For many, the Scott Meredith Literary Agency brings to mind an earlier time when soon-to-be-greats like Ed McBain, Lawrence Block and Donald Westlake cut their teeth working the slush pile and honing their craft. And the agency’s longstanding backlist allowed Arthur Klebanoff (who bought its worth back in 1993) to keep his client list small, as he tells MB’s Aileen Gallagher:
Klebanoff believes a backlist is important to the success of an agency, and not just for the money it generates. “It makes it a little easier to come to the office and take chances on what you do, because the business is all speculative,” Klebanoff says. “And the second thing it does is the author wants to have a sense that their agent knows what doing. And one of the ways one can get that sense is by taking a look at the entire list around what the agent’s connected to. It serves as a credentials document.”
Of course, it’s also telling that Klebanoff doesn’t take on very many new clients — and certainly not for fiction (unless you’re a teen writer like Amanda Marquit, whose debut SHUT THE DOOR made a bit of a ripple when it was published a year or two ago.)