “We publish people no one has ever heard of,” says Barbara Epler ’83, editor-in-chief and publisher of New Directions, the small, distinguished literary press founded by James Laughlin ’36 (see “Cantos and the Stem Christie,” January-February 1995, page 56). The Wylie Agency (UK) Ltd. You’ve got to get on a jet plane every month. She joined HG Literary in 2018 after building a list at Mary Evans Inc and handling foreign rights. For the second consecutive year, petitioners have qualified to be candidates in the Board of Overseers election. ’69, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Oliver Sachs, and Nicolas Sarkozy. There are payoffs for the legwork. “The bestseller list,” Wylie says, “was dominated by commercial trash. Literary agent Wylie founded the literary agency named after him in New York in 1980. There was a very other-worldly atmosphere about him.” Wylie also met rock songwriter and photographer Lou Reed, who is now a client and is “as good as François Villon, in my opinion.” And he published his own poetry, including the 1972 chapbook Yellow Flowers. Publishing Perspectives | 30 Irving Place, 4th Floor, New York NY, 10003 | +1-212-794-2851 |. “I suspect that the trashier the book, the more likely it is to be converted to an e-book. “They would ask what I was reading,” Wylie says, “and I would say, ‘Thucydides.’ They would say, ‘Huh? I become so enraptured by their interests, knowledge, and means of expression that nothing can distract me. Photograph by Gil Talbot/Harvard Athletic Communications, Volleyball captain Sandra Zeng’s defensive focus. Auden, Saul Bellow, Roberto Bolaño, William S. Burroughs ’36, Italo Calvino, Allen Ginsberg, Arthur Miller, Vladimir Nabokov, Hunter Thompson, John Updike ’54, Litt.D. So if you want authority in the Spanish-language market, for example, you have to have Borges and Bolaño, and others. “The agent works for the writer,” he says. The stance Random House and other publishers have taken that e-book and other digital rights are included in older contracts signed before digital rights existed and thus were not explicitly listed in a contract. 1898. Say the annual royalties for each approximated $1,000; then their inactivity meant Mailer was sacrificing $144,000 or so per year in royalty income. Wylie’s publishing credentials were promising. Agency founder Andrew Wylie, is apparently frustrated by two things: 1.) “Many agencies only think about money. A person with devotion to the writer, a person whose attention is focused on the nature and aspirations of the writer, a person who studies the language and thoughts of the writer, and who’s adept at transmitting another’s work. Wylie approached Mailer with a spreadsheet: 12 of Mailer’s books had fallen out of print, and his works appeared in 12 languages on average--translating into 144 fallow titles. When Wylie entered the business, American agents sold overseas rights through a network of sub-agents located in Scandinavia, Italy, Germany, France, and so on. 250 West 57th Street, Suite 2114, New York, NY 10107. Dinner conversations were like sparring matches.” Like his father, Wylie entered St. Paul’s School, but unlike him, found it “quite snobbish, full of attitudes.” His entrepreneurial spirit bloomed, though: he started a small business in cahoots with a cabdriver to ferry St. Paul’s students to Boston and supply them, illegally, with liquor.