by Richard Pooley
Why do so many authors, artists, musicians, actors, sportspeople and entertainers of all kinds have agents to represent them? Why don’t they deal directly with their market, be they publishers, galleries, music companies and so on? I asked myself this when I co-wrote a book on international commercial negotiation over ten years ago. And again when watching the superb comedy Netflix TV series Dix pour cent (relabelled Call My Agent! for anglophones). Okay, I could see why insecure, financially-naïve, unknown actors might need an agent to get them on to the first few rungs of their thespian careers. Likewise, writers, their self-belief in ruins after numerous publishers have not even bothered to send them rejection slips. But once established, why not dispense with the middleman? Why pay someone to sell you to those who have already bought you? I have spent much of my time over the past few weeks finding the answer to my question.
The Conan Doyle Estate, which I run, was contacted by IBB Law, a law firm with offices in and around London. They were clearing out centuries of archives. Would we be interested in having seven boxes of documents which appeared to be related to Sir Athur Conan Doyle, the creator in 1886 of Sherlock Holmes? We accepted unseen.
The boxes mostly contain correspondence from 1891 to the 1940s between A.P. Watt & Sons, a literary agency, and publishers, theatre companies and film studios around the world. The first letter, from the editor of The Strand Magazine, Herbert Greenhough Smith, to A.P. Watt is dated January 24, 1891 and says “Dear Sir, Many thanks for your letter. We shall use Conan Doyle’s story.” It then goes on to discuss other stories by other writers which Watt had submitted. Doyle’s story was The Voice of Science for which he would receive £4 per 1000 words, payable on publication.
Three months later Watt sent A Scandal in Bohemia, the first of Doyle’s fifty-six Sherlock Holmes short stories, to The Strand Magazine. Both Smith and the magazine’s owner, George Newnes, were enthralled by it and the subsequent stories. And, yes, the rest is history. I came across a later letter from A.P. Watt to Newnes, mid-negotiation, in which Watt reminds him that it was he who had introduced Newnes to Sherlock Holmes. The unsubtle message is clear: You owe me, mate. I helped make your fortune. Now, give me what I (and my client, Dr Conan Doyle) want. There is something else worth mentioning. At this stage Watt was still working out what commission he should charge his clients. He chose 15% for A Scandal in Bohemia but 6% for The Red-Headed League, submitted only weeks later. His first job had been as a publisher’s reader. Had he guessed that A Scandal in Bohemia was a better story than the other and the one which would make Doyle a star author and very rich? Whatever the reason, Watt soon settled on 10% as his standard rate, a figure which became the norm for agents in many different industries.
Alexander Pollock Watt (1834 –1914) claimed to be the world’s first literary agent. He was certainly the most influential. Many publishers loathed him, dubbing him a “parasite”. In a sense they were right. He sucked their blood. But he shared that blood with his authors. He changed the balance of power in favour of writers, at least the successful ones. Glasgow born, he moved from working in a publishing firm to representing a friend when negotiating a book contract with a publisher. He set up his business in 1881 and in 1892 his son, Alexander Strahan Watt, joined him. His firm was run by various Watts after his death in 1914 and still exists, though since 2012 under the United Agents umbrella. Doyle continued to write “Dear Watt” until his death in 1930, and whichever Watt he was writing to would always reply “Dear Doyle”. Doyle was neither Watt’s first client nor his only famous one. Rudyard Kipling, H G Wells, Thomas Hardy, Lewis Carroll and W.B. Yeats were others. But I suspect Doyle was his most lucrative one.
Doyle had already had his first two Sherlock Holmes novels – A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four, a historical novel – Micah Clarke, and a lot of short stories published before he made Watt his agent. But he wanted no more of “the hateful bargaining” with publishers and editors, describing in his memoirs how Watt was “that king of agents.” It’s fascinating to see from Watt’s letters how much Doyle benefited from employing him. Watt knew exactly which publisher would be best to approach on Doyle’s behalf. For example, he knew that A Scandal in Bohemia at 8,660 words was too long for most magazines but would be acceptable to The Strand, which being brand new was more flexible than its rivals. He made this plain to Doyle. He also knew that The Strand’s owner, George Newnes, was rich enough to risk taking a punt on relatively unknown writers. Later, when Doyle was a much-sought after author, Watt played off one publisher against another, making them bid against each other.
He was careful though not to go too far. There is correspondence between Watt, Doyle, Smith and Newnes in 1904 in which Watt says that the US publishers Colliers had agreed to pay “the largest price ever paid in America for any single short story” and that The Strand could not expect to pay this time the “trifling figures” they had paid in the past for Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. Watts describes Smith’s statement that “the value of a ‘Sherlock’ story at present seems to be about £400” as “of course, nonsense.” Smith comes back with £600 and, then, in the same letter agrees that £700 would represent a concession by Doyle and asks if Doyle will agree to that figure (Newnes should not have allowed his editor to negotiate!) Watt asks Doyle, if he agrees, to “send me a wire on receipt of this letter: Accept £700.” Doyle does so:
Watt also tried to persuade Doyle not to kill off Sherlock Holmes only 18 months after he had brought Doyle fame and fortune. In this he was joined by Doyle’s mother and by George Newnes, as can be seen in this letter to Watt of 10 August 1893:
After Doyle’s death in 1930, first his widow and then his two sons, tried to deal with publishers and film studios directly. The letters and telegrams show how poorly they did so. At some stage in the 1940s, A P Watt & Sons must have been asked to hand over all their Doyle business archive to Adrian Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur’s youngest son, who then, it seems, gave it to his lawyers to store. At some stage Adrian or his lawyers removed all the letters from his father to Watt, guessing that these would one day be worth a lot of money. How do I know? Because many of the bundles of documents in the boxes have notes in pencil such as "Ltr from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, signed" but there is no such letter. Or it may be more truthful: "Ltr extracted". Also the boxes contain an inventory done in 1957 by the same firm of lawyers. When a large number of Doyle’s letters, photos etc were auctioned at Christie’s in 2004, one lot contained 158 letters and cards from Doyle to Watt. The photo of one of these letters in the auction catalogue has a number in pencil – 62-19 – which matches the bundle number in the inventory. Yesterday, I discovered another photo of a similar letter being exhibited in New York. There was a pencilled number which matched the inventory one. Adrian was right. The letters sold for £53,775. I’m still trying to find out where they all are and see if they can somehow be united with Watt’s correspondence.
But one card from Doyle to Watt was not spotted by Adrian or the lawyer. Here it is:
He must have written it in 1926 (Doyle seldom dated his correspondence). "No 5" refers to the penultimate Sherlock Holmes story – The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger. It is indeed "shortish" - just 8 pages of text in my copy - but to have written that story in one day and played a round of 18 holes of golf is indeed "not bad" for a 67-year old. It shows just how little care Doyle took with the last ten or so Holmes stories*. But, of course, he had wished him dead decades earlier.
I see now how valuable a good agent can be. The new question I have is why employ a lawyer when the agent can draw up a contract for you and deal with all the copyright issues as Watt did for Doyle throughout their business relationship?
*My step-grandmother, Dame Jean Conan Doyle, used to tell me that her father would invite her into his study to help him work out the plots of these last stories. She would have been 13 years old in 1926.
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