Monday, November 19, 2012

I'm Taking Over This Town, See?

There are a few powerful agencies out there.

Those are the ones you'd never query because you just aren't rotating in the same galaxy as the likes of Martin Amis or Elmore Leonard. No indeed, you're not the profit generator, with your little manuscript and no platform.

When those mighty forces of agenting move, the business world takes notice.

Hence, the buzz that's vibrating through publishing circles with rumours spreading of uber-agent Andrew Wylie's interest in selling his agency, and it's Creative Artists Agency that's come a-courting.

Such a merger would create a more worthy opponent to William Morris-Endeavor, which was itself created with a happy union of two agencies.

As for the truth of the tale, Mr. Wylie says he's not selling, nor is he interested in selling.

He has looked at partnerships in the past, he admits, but that's not a sale, is it?

CAA would swallow up Wylie and then they'd have a nice little literary agency to attract more heavy hitting clients. On the other hand, WME or even ICM might be amenable to one of those partnership deals that Mr. Wylie has entertained before. Such a move would pretty much sew up representation for the biggest authors around, and publishing houses would certainly take notice. And feel the effects when the time came to negotiate a contract.

They'd take over this town, see, and mugs like you would be finished.

But there's always the danger that those big firms would simply poach talent, rather than buy it up by purchasing the Wylie Agency. And would that, then, be the end of Rico, err, I mean, Andrew?

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