US literary agent Andrew Wylie

Literary agents move into digital publishing & POD

May 13th, 2011

This week, ‘super agent’ Ed Victor announced that he is setting up a new digital and print on demand publishing venture, Bedford Square Books, which will release six titles by authors his agency represents this September, with another six planned for January 2012. Authors’ royalties will be 50% as opposed to the 26% traditionally on offer from publishers for ebooks. Now, The Bookseller reports that agencies Curtis Brown and Blake Friedman are planning to follow his example. Agent Sonia Land has already made 100 of Catherine Cookson’s out of print titles available as e-books, apparently frustrated by the lack of interest from the traditional publishers. She reacted to the news of Bedford Square Books by warning publishers to “rethink their legacy operation”.

In July last year, US literary agent Andrew Wylie (AKA ‘the Jackal’), created an imprint called Odyssey Books and struck a deal with Amazon to make a number of classic titles by some of his extremely famous clients – for example, Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, Nabokov’s Lolita – available on Kindle. Random House reacted furiously by declaring that it now regarded the the Wylie Agency as a direct competitor. In the end Wylie was forced to scale down his plans, although books like Brideshead Revisited and The Naked and the Dead are still available on Odyssey.

As yet, Ed Victor’s move has not attracted such ire. The CEO of the Publishers Association, Richard Mollet, wished Victor luck and added that he “hope[d] he would consider joining the PA”.