AvantGuild: The Agent Who Discovered Obama

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.

This article is one of several mediabistro.com features exclusively available to AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, you can register for $55 a year, and start reading those articles, receive discounts on mediabistro.com seminars and workshops, and get all sorts of other swell bonuses.

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.