Thought Leadership through Publishing: An Interview with Literary Agent John Willig

Editor's Note: This following is excerpted from RainToday.com's interview with literary agent and publishing insider John Willig. You can read this interview in full and others in the RainToday.com research report The Business Book Publishing Series. 

John Willig: Literary Agent Profile

Current Position: John Willig is the President of Literary Services, Inc., a literary agency that works with authors to create appealing proposals and books. Their services include contract reviews, author representation, and project evaluations. Founded in 1991, Literary Services, Inc. also offers special project management and consulting sessions that provide general guidance on all publishing matters and issues.

Books Represented: John has represented, among others, More Than A Pink Cadillac: Mary Kay Inc.'s Nine Leadership Keys To Success, Survival of the Savvy, and Mastering the Complex Sale.

Also Known For: John is entering his 29th year in the publishing business. He is a former marketing manager and editor for Harper Collins and was executive editor of business books at Prentice Hall. John is also a member of The Authors Guild.

Website: http://www.literaryservicesinc.com/consulting.htm

RainToday: How long have you worked specifically with representing authors of business books?

John Willig: I started my own practice, Literary Services, Inc., fourteen years ago. Since then, I've been gradually expanding my reach into other nonfiction topic areas, but my primary focus and strength is in the business book market.

RainToday: What do you look for in an author/book when deciding whether or not to represent them? Have you noticed any trends among successful authors and/or books?

John Willig: The biggest change in the business from when I was a publisher is that, back then, the burden was on me to convince you as an author that we were going to be the best publisher suited for the marketing, advertising, and sales of your book.

We've almost come full circle over the last ten years. Now, publishers are very much looking for authors that are marketing partners. You'll hear the word platform quite often. It references author activities such as speeches, workshops, email communities, and writing articles; all those activities aligned with the book that will help the publisher create more momentum in the marketplace.

The marketplace today has become so crowded, not just in the number of books published, but also the amount of information available to potential customers. What I try to emphasize to my clients is that you're competing beyond the bookstores. You're competing for your customers' attention.

From a publisher's perspective, the marketplace of ideas has gotten extremely crowded. There's an incredible amount of noise in people's lives and businesses, so how do you break through all of that? How do you get their attention?

So the publishers look for the authors to be more of a marketing partner for them. At the same time, the author needs to be really focused with their approach and really has to spend that quality time developing the book and developing the proposal, all with a notion of how they're going to get attention from the publishers and their target market.

What I look for in particular is that the author's activities are aligned with the content. If they're not a particularly good writer, they should be thinking about having someone work with them on the writing. Far too many books should not even be published because they aren't well-written. People just aren't appreciating the craft of writing a book.

Some of what we're looking for is attitudinal. We look for those quality people with a whiff of humility about them and a little bit of a sense of humor. How they interact with me reflects how they'll interact with editors, marketing people, and publicity people, and that's very important from the publishers' and editors' perspectives.

My role is to act as a filter for the publishers. We're essentially helping them with the volume in the marketplace and bringing them good, quality authors. And the authors are expecting us to be their advocates.

RainToday: What were your most successful books? Why?

John Willig: More Than A Pink Cadillac: Mary Kay Inc.'s Nine Leadership Keys To Success was really successful. It was the first time someone was given internal access to Mary Kay, and it really gives the inside story. That became a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller.

Right now I have one that's going to be published this coming fall that I wish was out right now because I think it'll be a bestseller. It's called The Elegant Solution: Toyota's Formula For Winning Innovation. We've had books like Survival Of The Savvy that have done extremely well too.

We've also had other books that maybe weren't New York Times or Wall Street Journal bestsellers, but are considered successful by business book publishers and meet their standards for what a bestselling business book is. Mastering The Complex Sale by Jeff Thull is one of those examples. Jeff has gone on to publish The Prime Solution, which has also done well.

We've had lots of instances like that with business books, where the number of copies the publisher is selling is into the 15,000 copy-and-above range, and it's considered a very good seller.

RainToday: In your experience, what's the truth about how many copies business books really sell?

John Willig: One of the biggest misconceptions in this business is how well books actually sell given how many are published in a given year. It's kind of an exercise that I walk unpublished authors through so they get a real sense of the publishing business and how few copies sell in any given year.

Last year, there were 195,000 books published. Seven or eight years ago, that number was hovering around 75,000. And the number of readers has not risen at all in those years.

I ask my clients to draw a pyramid. The first level is ‘50,000 copies,' the next is '100,000 copies' and the highest level is '500,000+ copies.' Less than 1% get into that first level. When you take out of that less than 1% the number of brand-name authors that are in there year after year, you begin to see how daunting it is for a first-time author to sell 50,000 copies.

When it comes to fiction and nonfiction averages, you get all sorts of ranges of numbers, and a lot of it doesn't account for special corporate sales in the business book market. That's what makes business books a little bit different than others; you have that corporate buying going on.

When you walk into a bookstore, the average number of copies that any of those books have sold is going to be anywhere from 4,000 to 7,000 copies – so don't quit your day job.

Publishing, in many ways, has become the great American lottery. Anybody can play with the technology, and you're not going to have that shot of getting to that 50,000 or above until you play. Parts of that equation for success are the ideas in the book and how well it is marketed, and then there's the intangible that's involved in any creative field. Sometimes an idea just catches that right moment in the business and it just runs.

Editor's Note: If you enjoyed this excerp, you can read it and other interviews in the RainToday.com research report The Business Book Publishing Series.