Andrew Wylie is not the namesake of Andrew Wylie.

On the CBS show The Good Wife there is a character named Andrew Wylie. Played by the actor Tim Guinee, the character is a private investigator hired by the state attorney's office to cause some drama by casually revealing past love affairs to all the wrong people and reviving dormant scandals. An inciter of barely suppressed gasps and sobs. But could it really be just a coincidence that he shares a name with a certain literary agent?

We called the show's spokesman, who left us a message saying that the Andrew Wylie on the show is not named for Andrew Wylie, the prominent New York literary agent. Mr. Wylie (the real one) did not respond to an e-mail requesting comment.

We looked at the list of The Good Wife's writers, but none of them appear on the Wiley Agency's lengthy client list. So that settles it -- at least until they refer to the TV version of Andrew Wylie as "the jackal."

Wylie.

Andrew Wylie is at it again! Speaking to the British industry publication The Bookseller at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Mr. Wylie advocated for more author-friendly royalty rates for digital book sales. "Publishers should pay a 5o percent digital royalty and digital distributors should not be charging 30 percent—zero would be attractive," he said. Most publishers pay royalty rates of 25 percent for digital sales right now, the exception being Amazon Publishing, which pays significantly higher rates (in exchange they usually sell the books at lower prices and retail digital versions exclusively through Amazon.)

"The demise of the music industry was brought about because the industry allowed itself to transfer the 30 percent profitability that existed in that industry to the digital device holder, Apple," he said. "Publishers have now replicated that by transferring 30 percent, for no apparent reason, to digital device holders – Amazon, Apple, others."

Mr. Wylie said that if publishers are going to transfer 30 percent of their profits to Amazon, Amazon should transfer 30 percent of Kindle Sales back to publishing.

"They have a device, it can’t be sold without publishing content," he said.

He added that publishers should also offer authors a greater percentage of net profit to compete. When asked whether Amazon et al will eventually win over authors with the promise of high royalties to the extent that the publishing as we know it dies out, Mr. Wylie offered another vision of a horrible apocalyptic future.

"If you allow the digital distribution piece to take over the entire industry, what it wants is volume, and low price, and it’s prepared to lower the price to 99 cents in order to achieve support the volume," he said. "At that point authors are working for 10 cents a copy. That’s not a supportable economic arrangement."

He again pointed out the fate of the music industry, where musicians have to go on tour to support themselves. "It would be a fairly dire situation if writers had to give public readings in order to support themselves," he said.

Then the interviewer asked Mr. Wylie what he thinks of his nickname, "the jackal."

"I don’t dislike it, I don’t like it, it’s just there," he replied.

Hastings.

The New York Post is reporting that Little, Brown has canceled Michael Hastings' still-untitled book, described in Publishers Marketplace as "'an unprecedented behind-the-scenes account of America's longest war,' with an unfiltered look at the war, and the soldiers, diplomats and politicians who are waging it."

Little, Brown signed it up after Mr. Hastings' 2010 Rolling Stone article about General Stanley McChrystal. After the article came out President Obama fired Gen. McChrystal and Mr. Hastings got a six-figure advance. Now, according to the Post, Andrew Wylie, who is Mr. Hastings's agent, has started shopping around the manuscript again to editors.

At the very least, this explains why Michael Hastings and Elise Jordan's entry on our Media Power Couples List saw an otherwise inexplicable boost in traffic yesterday.

When asked if the News of the World phone hacking scandal might bleed into other parts of Rupert Murdoch’s empire, including its publishing wing, HarperCollins, he answered bluntly, “Yes, it will focus attention on all parts of the business, and people will perhaps turn on some lights in rooms that have been left dark previously and look more closely at what is profitable and what is not and what is proper behavior and what isn’t.”

He went on to hint that proper behavior was not always to be expected from HarperCollins: “They have been, and I’ve explained this to the heads of the company in London and New York, unusually shrill and punitive towards authors.”

Having issued his proclamation over the airwaves, Mr. Wylie resumed his usual, oraclelike silence, refusing to refer to specific instances of said shrillness or punishment (or to answer any questions from The Observer) and leaving New York publishing to venture any number of conjectures. A few days later, as if to confuse everyone further, Mr. Wylie issued a correction of sorts, telling the British industry publication The Bookseller that he “did not ‘call for an investigation’ into HarperCollins.” He went on: “In the context of current events, this misrepresentation of what I said is regrettable.” A spokeswoman from HarperCollins characterized this as “a retraction.”

At HarperCollins, at least, the prevailing mood was one of annoyance. “Mr. Wylie makes extravagant allegations to the BBC but fails to specify exactly what he is complaining about,” the company’s British spokesperson wrote in a statement republished in The Bookseller. The American spokeswoman offered only a “no comment.” Aside from a few high-profile moves—most notably Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, authors of the  mega-bestselling book Game Change, defecting to competitor Penguin Press for their follow-up­—Mr. Wylie has continued to do business with the company, prompting his commentary to be referred to as everything from an instance of “the pot calling the kettle black” to a “fishing expedition.” Among HarperCollins editors, there was an aggrieved feeling that he was “piling on” while unrelated businesses owned by News Corp. were down.

This is not to say that others in New York publishing were unwilling to take the opportunity to air grievances. “They’ve become draconian in their cancellation policies towards authors for manuscripts delivered even a week beyond their delivery date,” said one New York literary agent. (Unlike Mr. Wylie, none of the agents interviewed were so bold as to give their names and face future alienation from dealmaking with the formidable publisher.)

Other agents said that while such cancellations can feel unnecessarily, well, punitive, they are a publisher’s contractual right. But the company also recently redid its standard contract (known as a “boilerplate”) in a manner that several agents told The Observer was not “author-friendly.”

“They have changed their asking for a broader scope of rights than they have before,” wrote one agent in an email to The Observer. “Like multimedia rights; or not allowing authors to make a graphic novel of their own novel even if HC has already turned down that idea.”

“First, and most importantly, the rights grab is insulting,” wrote another agent. “I mean, HarperCollins will essentially be able to hold the book (and ALL THE RIGHTS that go with it) hostage for eternity.”

“We don’t comment on contractual issues,” said a HarperCollins spokeswoman.

Others were quick to point out how Mr. Murdoch’s tactics in The News of the World scandal recalled those of HarperCollins scandals past—­the payments to people whose phones had been hacked evoked comparisons to Mr. Murdoch’s attempted payments to Nicole Brown’s family in the face of controversy about O.J. Simpson’s memoir, If I Did It. (The Browns declined payments and went on The Today Show; HarperCollins was shamed into canceling the book.) The exertion of corporate influence in the hacking scandal recalled the allegations by Judith Regan, publisher of an eponymous HarperCollins imprint who was fired in 2006, that Fox News executive Roger Ailes asked her to lie to federal officials when her once-lover, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, was being vetted for the Secretary of Homeland Security post (allegations that The New York Times verified earlier this year through court documents.) News Corp. paid Regan a $10.75 million settlement in the case.

Whether the recent News Corp. indiscretions will reignite interest in possible wrongdoing on this side of the Atlantic is unclear. Former federal prosecutor and Columbia law professor Daniel Richman suspected it may not, but added, “who knows what happens in this current feeding frenzy....It would be nice to think that all knowing lies made to those agents would be prosecuted.”

One small dose of justice was meted out this week to Mr. Murdoch, however. Back in 1998, Mr. Murdoch earned derision in Britain for canceling a memoir by Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, and was accused of doing so to protect his business interests in China. According to The Guardian, the editor of that book, Stuart Proffitt, has acquired an account of the hacking crisis for Penguin Press.

ewitt@observer.com

Wylie.

Speaking earlier today on BBC Radio 4, Andrew Wylie, the literary agent, expressed his thoughts on HarperCollins, the publishing house owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

According to The Bookseller, a British industry publication, Wylie said he had personally told Mr. Murdoch that HarperCollins should be "looked after a little more closely," and added that the increased scrutiny on the company recently "will perhaps turn on some lights in rooms that have been left dark previously and look more closely at what is profitable and what is not and what is proper behaviour and what isn't."

Mr. Wylie made no reference to any specific instances of impropriety, saying only that the heads of HarperCollins have been "unusually shrill and punitive towards authors."

Whether this warrants the kinds of investigations and resignations reverberating around other segments of Murdoch's empire is unclear. We wrote Mr. Wylie earlier requesting elaboration, but did not receive a reply.

A HarperCollins spokesperson told The Bookseller, "The more mundane truth is that HarperCollins have had differences of opinion on business matters with Mr Wylie in recent times." And on Twitter, there was a choice re-tweet on the HarperCollins feed referencing Mr. Wylie.

"If we do not reach an accord, Odyssey will grow. It will not publish 20 books, it will publish 2,000 and have outside investors and make itself available to other agents," Mr Wylie told the Financial Times this week.

"I am only trying to make a point in order to underscore the importance of getting the right terms with a view to uniting the two [print and digital] revenue streams," Mr Wylie said.

When the FT spoke to publishers, however, they seemed unperturbed, pointing out that Wylie has "limited bargaining power" because contracts from the last 15 or so years already include electronic rights. "Our position is unchanged," said Random House spokesman Stuart Applebaum.

But NB! Andrew Wylie—not prone to empty threats.

Wylie’s negotiations with publishers on the book industry’s version of the iPod, e-books, are currently on hold across the board. He’s dissatisfied with the terms publishers have been offering for e-book rights, which were not widely foreseen and are not allocated in most extant book contracts. Wylie threatens to monetize those unassigned rights by going outside the publishing business entirely: “We will take our 700 clients, see what rights are not allocated to publishers, and establish a company on their behalf to license those e-book rights directly to someone like Google, Amazon.com, or Apple. It would be another business, set up on parallel tracks to the frontlist book business.”

Witholding the rights to e-Roth and e-Rushdie? That's potentially a pretty big threat.

Of course, this being the Harvard alumni magazine, we also get a bit of nostalgia for schoolboy days:

At Harvard, he would have graduated summa cum laude in French literature but for his brash political blunder of trashing one of his thesis advisers in the thesis itself.

The version of Selasi's Ghana Must Go that Andrew Wylie sold this week to Ann Godoff at Penguin Press consisted of a hundred or so pages plus an outline. Even so, Wylie was wooing publishers by saying he would deliver blurbs from his client Rushdie as well as Morrison. Considering that an agent might typically mention a writer's "very supportive" teacher as someone who "would be open" to blurbing, that's a bold move with some big names. 

Perhaps the endorsements explain why Godoff swooped up the unfinished novel in a two-book deal. Ghana Must Go reportedly opens with a scene of a father who's about to die, and traces the saga of his disintegrating family back to Africa. Selasi's second book, with the working title Generations, will be a fantasy novel.

Neither Wylie nor Godoff could be reached for comment.

Included are all the familiar elements of the Andrew Wylie legend--the legendary estates, the nickname "The Jackal," the youthful bad poetry and time with Andy Warhol--but this time, however, Wylie also reveals the succession plans for his empire:

After a generation in the business, he insists that "the Wylie Agency is not about one person. It's a matter of 50 people. The succession is all arranged. Scott Moyers in New York and Sarah Chalfant in London. I want people to understand that we [the agency] will be around after my demise."

That appears to be a distant possibility: at 62, Wylie is going strong.

Also, in case you were wondering:

He concedes no interest in music or food ("it's just fuel"), and: "I don't go to books for sex. I go home for sex."

Now you know.