Alleging that another agent tried to poach one of her agency’s clients, ICM mega-agent Esther Newberg lit into rival Andrew Wylie in a public denunciation aired at the recent Book Expo of America in New York’s Javits Center. The author in question was not named.

Wylie’s reputation for raiding literary chicken coops is so well known in the agency field that he is nicknamed “The Jackal”. “The British press,” reports the New York Post, “is usually credited with tagging Wylie with the Jackal nickname back in 1995, when he obtained a $750,000 advance for [Martin] Amis after persuading the British writer to dump his longtime agent, Pat Kavanagh, even though she was the wife of Julian Barnes, a best friend of Amis’ at the time.”

Newberg declared war on Wylie, vowing “I am just lying in wait for the moment when I can get back at him.”

Client-stealing is not uncommon in the literary agency profession, but it is usually conducted with more finesse than the Newberg-Wylie fracas.  As I pointed out in Are Literary Agents Friends or Rivals? “Antagonism between agents flares up over the interpretation of just how loudly, sweetly, and aggressively an agent sings his firm’s praises to an author represented by another agent. You might think of it as the Smoking Gun theory of client-stealing: if the author walks in the door of another agency in a state of uncertainty but walks out clutching a signed agreement with his new agent, it can be inferred that something considerably more than a soft-sell occurred behind that door.”

Though agents can gain a certain degree of protection by issuing client contracts, it’s hard to keep an unhappy author against his or her will.

Every agent has been the recipient of a “Dear John” letter citing “differences in philosophy” and similar nonsensical explanations that are really thinly disguised pretexts for the fact that another agency filched the author. One agent told me he’d been informed that his former client had decided to go with a big bicoastal agency because it had movie clout. What kind of books did this author write that were perfect vehicles for major motion pictures?  Regency romances! Though a gentleman, the exasperated agent told this author, “Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.”

You can read all the gory details in Secret agent clash by Keith J. Kelly, Jennifer Gould Keil and Michael Gray.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by The New York Post.