Andrew Wylie (literary agent)
American literary agent (born 1947)
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Andrew Wylie (born 1947) is an American literary agent.
Andrew Wylie | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1947 (age 78–79) |
| Other name | The Jackal |
| Occupation | Literary agent |
| Known for | Founder of The Wylie Agency |
| Website | www |
Early life
Wylie is the son of Craig Wylie (1908–1976), one-time editor-in-chief at Houghton Mifflin, and Angela Fowler (1915–1989), daughter of the landscape architect and artist Robert Ludlow Fowler, Jr, of Oatlands, New York[1][2][3][4] (son of judge Robert Ludlow Fowler, author of many legal texts).[5][6][7][8]
Wylie grew up in Sudbury, Massachusetts, and attended St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, from which he was dismissed in 1965; an interview with his university alumni magazine stated that this was for arranging illicit excursions to Boston for fellow students and supplying them, illegally, with alcohol.[9] When he was a teenager, he spent nine months in Manhattan's Payne Whitney clinic, a psychiatric hospital, for punching a police officer.[10]
He graduated from Harvard University.[10]
Career
Poet
In 1972, Wylie published a short collection of poetry, Yellow Flowers. Many of the verses cited in public sources are sexually explicit in nature. In a 2007 interview, fellow agent Ira Silverberg suggested that Wylie has since attempted to acquire the remaining copies of the collection.[11] Wylie himself denied this allegation, describing Yellow Flowers as a "youthful indiscretion".[12]
Literary agent
Wylie founded the literary agency named after himself in New York in 1980 with a $10,000 loan from his mother.[10] He opened a second office in London in 1996.[9] It now represents more than 1,300 clients, approximately 10% of which are literary estates.[10]
Throughout his career as a literary agent, Wylie has attracted attention for poaching clients from other agents,[5] and has been nicknamed "The Jackal" for his business tactics.[13] He has been criticized by other agents and publishers for harming the culture of the book industry.[10] In 1995 Martin Amis left his agent of 22 years, Pat Kavanagh, for Wylie, who was reported to have secured an advance of £500,000 for Amis's novel The Information.[9]
In July 2010, Wylie launched a new business, Odyssey Editions, to publish e-books. The first twenty titles were launched on 21 July, available exclusively from Amazon.com. Wylie's friendly attitude towards Amazon was short-lived, however; in 2014 he advised: "If you have a choice between the plague and Amazon, pick the plague." He later went on to liken Amazon's tactics to those of the Islamic State.[14]
Personal life
In 1969, Wylie married his first wife, Christina, whom he had met in college. They had a son together, Nikolas. They divorced c.1974. In 1980 he remarried. Larry Clark was his best man. He has two additional children.[10]