Founder of Westwood Creative Artists Bruce Westwood, 84, died peacefully at home on February 28. Originally a venture capitalist, he paired with Sterling Lord to create Sterling Lord Canada, and then created WCA in 1995 following the acquisition of McKnight Gosewich Associates and the Lucinda Vardey Agency. The agency notes that, “Bruce’s foundational belief was to build from within, and he was so pleased that the new owners of the agency came up through its ranks. If you’d like to honor Bruce’s memory and legacy, we can think of no more appropriate way than to raise a glass of rosé […]
Agency News
Agency News: Einstein Joins Dunow, Carlson & Lerner
As of January 1, 2025, Susanna Einstein will join Dunow, Carlson & Lerner as an agent, as will her colleague Susan Graham. Einstein has run Einstein Literary Management since 2015. (Prior to that, she was a partner in Einstein Thompson Agency, which was the successor to LJK Literary Management.) Einstein says in the announcement: “I’ve loved building my company over the past decade, but with the ongoing changes in publishing, and the isolation of our post-pandemic work-life, I’m more than ready for the collegiality of a larger group. I’ve known Jen, Henry, and Betsy for many years and have long […]
Listening to Lipskar
Open Road’s latest behind-the-scenes in publishing podcast is a recorded conversation from September between Simon Lipskar at Writers House and Open Road ceo David Steinberger. Lipskar discusses learning about the business of the business in his early days as an agent: “All I did was go to lunch and ask questions…. What I learned was nothing surprising, but it all had to do with budgets being based off of gross receipts. That was it. There was nothing more to it. So everyone’s budgets were being built off of gross receipts, and executives’ bonuses were contingent upon delivering on budget. So […]
Endeavor Top Execs to Receive Bonuses, Royalties, More in Buyout
When Endeavor finally went public in 2021 at a reduced $24 a share, a few top executives wound up with significant holdings and valuable options while hundreds of others were reportedly told their options were worthless. According to SEC filings, Silver Lake’s move to take Endeavor private again — after producing less than a 15 percent return over three years — will lead to another significant windfall for executives. Endeavor founder and ceo Ari Emanuel—who currently owns 11.9 percent of stock—will receive a $25 million bonus at the sale. He’ll be named founder and executive chairman of William Morris Endeavor, […]
As Expected, Silver Lake to Take Endeavor Private Again
Endeavor’s controlling owner Silver Lake confirmed on Tuesday that it will take Endeavor private again, but all outstanding stock for $27.50 a share. It took the company multiple attempts to go public in the first place, finally doing so in 2021 at $24 a share. Though Silver Lake’s press release trumpets the value that has been created for shareholders, most outside investors have not reaped any bonanza from Endeavor. The stock was languishing at below $18 a share last fall when the company said it would explore a sale and Silver Lake indicated it was putting together a proposal to […]
Using AI to Search Deals and Dealmakers
We have launched an experimental use of an AI-powered search approach at PublishersMarketplace, called Matcher. Up until now, our corpus of over 200,000 deal reports has only been searchable through basic word matching and Boolean search strings—and our Dealmakers lists, while quite extensive, only cover the 100 or so sub-categories that we tag and track. Matcher is designed to help you find agents and editors that “match” your manuscript, using natural language descriptions of your work. In this initial phase, it comes in two versions: Deal Matcher lets you search through the deals database, and highlights the editors and agents involved […]