Agents & Editors: David Gernert

Is that something an editor can cultivate?
An editor can pick and choose who reads it. You can pick the right publicist and urge them to read it. But the book really has to deliver.

It’s certainly true that in some cases, someone in the company just does an amazing job. On the publication of The Firm, the publicist did an unbelievable job. She came up with this idea of doing one campaign for it as a novel in the way you would do all other novels, and a separate campaign to lawyers. Her husband was a lawyer and he loved it.

One of the great books you edited is Shot in the Heart by Mikal Gilmore.
God, I love that book.

You were the editor, and Amy Williams was your assistant at the time. Richard Pine was the agent. Now all three of you are principals of major literary agencies.
Richard Pine called and said, “I have this incredible proposal. I think it’s one of the best proposals I’ve ever read and represented.” And he sent it over. It was the best nonfiction proposal I’ve ever read. It was so good that we distributed it. It wasn’t an outline. It was a narrative that started to tell Mikal’s story and then talked about what the story was going to be. It was fantastic.

Some of the best nonfiction proposals I’ve read don’t have the standard structure—overview, contents, competitive analysis, sample chapter one.
Yes! Let’s be honest: That book was all about the voice. There are certain kinds of nonfiction where you’d rather see the table of contents, if it’s a diet book or something. But if it’s a piece of nonfiction that’s all about the voice, you want to hear it.

What other stuff did you publish?
Primarily novels.

Mostly commercial fiction?
No—which may be a little surprising. When I became an editor, I was leaning more toward literary fiction. My favorite writers were Don DeLillo and Raymond Carver.

At one point, before I worked for Nat Sobel, I interviewed with a different literary agency. They asked me what my favorite novel was, and I said it was Gravity’s Rainbow. I didn’t get the job, and I remember thinking, “Wrong answer!” [Laughs.]

I lean towards the literary, but because I acquired and published The Firm, I started to get a ton of submissions for thrillers. I had always loved them and read broad range of fiction. At Doubleday, I did acquire and publish what remains one of my favorite first novels of modern times, Stewart O’Nan’s Snow Angels.

I think he’s great. I would call him a literary writer.
Absolutely. I published a very commercial novel that was a best-seller by Phillip Margolin, who writes very successful crime fiction and mysteries. I did sports stuff, too. I liked to work on athletes’ memoirs.

I was a young editor when the editor of one of Mickey Mantle’s books left, and it was assigned to me because I was into sports. Mickey Mantle was my number one hero when I was eight years old. I had the great good fortune of meeting a lot of amazing athletes. I met Gretzky—what a great guy. I wish I had published his book. I did publish Bo Knows Bo by Bo Jackson, which was the most successful sports book of its time.

What did you learn at Doubleday?
It goes back to remembering the ones that got away. If you're an editor, and you're crazy about a book, do whatever the fuck it takes to acquire it and publish it. Passion is all that matters.

I remember another one that got away that drives me berserk. If I had bid a couple thousand more dollars I would have published Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. Why did I let it go?

I was in London and visiting a publisher, and saw the cover of Nick’s first book, Fever Pitch, on the wall. It intrigued me, and I got a copy and read it on the plane. I wanted to publish it, but to get an American publisher to publish a book about a British guy’s obsession with a football team—there’s no chance. But they sent me High Fidelity, and I was outbid me by a modest amount of money.

You’ve got to have the courage of your convictions. If you love it, buy it. Publish it. Don’t back off. Don’t back down. I’m not saying that because I’m an agent now. The ones you love but don’t buy bother you more than the ones you buy that don’t work.

Last year, I was preparing a P&L for a large offer and was nervous about it. One of my colleagues told me, “Mike, remember, it’s your job to take risks.”
Absolutely right. [Former Random House CEO] Alberto Vitale said once that editors do not participate directly in the financial success of the books that work because no one would ever ask them to pay for the ones that didn't. You have to support editors evenly across the wins and losses. Everyone has the ones that didn’t work.

But you know what, the book that you were doing the P&L for will probably work, at a level. It’s not going to sell no copies.

Editors need to have the courage of their convictions. At some companies, if an editor is passionate about a submission and wants to acquire it, they go into some kind of acquisitions board or committee. A committee’s decision-making is supposed to be rational and pragmatic. Decision by committee is designed in part to remove the passion from the equation. But really good publishing is about passion. It’s the editor’s job, if they love a book, not to back down and to just go for it.

You were in a position at Doubleday to enable that passion. What if I was one of your editors and we had a real difference of opinion on a novel that I thought was amazing, but you thought was dreck?
If you came into my office and said you wanted to buy this book, I would take a look at it first. Then we would have a conversation about your vision of how to publish it: Who’s the audience, how are we going to reach them, how much is it going to cost, what kind of marketing are we going to do, and so on. But that’s a one-on-one conversation. After that, I would factor into the equation how strongly you felt. That’s an important piece of the puzzle.

I read an interview years ago with Barry Diller. When he was running a movie studio, he had an unwritten rule that if one of his executives came in and said, “I just heard this pitch for a great movie. We’ve got to make it,” but Diller was not excited about it, he would say no. If that executive came in the next day and said, “You’re missing the point. This is a great project,” and he still didn’t see it, he would still say no. But if the person came in a third time, he would always say yes. If a person sees it that strongly, you’ve got to let them go with it.

How did you become an agent?
Sadly, Jay Garon, John Grisham’s agent, died—he suffered a pulmonary embolism. I told John that he needed to choose a new agent and that I would walk him through a detailed snapshot of several agents that I thought he’d like. And he said, “That’s a good idea, but I’d like to have that conversation in person.” I went down to visit him, and he picked me up at the airport and then we stopped at a coffee shop. After we sat down, we started talking and I said, “Okay, John, so there are a half-dozen agents who I think would be good for you.” And he said, “Wait a minute. I want to change the conversation. I don’t want to work with anybody new. Would you leave Doubleday and be my agent?” And I said yes.

This was not only a wonderful thing in that I got to start an agency and my first client was the most popular novelist in the world, but it was also a fairly tumultuous time at Doubleday. I wasn’t completely thrilled with the direction the company was going in. It was a good time for me to leave.

I was excited. I had never thought about being an agent. I worked with agents, obviously, but I didn’t want to be one. I was happy being a publisher. So I said something along the lines of, “Do you want me to work only for you?” He said, “No, start an agency. I’ll be your first client.” And I started the company. It was just me and Amy Williams, my assistant at Doubleday—and truthfully, she did all the work starting the company.

Since I had never really thought about being an agent, it took me a little while to become an agent. I think I was smart in one way and stupid in another way. The smart thing was that for the first couple years, I really focused on trying to do a really good job for John.

What did that involve?
John has never wanted a film agent, so the first thing I had to do was sell the film rights to his new book. I knew nothing about selling the film rights. But I figured it out, and we made a great deal. The hardest part is getting to know people—it’s like publishing in that way. And John is published all over the world. He had another agent who was doing his foreign rights at that time, so I was working in collaboration with that other agent.

Do you still edit John Grisham?
Yes.

What is that like?
It’s great, and it’s pretty familiar to both of us. We’ve done it so much that we have it down to a science. He generally talks to me about a book when he’s starting it, and shows me the first rough hundred pages. We discuss it, and he talks about where the book is going. And then I usually read it again when it’s two-thirds done and then when it’s done—usually three times.

It’s important to point out that John has gotten better and better as a novelist. I don’t know if that is evident to people reading the books, but it is to me. A couple of the earlier books, we kind of messed with. But now John writes a pretty solid book with no help from anybody. My job got easier. There’s still some line editing, and the conversation is important—just talking it through.

The smart thing was taking the time to really serve your first client. What was the stupid thing?
Not growing. It stayed just Amy and I for a couple years. I wish I had grown a little sooner. Eventually I began to think that it would be better to have a slightly larger company. Now there are thirteen of us. I love the size we are. There’s a handful of agencies this size, but not many.

What are the benefits of being a midsize agency?
A lot of it is sort of a gut feeling, of what feels right. I don’t have a lot of evidence for this, but I wanted to have an agency that had enough agents to have a book on submission pretty much all the time. I felt that it would be advantageous to be in constant conversation with the editors and publishers you’re submitting to.

The other thing is that the more business you do with a publisher, the better your relationship is with them, in theory. Sometimes you might get a little leverage—not very often, to be honest. You could probably achieve that as a solo practitioner, but I think would be harder.

It’s also true of course that as a midsize agency we have a very strong foreign rights department, and we do, partially because of John, a fair amount of film and television work. It gives us a stronger position in general.

For an author who might be choosing between you and say, William Morris Endeavor, is there an advantage that you have in being smaller? When I talked to Eric Simonoff at WME, he mentioned how important it is to be on a big ship in a stormy sea.
There’s some truth to that. I think our ship is plenty big enough. WME is maybe not the best alternative, because if you’re at WME or ICM, you're choosing to be a part of a very large company that is in fact driven by its work in the entertainment business in Los Angeles. For some people that’s a good thing. Others would rather not have that. If you’re a novelist, and one of those companies sells your book, they’re also going to sell your film rights. Some writers would rather have a different agent on the film side.

What did you look for in the people you hired at the agency?
People that I would be happy to see every morning was priority one. I had the good fortune of being able to hire whoever I wanted, as long as they were interested in working here, and I didn’t really need anyone.

I would meet someone, or someone would contact me and say they wanted to talk, and over time I found people that I thought would be a good fit for the company. We are a pretty tight-knit group, and we oftentimes have an all-hands-on-deck mentality. I might say at a staff meeting, “Who has a really good friend at magazine X? I need to talk to them about an article someone’s writing.”

We share all kinds of information, which is another advantage of being bigger. You cast a wider net in terms of your contacts and the people you know well, and the number of “friends” that you have in the business is bigger. But I always thought priority one was someone who would fit in well with the ambience and character of the company.

If I went out to poach a superstar agent who worked somewhere else, I think they would bring their culture with them, and it might not mesh well with ours.