An Interview With Andrew Wylie

L.G.: Really?

A.W.: Yeah. Because the publishers have given in to every act of aggression that's proposed by the chains, and it's been very bad for business. Everything is deeply discounted, there are endless two-for-three deals and stuff like that, with the authors getting reduced royalty, and the publishers having an already thin margin decimated by being compelled or agreeing to higher discount arrangements with the chains. It's very shortsighted, and it's all an aspect of publishers trying to cover over the fundamental weaknesses of their respective businesses with, you know, misleading cash flow.

L.G.: So this agency is a far cry from renting a desk at somebody's office, which, I think, is how you got started. You have two offices now, here and in London?

A.W.: Yeah.

LG.: How many people on staff here?

A.W.: Thirty-six between the two.

L.G.: And you just brought in Scott Moyers, the former editor of Penguin Press?

A.W.: Yeah, that's right. Really what happened structurally was that Sarah Chalfant ran the New York office for the last decade, and I ran the London office. She is a Brit, however she's been here for 15 years, and the last 10, she's run the day-to-day business of the New York office, while I've run the day-to-day business of the London office. And I've been going to London once a month for the last 20 years. When she announced that she'd like to go to London, which was a good thing from my point of view, we arranged for Scott to come here and fill her shoes. And now she runs London, Scott runs New York.

L.G.: And you're a floater.

A.W.: I run around Central Park.

L.G.: Tell me, how big is the book industry? I've seen statistics that in the United States, it's somewhere north of $30 billion. I don't know what it is, $25 billion to $26 billion in Europe? But that's the whole industry. It's a relatively small industry. Dwarfed by television, by Google, by the internet.

A.W.: Dwarfed by shoe shining. It's a very odd, very small business, that no one should get into unless they have no other occupation that they want to be involved in. I love it, but it's tough—you have to work two or three times harder than you do at other jobs to succeed.

L.G.: What's the reward for you, other than financial?

A.W.: The reward is aesthetic. I respond to interesting writing and provocative thinking more passionately and deeply than I do to painting or film or music. That's just where my interests lie. At its best, it's completely satisfying to me, and everything else is gravy.

L.G.: Tell me what the rhythm of your day is like. Do you get up very early in the morning?

A.W.: Around 5. When it's not freezing cold, I run. If it's freezing cold, there's a gym in the building I go to.

L.G.: You live on the West Side? East Side?

A.W.: East Side. And I do BlackBerry while I'm working out, if in the gym. Otherwise, I do a computer until it's time to wake up my family, which is 7 o'clock. I wake them up and either go to work-

L.G.: What, you don't make them breakfast?

A.W.: I sometimes do.

L.G.: And you have young children, right?

A.W.: Um, my youngest daughter is 13. I have three kids. Sometimes I drop her off at school and come to work. Otherwise, I'm at work by 7:30-between 7:30 and 8:00 I get in, by which time I've answered usually about 40 to 50 emails which have come in. I go to bed very early, so the email comes in from London primarily.

L.G.: And relatively recently, you've been trying to make some forays into France, where literary agentry is not a tradition.

A.W.: Well, I went to France once a month for about a year, and I wasn't really sure what it was about. But I think the best way to describe it is that, as an aspect of keeping this business properly tuned, we need to renew and scour our information. I go to Italy a lot, and I keep our Italian understanding and our Italian operation pretty up-to-date by visiting Italy six to seven times a year.

L.G.: And your Italian is fluent?

A.W.: No, it's bad, but I can understand it. I speak it badly, but I speak it.

L.G.: But the dollar to euro ratio must be killing you.

A.W.: No, because we do business in England in euros and sterling, so it's fine. In fact, I think it's attractive, because so much of our business is in sterling and euros.

L.G.: I see, so you're actually in the good currency—you've actually got an advantage from this fiasco that's preventing me from going to Europe for the next several years.