A TRIBUTE TO THE MEN WHO GAVE ME MY FIRST SHOT IN PUBLISHING. AND A SNEAK PEAK OF WHAT'S NEXT FOR ME.

I started in publishing back in the olden days. I didn’t mean to get into publishing exactly. I wanted to be an investigative journalist. When I was 20 and in my senior year of J-School at GW, one of my professors recommended me for a job with a legend of investigative journalism.?

David Wise, the former bureau chief of the New York Tribune, was a trail blazer and a bad ass.????The first thing he taught me was that when it comes to cultivating sources for a piece of writing, “No, is the first step in the path to yes.”?

I never looked at a NO the same way again.

My first day working with David, his editor, Jackie Kennedy Onassis called.????Turns out legends hang out with legends.

I met many legends of publishing in the years I spent working as a research assistant for David. One of the most important was a man named Sterling Lord. Sterling was David’s agent and Jack Kerouac’s agent, and Erica Jong’s agent, and Doris Kearns Goodwin, Art Buchwald, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ted Kennedy, and Robert S. McNamara’s agent. (Among many others.)

??I had just turned 21 when we walked into his office in the Met Life Building in Manhattan to talk about David’s next book. It was Sterling was taught me how to get publishers to compete for the right to publish a manuscript through an auction process and how much extra a publisher would need to pay to pre-empt that auction process.

He was already 74 when I met him and he had been an agent since he was 32 (over 40 years when we met) and he did NOT seem bored. He found his calling and was doing what he loved.???

I loved books, but not like this. He seemed to know every book ever published and the story of how it was sold to a publisher. Sterling wasn’t a man to me, he was a doorway to a new world. A world of unending intellectual curiosity, of gamified business strategy, of making a real difference with words and KNOWING that’s what you were doing.

???

I didn’t exactly look up to him, but I was mesmerized by the vision he held for his authors.

David was one of his longest clients. 60 years. 60 FUCKING years! That is longer than most marriages. ?

The old guard of publishing is almost all gone now and it’s a new world. Agents that remain don’t have the bandwidth to know their authors and their messages the way Sterling did.

I told a friend who is a well-establish author some of my thoughts about Sterling’s passing and she said: “To be honest I didn’t know he was an actual person. I just thought it was an agency.”

???His name was pretty damn epic and so is his legacy.

Today, as I reflect on his life and his 70 years of service in publishing, I’m asking myself some big questions about what I want my legacy in publishing to be. David and Sterling taught me to value big ideas, deep expertise, attention to detail, and the value of longevity.

As I prepare for my next 50 years in publishing I’m turning my focus to those values and I’m working on launching a brand-new kind of literary agent where I give my clients the kind of attention that would make Sterling and David proud.

If you want someone in your corner who SEES you, GETS you, READS every word, STRATEGIZES for you, and has FUN working with you to SHAPE the world. Stay tuned because I’m about to turn this industry on its head for a second time.

There are only a few more spaces with me to get your book done the way we have been doing it for the last 10 years. Everything is about to change. If you have been waiting to work with me, now is the time to reach out! Things are just about to get REALLLLY FUCKING GOOD.

I’m always grateful I got my start with the best. Working for David Wise was the best first job ever. Getting to know Sterling Lord was an honor. It was a life in publishing well lived. 102 years old and died on his birthday.?

BTW – Sterling started his newest business at 99 years old. Lest you think you are too old to start something new. 99! Serious Legend! Sterling, you will be missed.???