Blogs to Books
Searching for Signs of Literary Life in the Blogospher
In March of 2003, Kate Lee, C’99,
assistant to a literary agent at NYC’s International
Creative Management, sent an e-mail to Elizabeth Speirs,
then the editorial web mistress of a popular media and entertainment
blog called Gawker. Lee liked the writing and wanted to know
if Speirs had ever considered doing a book. A year later,
Lee would be dubbed “agent to the blogosphere” in
a New Yorker article about her success at representing bloggers.
Blogs
can be anything from personal online journals to highbrow
compendiums of and commentaries on art, politics, culture,
or the media. They’ve become one of the fastest-growing
segments of the Internet and a lode of undiscovered writing
talent, but sifting through the multitude of blogs in cyberspace
is a monumental task. When Lee finds a blogger whose voice
she thinks would translate into a book, she gets in touch.
If all goes well, she gets a new client and the blogger becomes
an author.
Lee’s client list reads like a who’s
who of the New York blogging scene. There are writers from
the satirical
Black Table and Low Culture websites and the creator of the
political blog Instapundit. The unusual niche she has carved
out in the agent business is what first caught the eye of
blogger and New Yorker contributor Daniel Radosh.
At an April
launch party for Kinja, a blog that’s basically
a guide to blogs, Lee met Radosh, who told her he wanted
to do a sketch about her for Talk of the Town. The piece
was published in the May 31 issue, and Lee’s phone
hasn’t stopped ringing.
“My work life has changed,” she said recently
over brunch in Alphabet City, a neighborhood where she lives
adjacent
to New York’s East Village. “I’ve been
inundated by writers and bloggers with queries. I’ve
been called by editors from all over....I have much more
material to sift through.” And that’s
on top of her day-to-day responsibilities as an assistant—reading
the mail, answering the phone, scheduling appointments for
her boss.
Lee got her start in the literary world at US
Weekly, a job she was tipped off to by classmate Dave Kalstein,
C’99,
who also worked there. In an example of everything-comes-full-circle,
Lee is now Kalstein’s agent and sold
his first book, the novel Recess, to St. Martin’s Press.
When
it came time to leave the magazine job, Lee spoke to editors
at Wenner Media, publishers of US Weekly, Rolling
Stone,
and Men’s Journal, who put
her in touch with International Creative Management. Thus
began her long ascent from agent’s assistant to the
summit of ICM, which still seems far off in the clouds. It
typically takes from three to seven years of assisting to
become an agent, and the climb, especially at a top agency
like ICM, is brutally competitive.
“
I have no illusions that this is an easy business,” she
said. “People might think that because this [New
Yorker]
article came out that I’ve made it. But I’m still
at the bottom of a long climb.”
So Lee keeps scanning
the myriad worlds of the blogosphere, searching for signs
of intelligent life. With the explosion
of blogs on the Internet, it’s a task that grows bigger
each day. But the payoff—for both Lee and her clients—could
be huge. |