An Interview With Andrew Wylie

A.W.: Yeah. So our business is getting to where I want it to be-50 percent U.S., 50 percent outside of the U.S., which is pretty much the same equation that the film industry operates on. We're in all of Europe and Asia-we put Asia through London as well. Hollywood works on this model, and every dollar is divided equally, 50 percent U.S., 50 percent non-U.S., so obviously if the dollar is weak and the euro is strong, there are disadvantages. But there are also advantages. For instance, the [Italo] Calvino arrangement in Italy is a euro-based arrangement which has moved considerably in the past few years to our advantage.

L.G.: And everybody on your client list, including the Calvino estate, you represent globally?

A.W.: Globally.

L.G.: And for his Italian language works as well as the translations?

A.W.: Right, and [Jorge Luis] Borges, in Spanish as well as everywhere else.

L.G.: Who's giving you, at this point, the greater cash flow—your dead authors or your live ones?

A.W.: Probably live—yeah, I'm sure it's live. But there are some considerable estates that we represent. Our business, the best piece of it, is all about figuring out—when a writer is young—whether they will, in the course of time, write many books which will remain in print, in many languages. And then to get those writers into the right hands, internationally, country by country, so that their revenues and their presentation internationally will be maximized. In the case of older, more established writers, who come to us later in their careers, what we find is that usually agencies in this country have not a very thorough knowledge of foreign markets and don't have a lot of access to those markets directly. They operate as subagents. So they don't really understand the difference between one house and another. And furthermore, they don't really know the people involved. So, because I have traveled so much, and concentrated so much on this aspect of the business, I can pick up the phone and tell [leading French publisher] Antoine Gallimard that I think this writer is very important, and because we know each other and he knows that for 20 years, I haven't done this every few months, that there must be a reason for it, then it's probably worth paying attention to. And so we also look at getting a writer's rights renewed on a regular basis-redesigned, re-presented, so we're quite a lot more diligent at that side of the business than I think all of our competitors are. Because I think their focus is more national. So our bet, financially speaking, is that if you are going to represent quality, you must do so internationally, and it must be a long-term bet. So all our representations are representations made in the belief that the people we represent will last and will be published internationally.

L.G.: By the way, how long have you had Nicolas Sarkozy in your stable?

A.W.: Well, he was the first French client, and we got him about 15 or 16 months ago. And, interestingly enough, in Paris, as you might imagine, nearly everyone in the literary world is on the left—so it was an odd thing to do for us to engage with Sarkozy before he was president. And it seemed pretty clear to me that he was the right choice in France.

L.G.: So were you prophetic? Did you think he'd become president?

A.W.: Yeah, I did.

L.G.: But you don't vote in France.

A.W.: Sadly, not yet, no.

L.G.: You met with him?

A.W.: No, we engaged through his publisher Bernard Fixot of XO editions-coincidentally, his stepbrother [Olivier Sarkozy, a top executive at UBS], bought [Wylie client] Dick Avedon's house [on the Upper East Side] after Dick died. And he's a very nice guy. Anyway, I think eyebrows were a little bit raised in Paris that we were not supporting [Sarkozy's left-leaning opponent] Segolene Royale.

L.G.: Was she looking for an agent too?

A.W.: Probably. I mean, everyone in France—every lawyer you speak to, every cabdriver—has a novel.

L.G.: So, looking at your list, you have 600 clients supposedly—is that what it is?

A.W.: I think it's a little more than that.

L.G.: More than 600. But there are some distinctly nonliterary names here. Like [Oracle founder and C.E.O.] Larry Ellison.

A.W.: That's a very literary name! What are you talking about? [Laughs] There are some people we represent who are in business or finance.

L.G.: But unless I'm mistaken, it's the Larry Ellison of Oracle—he's oracular. You also have David Rockefeller, Pete Peterson, William H. Gates. What's that? Why take those on? How does that fit into your literary snobbery?

A.W.: Well, I like to educate myself, so I like to learn things from people. David Rockefeller was an old family friend, so I've known him since I was a child. And I think his memoirs—the whole process of being involved in the course of his writing his memoirs—was particularly interesting to me. Ellison we got involved with because Matthew Simons, who was at the Economist and was a client of ours, engaged with Larry to do a book. And we represented both Larry and the writer. Um, who else?