The family wants to pay off those student loans.
'Throat' Book Advance
Could Exceed $1 Million
By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
June 1, 2005; Page B4
NEW YORK -- As the family of W. Mark Felt fields offers for a book based on his experience as "Deep Throat," literary agents say such a project could attract an advance of more than $1 million. They caution that much depends on how Mr. Felt's memory is holding up at age 91, and how skilled a ghostwriter would be at wringing a compelling story out of 30-year-old events.
"What he's got to do is team up with a writer known for suspenseful narratives," said Richard Pine, a partner in the New York literary agency InkWell Management LLC. "He'll need a writer that a publisher knows will deliver a good tale in the right way."
Mr. Pine said he expects demand will be strong among publishers, and that Mr. Felt's book could bring seven figures for U.S. rights, with rights in other markets generating as much as six figures each. "This is a serious piece of American history," Mr. Pine added.
Mr. Felt is profiled in an article written by San Francisco lawyer John D. O'Connor in the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair magazine. In the article, Mr. O'Connor writes that he told Mr. Felt that he would help him "find a reputable publisher if he decided to go that route" on a pro-bono basis. Mr. O'Connor also writes that Mr. Felt's "health and mental acuity" have declined. Mr. O'Connor said in an interview yesterday that he wouldn't personally gain from any book or movie deal about Mr. Felt or his family.
Literary agent David Black said Mr. Felt will need to show that he can spin a good narrative, and that such a hurdle also can be overcome with personal reference materials such as a diary, if Mr. Felt has that kind of record. "It's about his motivation," Mr. Black said. "Why did he do what he did?"
Added Glen Hartley, a literary agent with Writers' Representatives LLC: "People are going to want the entire story. How did he discover what was going on? How was he privileged to this information? And how was he able to successfully conceal himself for all these years?"
Should Mr. Felt decide to write a book he will have access to a rich vein of source material. In 1993, the University of Texas at Austin purchased the Watergate papers of reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein for $5 million. The papers include notes and interview transcripts for articles the men wrote for the Washington Post and two books they published. The papers are available to the public, although the reporters segregated documents that identified Deep Throat. Those documents remain in Washington and were to be delivered at the time of the source's death. It was unclear yesterday whether that agreement will hold. Robert Barnett, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who represents Mr. Woodward in his publishing efforts, declined to comment about the day's developments.
From a publisher's point of view, an ideal collaboration would have been for Mr. Woodward -- a big literary brand name -- to joint-venture the book. Indeed, in the Vanity Fair article Mr. O'Connor writes that Mr. Felt originally agreed to reveal himself if Mr. Woodward was involved. Mr. O'Connor and Mr. Felt's daughter, Joan Felt, approached Mr. Woodward about writing a book, but the reporter was ambivalent and never responded to the offer. "I told him if he didn't do it, we'd do it ourselves," Mr. O'Connor says. |
