17
clearly illustrated by Wylie’s refusal to sign official con-
tracts with his clients, a virtually unheard-of practice
among his peers. A contract, Wylie argues, instills a
sense of complacency in an agent, and can lead to the
agent’s coasting instead of putting in the work necessary
to guarantee a writer’s success.
“You have to be free to get rid of us if we’re not doing a
good job,” Wylie tells potential clients. “Because if we don’t
have a contract, then we’ve really got to protect your
interests, and pay attention to what you’re saying, because
we can be dismissed like
that
.”
Wylie has also gained respect in the publishing world for
his uncompromising commitment to quality. Most high-
powered literary agencies effectively have two client lists:
one composed of “literary” authors, who have great ac-
claim but middling sales, and another made up of writers
who top bestseller lists but are unlikely to win many
awards. By diversifying their portfolio like this, the profits
from the “lowbrow” writers allow agents the leverage to
continue representing more renowned clients despite
these authors’ lesser returns. Wylie’s agency, on the other
hand, refuses to accept this conventional wisdom.
“We absolutely do not have the commercial piece,” he
says. “Our business model is not dependent on that. It is
dependent on books that are
good
.”
Wylie says he often jokes with new clients that if they
become a bestseller, they’ll be kicked off the client list.
This joke has slim basis in fact – many of Wylie’s authors
have sold huge numbers of books – but it underlines
Wylie’s insistence on maintaining literary standards
rather than profit projections, an idealistic perspective
that is rare in the industry.
“What I say to kids as they join the agency is, look, we
are interested in one thing and one thing only: the quality
of the work,” Wylie says. “Is the work interesting and good?
If it is, we want to represent it. If it’s not, and you think it’s
gonna make money, we do
not
want to represent it. Not.
Of. Interest. And so we are some 50 people dedicated to
the business of discovering and nurturing quality.”
This raises an important question: How can one dif-
ferentiate between what’s good and what isn’t? If there
is little-to-no correlation between literary value and
monetary worth, what other metric can an agency assign
to a writer’s output? Wylie says, in his typical straight-
forward fashion, that “it’s very hard for a reader to know.
But we’re in the business, and it’s our job to know.”
Wylie’s perspective on quality was not always so self-
assured. In his early days as an agent, determining quality
work was an uncertain and time-consuming process.
However, a phone call from one of his first clients, legend-
ary
New Yorker
fiction editor William Maxwell, helped
shape his critical acumen. Wylie, frustrated by his inability
to quickly identify books that weren’t worth pursuing, re-
lated his problems to Maxwell from his small apartment
Courtesy of The Wylie Agency
