In the latest installment of mediabistro.com's "Pitching an Agent," Jane Dystel of Dystel & Goderich discusses the hands-on approach she takes with clients whose books cover a diverse range of subject matter—just about anything that catches her eye, really. "I think my clients would say that I'm very nurturing," Dystel confides. "They all have my home phone number. I take very good care of them." And they can go on to great things: One writer Dystel shepherded to publiciation in the 1990s published a memoir about growing up as the son of an American woman and an African man who divorced when he was only two years old. Today, little more than a decade after the publiciation of Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama is the president of the United States.

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