“You have people who write books about burying dogs,” he told DailyExpertNews in 1980. “People are writing me letters about how this book should sell five million copies in hardcover and 10 million paperbacks, and why Robert Redford is going to make a movie out of it. And you pick it up and it’s a book about a mailman. Then you get we have these books all the time about how the CIA planted a transmitter in my teeth.”
After making millions, Mr. Janklow changed direction in 1989. He formed a partnership with Lynn Nesbit, a veteran International Creative Management agent whose clients included literary figures such as Toni Morrison, Tom Wolfe, John le Carré, Donald Barthelme, John Gregory Dunne. and Robert A. Caro.
Representing both money-makers and literary talents, Janklow & Nesbit eventually compiled a client list of 1,100 novelists and nonfiction writers, including winners of Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, Academy Awards, and other accolades. Many were well-known politicians, entertainers, historians, journalists, and leaders of the arts and sciences.
Mr. Janklow took commissions of 15 percent while most agents got 10 percent. But his customers received bountiful rewards. The Janklovian influence often won signing bonuses and secondary rights to television and movie spin-offs, as well as deals for book clubs and world publications. He also acquired rights rarely granted to authors: a say in advertising and promotional campaigns, even in the details of a book’s cover and cover.
For some established writers, he secured contracts for books that had not yet been plotted, let alone written. Many of his customers became regulars on the bestseller list. By November 1989, he had three clients who were #1 on Times lists: Danielle Steel on hardcover fiction with “Daddy”, Nancy Reagan on nonfiction with “My Turn”, and Sidney Sheldon on paperback fiction with “The Sands of time”. †
Unlike most agents, who remain in the shadow of their clients, Mr. Janklow was a flamboyant self-promoter who moved in political, cultural, communication and entertainment circles, throwing lavish A-list parties. His friends included Mayor Edward I. Koch of New York; television news stars Morley Safer and Barbara Walters; Washington Post editor Katharine Graham; William Paley, the chairman of CBS; California Governor Jerry Brown; and the writers Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer.
It was long and intense, and it spoke a blue streak. “You’re not so much talking to Janklow as you are diving into a gushing river of words and trying to grab hold of a piece of jovial driftwood,” Trip Gabriel wrote in a magazine article for The Times in 1989. He noted that Mr. Janklow for great progress was more than a macho game or the result of the influence of gossip on the market.