After breaking the news that Scott Hoffman, Paige Wheeler and Jeff Kleinman would be banding together to form Folio Literary Management, the natural thing to do was to get more information about this agency, which will officially open its doors on February 1st. Thankfully, the main principals were kind enough to answer my follow-up email queries.

When asked about the status of her original agency, Creative Media, Wheeler said that it would be absorbed into Folio -- as would all the agents currently working for her. Kleinman, currently based in DC, will continue to work from there as Folio's Washington representative (while the agency will eventually expand to Los Angeles.) And Hoffman, as Folio's instigator, offered further thoughts about the agency's formation:

Last year, Jeff Kleinman and I were both looking to leave the agencies where we had started our careers. Jeff had been at Graybill and English for about six years, and I had been with PMA Literary and Film Management for three or so. We had each developed our client lists and our reputations, and we were interested in expanding our skills, services, and reach to authors.

Paige was running the Creative Media Agency, and was at the point where her agency had grown so large and she was selling so many books that it was time for her to expand and really take things to the next level.

When Jeff started looking to leave his previous agency, I don't think he ever really seriously thought he would wind up starting his own shop, with or without partners. I know I didn't. We were each looking around to see if another agency might offer something different—something that would enable us to sell more and better books, service our clients better, and develop new income streams for them.

Well into the search, Jeff met Paige, and was struck by how dynamic she was, and by how similar their visions for the "perfect" agency were, despite the fact that they represented very different kinds of books. Paige's practice was almost entirely commercial fiction at that point, and Jeff's was big literary fiction, and lifestyle and narrative nonfiction.

Jeff and I met after half a dozen or so matchmaking editors suggested that we might work well together.

When the three of us got together, everything just sort of clicked. We started talking about what the future of the industry was going to be, and how things could be done differently at the agency level to benefit our clients and their books.

In the end, they decided to band together to create a "one-stop agency" with an integrated PR, publicity and speaker's bureau operation, with the idea that their clients' brands can be extended and that they can develop as much of an income from their work as possible. Obviously, Hoffman points out, it remains to be seen how everything will work, but "overall, Folio is based on a lot more than just shared overhead. It’s based on a shared vision of where the industry is going, and what an agency needs to do to gain a competitive edge for its clients."