Friday morning, we told you about the book deal Rob Weisbach set up between Ecco and author Norman Ollestad. Later on in the day, Leon Neyfakh, the NY Observer publishing reporter, got Weisbach on the phone to ask if this meant that the long-time editor had become an agent, and learned “the Ollestad book was a one-off project and that he doesn’t expect to be selling any more books.” Getting involved with the deal was, essentially, a combination of doing a favor for a friend and being blown away by the material—and the experience was not enough to want to make Weisbach become a full-time agent. “I’m going to be something else,” he told Neyfakh, without adding any details.
(It may be worth noting that, back in 2003, Weisbach told mediabistro.com he was interested in “trying to pull [different kinds of] businesses—magazines, television, the Internet, and books in particular—together into a multiplatform business.” Of course, that was five years ago, and people’s goals can change a lot in that time.)