SAN DIEGO COUNTY : Software’s King of Soft Sell : Del Mar Agent Finds Niche in Computer Books

Bill Gladstone keeps track of his many book deals on a pad of paper. His desk is covered with personal photos, not a personal computer. And, when it comes to software, he’ll concede that he is happily low-tech.

This is the most successful computer book agent in the United States?

“Well, really, in the world,” he corrects.

Gladstone, 39, may not be a computer buff, but he knows his computer books. In seven years, he has built his Del Mar literary agency, Waterside Productions, into a multimillion-dollar company. In doing so, he has created a unique niche for himself in the little-known, but extremely lucrative and volatile, world of personal computer books.

Personal computer users bought $2.87 billion worth of software in 1988, a 40% increase over the preceding year, according to the Software Publishers Assn. in Washington. Because most popular software packages don’t come with accompanying manuals, a huge market has sprung up for computer books.

An Astounding Number

No matter that Gladstone has no personal computer on his desk. He knows his market. His biggest coup was Danny Goodman’s “Hypercard Handbook.” Although it has an unlikely title for a best-seller, the $30 book sold more than 200,000 copies, an astounding number for a book about a software program.

Gladstone has understood the market well enough to place 1,000 books with publishing houses since he started his agency, more than 200 of them this year alone. He has become so well-known that authors and computer company executives from as far away as Norway and Spain call him with offers.

He recently negotiated a “million-dollar deal” for a series of computer books. Like most agents, he receives 15% of royalties, including advances.

“I don’t think anyone else has ever done that kind of (computer book) deal, and I’ve been an agent for a while,” he said.

Rat-a-Tat Sentences

A small, wiry man who wears oversize black glasses, Gladstone looks and sounds like Michael Caine with a thick New York accent. His self-confidence seems unswerving and his ear is always connected to a phone, into which he speaks in rat-a-tat sentences. As soon as he hangs up, the phone rings again.

That doesn’t mean he is an obnoxious New York agent, Gladstone says. Look at the faded shorts he wears to work. Listen to him crow about his golf score of 82, not his book deals. Notice that he took a break to watch his daughter’s dance class.

“Most agents are pushy. I’m not. I’m soft-sell. But I know what the market is, what it will bear. I know who can afford what. I also know what is a fair deal, and I’m not looking to gouge the last dollar from the publisher,” he said.

Gladstone also has contacts and experience on his side. As a 6-year-old, he would trot downtown to his father’s New York company, Arco Publishing, and paste price changes on books. His payment was all the comics he could carry away from the nearby offices of DC Comics.

“I would say I was very well paid by publishing standards,” he said dryly.

In between degrees at Yale and Harvard, he worked for Arco. He managed a bookstore and, during the summer, wrote test preparatory books for medical school and real estate. After his father sold Arco, he worked as a consultant to the new owners.

He also found time to write three books. One of them, “How to Test Your Own Mental Health,” sold 100,000 copies.

He briefly worked in the film world as a location scout for the television special “In Search of Ancient Mysteries.” He was asked to stay on when the show turned into a series, but he decided to return to books.

In 1980 he came to San Diego as a senior editor for Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. But he was abruptly fired 18 months later after a newspaper story credited him with being famed economist Milton Friedman’s editor. Gladstone says he was misquoted. He also says he has no hard feelings toward HBJ.

“The two best things HBJ ever did for me was to hire me and then to fire me,” he said. Being fired sparked him to try something entirely new. Instead of being an author or an editor or a publisher, he decided, he would be the go-between who brings all three together. He became an agent.

It wasn’t easy at first. The first year, Gladstone and his wife, Cynthia, depleted their savings and then had to borrow $10,000. The second year he broke even, but, not long afterward, the computer book market collapsed, glutted with mediocre books and contracts that fell through because the products they were based on turned out to be “vapor ware,” computer lingo for something promised but not produced.

But Gladstone stuck out the crisis and has prospered.

“We had more books canceled than books coming in, but we hung with it during the bad times. Since the bust, our business has doubled every year,” he said.

Sometimes all the nurturing of authors and the tricky negotiation with publishers pays off in a best-seller. But even that is a matter of luck and perseverance.

“I don’t feel you can build a business around a best-seller,” he said. “They happen because of the business you build. If it takes 10 years, it takes 10 years.”

Gladstone is putting more emphasis on nonfiction and fiction. He hired agent Julie Castiglia; she proudly shows the positive reviews in the New York Times for “Alfred H. Barr Jr: Missionary for the Modern,” a recent book by Waterside client and UC San Diego historian Alice Goldfarb Marquis about the first director of New York City’s Museum of Modern Art.

The agency’s only novel, “Good Friday,” by Robert Holt, was a best-seller. It is also an example of how an agent can make a difference. Gladstone negotiated for a heavy promotional commitment in lieu of an advance, knowing that the big money would come with the paperback version. He was right; the paperback rights sold for $300,000, half of which went to the author.

Of course, if all of this goes to Gladstone’s head, he just remembers his father’s reactions when told his son had become an agent.

“He wanted to know why I didn’t get a real job.”