What I learned from reading Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger.
As soon as I took the phone call, I regretted it.
All of my authors had a lot of personality, but Jim was never happy about anything.
I just read about your latest real estate deal in the newspaper, he said.
I'm not sure how you can be doing your job for me when you're busy buying up this city.
I didn't appreciate Jim's questioning my competence as his agent when I not only worked hard on his behalf, but had also discovered him from the slush pile.
Not long after my father died, I had taken over the agency.
I put a small notice in the New York Times calling for authors to send in their work in an effort to drum up some new clients.
Accepting unsolicited manuscripts was very unconventional for an agent.
I was deluged with all manners of books.
Most were not worthwhile, but I did find it a good, highly stylized, fast paced thriller built around a political assassination.
I liked the book and contacted the author to take on the challenge of selling his first novel.
A challenge is exactly what it became.
I went through 27 rejections until I found an editor who didn't say no immediately.
If the author would rewrite it, the editor would consider publishing it.
Jim agreed and rewrote the book, which I resubmitted to the editor, who nonetheless declined it.
Most agents would have certainly given up at this point, but I can be extremely stubborn when I have a hunch about something.
On the 38th submission, not only did the editor buy it, he paid $10,000, a very generous advance for any first novel, and especially one that had been rejected 37 times.
Jims first book, published in 1970, ₩6, the Edgar Award for best first mystery.
It was a nice little success story and a parable on the merit of dogged determination, but it hardly warranted him calling the shots in my career.
Look, he said, you have to decide whether youre buying buildings or youre selling books, because I cant have an agent who does both.