West’s Literary Agents Won’t Be Written Off : While New York Is Hub of Publishing, Authors Still Succeed With California Representatives

William Wood remembers the reception he received when he walked into one of the large New York literary agencies with the manuscript of his first novel, “Rampage.”

“If it was possible to express less than no interest, they did it,” the Sacramento attorney said.

Discouraged, Wood gave up looking for an East Coast agent to take him on and found one in Los Angeles, Mike Hamilburg. Many people in publishing believe that a writer who chooses a West Coast agent has settled for second best, because the center of the book industry is in New York. But Wood reasoned that a Los Angeles agent was better than none at all, and he ended up pleased with the outcome.

After Wood rewrote “Rampage” along lines suggested by Hamilburg, the agent sold the book to St. Martin’s Press for a $7,500 advance, typical for a first novel. Movie director William Friedkin happened to read the book, which tells the story of a serial killer from a prosecutor’s point of view, and bought the film rights for $75,000. The movie deal helped Hamilburg land a sale of the book to paperback for $66,000, and he negotiated a $22,000 advance for a second novel by Wood.

Today the author believes it is not only possible to succeed with a West Coast agent, it is preferable.

“You’ve got to have someone who’s approachable and who’ll work with you,” Wood said. “Maybe an agent on the West Coast tries harder.”

Joseph (Jody) Procter of Malibu sees the matter differently. A writing teacher for UCLA Extension classes, Procter’s credits include magazine articles and videotape scripts. He has finished four novels, but a first sale has been elusive. Thinking he was at a disadvantage with a Los Angeles agent, Procter recently switched to one in New York. The agent he left, Barbara Markowitz, exhibited no rancor.

“With a lot of New York editors there is an East Coast-West Coast mentality, both in terms of agents and writers,” Markowitz said. “They’re snobbish toward both agents and writers from the West Coast. What happened with Jody is a good example. He has written two novels that to me are major, but it’s hard to get editors in New York to pay attention.”

Nearly everyone involved in the selling of books will advise an unpublished author to get an agent. But must the writer look for one on the East Coast? Or can a West Coast agent provide adequate representation?

Conflicting Answers

The question has half a dozen or more conflicting answers and can be largely academic. In the real world, authors and agents often are brought together by mutual friends or twists of fate. A writer’s path to his first book sale, or to bigger sales of subsequent books, usually is a haphazard one.

Elmore Leonard received a $200,000 advance on hard-cover royalties for his most recent best seller, “Glitz.” Paperback rights for an earlier book sold last year for $360,000. Screen rights for his recent novels have fetched $300,000 to $400,000. But in the mid-1950s, Leonard, of suburban Detroit, was a struggling writer of Westerns. He had a New York literary agent who happened to fall ill just when Leonard finished his first novel of crime and adventure, “The Big Bounce.”

The agent gave the manuscript to H. N. Swanson, a Los Angeles agent who had sold a couple of Leonard’s Westerns to the movies. The partnership was far from an overnight success, but eventually Leonard hit the big time.

Swanson’s is one of perhaps a dozen California agencies that successfully represent book authors. Most writing that is sold by West Coast agents is sold to television and movies. The list of agencies distributed by the Writers Guild of America, West, includes 140 California entries, and Joe Curatolo, who updates the list, estimates that 95% of the agents handle screenwriters exclusively.

“You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone in California representing books and making a living at it,” he said.

Screen Sales

While Curatolo exaggerates a bit, it is true that nearly all West Coast agents who sell books also handle screen sales. Swanson estimated that his work divides evenly between deals with publishers and with movies and television. At 86, he is typical of long-established local agents in that he first supplied material to Hollywood, then branched into selling books to publishers.

“A great amount of our work is done in cooperation with New York agents,” he said in explaining his operation. “We represent them out here.”

That practice--having two literary agents involved in a book sale--is a fairly common way in which West Coast agents overcome geographic disadvantages.

“It’s best to work through a cooperative New York agent,” said Robert Eisenbach, in business on the West Coast since 1959, “because they can hold the hand of the publisher. Then in return they send you books they want to sell to motion pictures.”

Eisenbach, like most agents, charges an author 15% of book royalties. He said he usually splits the fee evenly with his New York counterpart, if there is one. Most sales of material to television and movies, however, is covered by the Writers Guild basic agreement, which requires that agents receive no more than 10%.

There is a time-honored “Catch-22” for the writer seeking an agent. Agents with the best connections to publishers are the least likely to read a new writer’s submissions or talk to the author without an introduction. Top local agents--Swanson, George Diskant (who represents John D. MacDonald), Irving Lazar (who represents Larry McMurtry and Betty Bao Lord)--say that referral from a friend or client is about the only way for a new writer to get in the door.

Mike Hamilburg, who took over his father’s agency in 1960, is more approachable than most and charges only 10% on book deals. He also is more forthright than many West Coast agents about problems caused by geography.

“The thing you deeply miss as an L.A. agent is the daily contact with editors, the ‘What are you looking for?’ thing.” he said. “Most writers will try to get a New York agent. Face it. That’s where the action is. It’s basically an East Coast business.”

Hamilburg said that an attempt by publishers in the ‘70s to expand to the West Coast has long since failed.

Charles Bloch of Bantam Books is one of the few publisher’s representatives left on the West Coast. Bloch works out of his North Hollywood home. Like Hamilburg and many others, he sees a steady trend in publishing away from fiction.

“In recent years the market has become very tough for mid-list fiction--the novel,” Bloch said. “It’s very difficult to find a market unless the book gets tremendous reviews. Bantam has reduced its publishing ratio of mid-list fiction, so my efforts are going much more to nonfiction.”

Many Nonfiction Sales

Hamilburg said he loves to sell fiction, but that most of his recent sales have been nonfiction.

Despite success stories, there are many people connected to publishing who question the wisdom of an author who has a West Coast agent. Delia Ephron, author of an upcoming collection of modern marriage essays called “Funny Sauce” and sister of “Heartburn” author Nora Ephron, moved here from New York six years ago and is acquainted with writers and agents on both coasts.

“I think you’re better off with an East Coast agent because the business is there, just as you’d be foolish to have an New York talent agent if you were an actor trying to work in Hollywood.”

Writer Marilyn Sorel had five novels to her credit when she moved from New York to Los Angeles eight years ago. She recently moved back to New York because, she said, “In all the years I was in Los Angeles, all I wrote was a nonfiction series on the Holocaust. Los Angeles is so dominated by film and television, I got stuck out there.”

Sorel said that her time on both coasts has taught her that a writer is better off with an East Coast agent.

“Unless your agent is one that goes to New York at least four times a year, you cannot make deals. You cannot sell properties, even if they’re better than what’s being sold from here. And sometimes they are, because Los Angeles is a place that’s floating with talent.”

She attributed the difficulty faced by West Coast agents in part to an East Coast attitude of literary superiority.

Trashing of Los Angeles

“People in the East always trash Los Angeles,” Sorel said. “It’s a double standard, because they’re fascinated by it. All the magazines based in New York have stories on Hollywood celebrities and Hollywood trends.”

Two of the best-known agencies representing talent of all kinds, the William Morris Agency and International Creative Management, operate large Los Angeles offices but do not have agents here that sell to publishers.

“My main job is selling movie and TV rights for books that our eight New York agents handle,” said Irene Webb, the local William Morris agent whose work is most connected to publishing. “I’ve been out here seven years doing this and I think to be a proper literary agent, you have to be on the East Coast. Otherwise the time-zone difference is deadly. You get into work, and the editor in New York is about to go to lunch.

“You have to be there to know what’s going on. You have to know which editor is pregnant and will be very interested in books on babies.”

However, Webb said, West Coast writers, unlike West Coast agents, have a certain standing among East Coast editors.

“New York publishers are looking for California nonfiction,” she said. “There’s that cutting edge that California is known for. This is where the new diets, new drinks, new trends, new fads begin. L.A. is where it’s happening.”

Fitness Book Sold

Webb sometimes recommends book ideas to her counterparts in New York. One such idea, from Harvey and Marilyn Diamond, became the 1985 hit diet book “Fit for Life.”

Maureen Lasher and her husband, Eric, are agents who specialize in nonfiction with a California angle. Operating the Maureen Lasher Agency from their Pacific Palisades home, the Lashers have sold self-help books by psychologists, cookbooks by chefs such as Wolfgang Puck of the restaurant Spago and biographies of celebrities such Barry Manilow and Kim Novak.

“It’s very hard to start a book agency,” said Maureen Lasher, who began the business five years ago. “We had an advantage in that we came from jobs in New York publishing. We kept our apartment there, and we go to New York about five times a year. So we’re really New York agents, although we happen to live here.”

Barbara Markowitz, Procter’s former agent, also started her literary agency five years ago. She works out of her Hollywood home. Markowitz has made a few big sales but said of business, “It’s feast or famine. It took two years before editors would believe that I’m not shopping around junk. There is resistance by editors to L.A. agents.”

Perhaps the best-known Los Angeles agent, Irving Lazar, said that lately he is spending half his time in New York, but that books can be sold from Los Angeles.

“I’ve been doing it for 40 years,” he said. “Remember that about 90% of all deals are made on the phone.”

Big Telephone Bills

Fred Hill agrees. He and co-agent Bonnie Nadell run Frederick Hill Associates in San Francisco, an agency with a knack for selling novels by newcomers. Hill said his telephone bill runs about $600 a month, much of it in calls to New York.

“It is a lot, but if I were in New York I’d be paying a ton of money for an office,” Hill said. “Instead I’ve got an office in San Francisco with a deck and a view of the Bay for $350 a month.”

Like the Lashers, Hill spent several years working for New York publishers before coming to California. He said he has sold 12 first novels in the past year, most of them for advances in excess of $20,000.

“This business of first novels being hard to sell is a bromide,” he said. “It’s because a lot of agents are afraid of fiction and new writers. But it’s a hell of a lot easier to sell a good first novel than a modest or OK third or fourth novel.”

Hill’s point--quality sells--was reiterated by people throughout the publishing business. In agent Lasher’s words, “There are no undiscovered masterpieces. If you write a good book, it will get published.”

Bob Asahina is the editor at Simon & Schuster who handled the best-selling novel “Less than Zero” by Los Angeles writer Bret Easton Ellis. Although the book was sold by a New York agency, Asahina said he and his colleagues in publishing are indifferent to the location of an agent.

“Most of our business is over the phone,” he said. “I don’t think editors think geographically at all. It makes no difference. What we want is good quality.”