Mr. Friedlander’s book is among the first Mr. Abate has sold since leaving Endeavor, the Hollywood talent agency for which he operated an East Coast literary department prior to the firm’s recent merger with William Morris. Mr. Abate declined to comment for this story beyond confirming the fact of the deal.

It Books editor Kate Hamill, who first reached out to Mr. Friedlander’s management team several months ago about a possible project, said the book will take the form of an illustrated, satirical how-to guide that will teach readers how to deal with “everyday dangerous situations,” and would feature “a ton of pictures of [Mr. Friedlander] combating his many foes.” According to Ms. Hamill, some situations to be dealt with in Mr. Friedlander’s book include confrontations with Bigfoot, hostile tourists, dinosaurs who have come back from the past, and one-armed men. 

Mr. Friedlander’s film and television agent, Bernie Spektor of the Gersh Agency, compared his client’s act to that of Andy Kaufman. “He takes on this persona, this alter ego, this character, and that’s the voice of the book,” the fast-talking Mr. Spektor said while driving through the desert to Las Vegas. “The world champ is a world champ of many kinds of activities, one of which is the self-defense karate/ninja element.”

Scheduled for publication in the spring, this is the third book Mr. Abate has sold by an actor from 30 Rock—the others being Tracy Morgan’s I Am the New Black, which is out this fall from Spiegel & Grau, and Tina Fey’s collection of essays, which Little, Brown famously acquired for a sum in the neighborhood of $6 million.

“The Alec Baldwin book would be amazing, too, I’m sure,” Mr. Spektor remarked.

So are we! Unfortunately for Mr. Abate, Mr. Baldwin already has a literary agent in one Karen Gantz, who told the Transom on Tuesday that “many publishers” have called her expressing interest in a book by Mr. Baldwin written from the perspective of his 30 Rock character, Jack Donaghy.

“I think the Jack Donaghy character in this kind of economy is a real important lesson for how to do business, how to interact with people, how to deal with the downturn in the economy,” she said. “He’s a boss that’s very caring about his employees. I think it’s very relevant today.”

Mr. Abate was left to plan his next act when the merger was finalized at the end of April and it was confirmed that he wouldn't be joining the combined company's book operation in New York. That division will be run by longtime William Morris literary co-heads Jennifer Rudolph Walsh and Suzanne Gluck when the merger receives governmental approval.

It was unclear at the time whether the squad Mr. Abate had built up at Endeavor over the past two years would follow him wherever he goes next. But according to a source with firsthand knowledge of the situation, he is saying goodbye to literary agents Kirby Kim and Rebecca Oliver, as well as his subsidiary rights manager, Laura Bonner, all three of whom have resolved to leave their old boss and have committed to joining up with the ladies at William Morris instead. Both Mr. Kim and Ms. Bonner joined Endeavor in the last year or so. Ms. Oliver has been there since May 2007.

As for the rest of Mr. Abate's people, it remains unclear what's next for Shawn Coyne, who has been with Endeavor since the fall of 2007, or Trena Keating, who was the editor in chief of Dutton before Mr. Abate brought her on as an agent in the fall of 2008.

Mr. Abate's plans, meanwhile, are anyone's guess at this point, though he is rumored to be in the process of forming his own agency.

All those involved either declined to comment or did not return emails from The Observer.

According to our source, who will be part of the combined WME Entertainment, no one from the William Morris literary department—which includes agents Bill Clegg, Wayne Kabak, Erin Malone, Jay Mandel, and Eric Simonoff—will be leaving the company.

Mr. Abate, who is in his early 40s, oversaw a number of seven-figure book deals during his brief tenure at Endeavor and built up a staff of several literary agents while cementing his reputation in publishing circles as a brash and sometimes sly businessman. Now he is rumored to be in the process of reconstituting his operation as an independent literary agency. Whether his staff—which included former Dutton editor in chief Trena Keating, as well as Shawn Coyne, Kirby Kim and Rebecca Oliver—would join him there could not be determined. 

What spurred Mr. Abate’s exit from Endeavor, of course, was the firm’s long-planned merger with rival William Morris Agency, which was approved on Monday afternoon by the governing bodies of both companies after months of negotiations. 

Variety called the merger “a giant leap into showbiz’s future,” but what it means for the publishing industry has not been the subject of much discussion in the Hollywood press, because as major as both companies’ literary departments have been in the New York book world, neither generates anywhere near the sort of revenues the two firms take in from their work in film, television and music.  

Once the merger receives governmental approval, the literary department for the combined William Morris–Endeavor firm will be run by Jennifer Rudolph Walsh and Suzanne Gluck, who have spent the past eight years as co-heads of the lit department at William Morris. Ms. Walsh, a high-octane 42-year-old who started her career in publishing about 20 years ago at the Virginia Barber Agency, will serve as the only literary department representative on the combined company’s nine-person governing board.

The reason why Ms. Walsh got the board seat instead of Ms. Gluck, who is several years older than she and no less accomplished an agent, can be explained by Ms. Walsh’s demonstrable will to be a leader in the company and Ms. Gluck’s relative lack thereof. (Unlike Ms. Gluck, for instance, Ms. Walsh served on William Morris’ seven-person executive board, spearheaded the implementation of a company-wide yearly retreat and helped created internal evaluation systems for employees and board members.)

“Jennifer Rudolph Walsh drips ‘alpha female,’ whereas Suzanne Gluck’s m.o. is much more … sweet,” said an editor who has done business with both women. “Jennifer Rudolph Walsh carries herself like she has a razor-sharp mind and a ninja’s body.”

The fact that Mr. Abate will not be working at William Morris Endeavor was for all intents and purposes a done deal after he and Ms. Walsh got together in March to discuss the merger. Despite Mr. Abate’s relationship with Endeavor founder Ari Emanuel, who will oversee the new company’s day-to-day operations as co-CEO, it seems that Ms. Walsh’s leadership position in the lit department was never in much doubt. This was in part because her department was many times bigger and more firmly established than Mr. Abate’s, but also because Mr. Emanuel’s priorities lie with the more lucrative film and TV business, and so giving William Morris control of the book business was an easy concession. As one senior publishing executive put it, “Jennifer’s ascension is the bone being thrown to William Morris.”

The notion that Mr. Abate would be satisfied reporting to Ms. Walsh or Ms. Gluck after running his own show for two years was a tough one to visualize during the run-up to Monday’s announcement. As one literary agent put it this week, “This is a guy who for the first 10 years of his career worked for two very strong-willed women [ICMers Esther Newberg and Amanda “Binky” Urban]. Would he really want to do it again?”

Mr. Abate had indeed been working in the literary department of ICM for a decade when he decided that it was time to run his own shop. According to a breach-of-contract lawsuit ICM filed against him when he announced his intention to defect to Endeavor in February 2007, Mr. Abate started at the firm as a lowly assistant making just over $20,000 a year. He was made an agent just two years later, and before long, according to the Publisher’s Lunch database, was doing deals for celebrities like Bernie Mac, journalists like Andrew Schneider and several first-time fiction writers.

Since leaving ICM, Mr. Abate has brokered a number of lucrative book deals for Endeavor clients. Last April, he sold a trilogy of thrillers co-written by Heroes creator Tim Kring and the novelist Dale Peck for $3 million. The following September, he got $3 million more for a vampire trilogy by the director Guillermo del Toro. In October, Mr. Abate scored a deal worth $6 million for Tina Fey; two months later, his colleague Ms. Keating got $2 million for Kathy Griffin. In between, there were also good deals for Endeavor clients such as James Franco, Tracy Morgan and Artie Lange.

But Mr. Abate, who began his career in publishing at the age of 30 after completing a Ph.D. in American Studies at N.Y.U. and teaching high school for two years, also has a list of clients of his own, most of whom would presumably follow him to his next gig. When he defected from ICM, he reportedly brought nearly 50 clients with him—among them Evan Wright, It Girl teen-lit author Lisi Harrison, James Swanson and Kate Christensen—and a substantial number of the deals he has brokered since joining Endeavor were for authors who have no affiliation with the talent side of the agency.

Mr. Abate and Ms. Walsh both declined to comment. Ms. Gluck did not respond to an interview request.

lneyfakh@observer.com

The latest comes from business reporter Erin Arvedlund, whom Adrian Zackheim from Penguin’s Portfolio imprint signed up earlier this week for a book called Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The special thing about Ms. Arvedlund-- the thing that compelled Portfolio assistant editor Brooke Carey to seek her out when she heard her being interviewed on NPR recently-- is that she was investigating and publicly questioning Madoff’s investment methods as far back as May 2001. This is a fact Portfolio’s publicity team will surely remind readers of many times when the book is published during the spring of 2010.

Will Weisser, the associate publisher of Portfolio, conceded in an interview yesterday that Ms. Arvedlund has quite a bit of competition on the Madoff book beat, but that he is confident she will write the definitive account.

“There's a pack,” Mr. Weisser said. “It's definitely going to be competitive. The question ultimately is going to be who writes the best book.”

Two authors who will definitely be gunning against Ms. Arvedlund are former NY1 reporter Andrew Kirtzman, who is writing a Madoff book for Claire Wachtel at HarperCollins, and magazine journalist Richard Behar, who is writing one for Random House.
 
Literary agent Richard Abate, who represented Mr. Behar, predicted back in December that by the time everyone in publishing returned to their desks after the holidays, there would be “three or four” other Madoff proposals floating around. "I think publishers will think long and hard before signing up a third book," Mr. Abate said then, very clearly pleased with the fact that he and his client had come rushing through the gate as early as he did.

Some of Mr. Abate’s rival agents are hoping he is wrong.

As of late last week, there were fully four Madoff-related books on the market that had not yet found homes. One of them we know absolutely nothing about (the editors who received the submission were asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement) but one is being written by the Financial Times columnist John Gapper and repped by agent David Kuhn, and a third comes from Richistan-author Robert Frank and is being handled by Inkwell Management’s Richard Pine. A fourth is out from former Little, Browner Fredi Friedman, who would not discuss the book or confirm its existence last week, but indicated that she would call Pub Crawl when someone bought it.

So, look forward to that.

"With time running out, I decided to submit only to two houses," he said in an e-mail. "Both wanted it."

After meeting with Mr. Behar for an hour and a half, Random House editor-- and the new editor-in-chief there, Susan Kamil-- put in a preempt offer and Mr. Abate took it. 

"I didn't want to return on the 5th and possibly be up against three or four proposals put together over the holiday," Mr. Abate said, noting that between his client's book and the one by Andrew Kirtzman that Sterling Lord Literistic president Flip Brophy just sold to HarperCollins, there's already not much room left in the Madoff market. "I think publishers will think long and hard before signing up a third book," Mr. Abate said.

Asked what Mr. Behar's book will have over the competition, Mr. Abate said, "he's simply the most badass investigative reporter in America, and this is the first story he's encountered that demands a book-length treatment."

Neither Ms. Brophy nor Mr. Kirtzman's editor at HarperCollins, Claire Wachtel, were available to respond late this afternoon.

The book was acquired for a sum in the mid-six figures by editor Sean Desmond in a deal that was brokered by the Endeavor Talent Agency's Richard Abate.

Ms. Kornblut's is the first of what is sure to be many post-election books, a category that is so far known to include titles from Newsweek, Media Matters' Eric Boehlert, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, and Ms. Kornblut's Post colleagues Haynes Johnson and Dan Balz.

For now, the stifling timidity many editors and agents are predicting appears not to have taken hold. The Penguin Press just acquired a book about the history of American counterfeiters written by a recent college graduate who works at Lapham’s Quarterly. Literary agent Susan Golomb, who introduced Jonathan Franzen and Marisha Pessl to the world, is out with a manuscript for a novel by first-time author Tom Rachman, and interest from editors has been so energetic that she had trouble keeping up with the preempt offers. Mitzi Angel, the 34-year-old editor from London who was recently brought over by the publisher of Farrar, Straus & Giroux and charged with signing up new, unpublished talent, has acquired the rights to a collection of short stories by David Means, whose debut collection she published when first starting her career in the U.K.

Soon, though, people may find themselves compelled to be more wary. Only the most established agents will be able to convince publishers to take a chance on an unknown novelist or a historian whose chosen topic does not have the backing of a news peg. The swollen advances that have come to represent all that is reckless and sinful about the way the business is run will grow, not shrink. Authors without “platforms” will have a more difficult time finding agents willing to represent them. The biggest publishing house in the world, meanwhile, will be overhauled by a 40-year-old man who worked in printing until he was appointed to his post as CEO of Random House Inc. last spring.

“Think of it like a supply chain,” said one publishing executive who would not speak for attribution. “If the newspapers have fewer ads, they’re running fewer book reviews, so therefore, for those books that don’t have a pre-established audience, there are fewer opportunities to appeal to the consumer. Therefore, there are fewer of those consumers going into the bookstore. The bookstore recognizes this, and they tell you your mid-list books aren’t doing shit, so they’re not gonna order them, or they’re just gonna order 100 copies. They can cut off those books, and then the publisher is faced with a tough decision—how am I gonna buy those books that I know I can only ship 100 copies of? What am I gonna do? Am I gonna keep doing it? Or am I gonna spend more [money] chasing established authors?”

Endeavor Talent Agency’s Richard Abate, who has in recent months done deals for Tina Fey, Heroes creator Tim Kring and filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, called this the “tent-pole effect.” Skittish publishers, he said, will flock to books by well-established cultural figures—celebrities, athletes, etc.—which they feel they can count on to achieve blockbuster status just as those books are becoming more in-demand and harder to reel in. Publishers feel vulnerable unless they have at least one such title in their arsenal every season, and as a result they will offer more outlandish sums of money for them than ever.

Mid-list projects, Mr. Abate said, the kind of books that have traditionally attracted advances in the $50,000 range, will suffer as a result: For little-known literary authors and journalists, “the advances are going to be lower and it will be that much harder to sell them.” 

In fact, he said, these books “might not even get bought. We’ll see how it shakes out, but my guess is we’re going to have fewer purchases, smaller lists, more focused lists, and it’s going to get tougher for all those books.”

Some of those books might end up going to the university presses, many of which have teams devoted to producing trade titles meant for audiences outside of the academy.

“If the advance levels come down, then we’re pretty much back in the game,” said David McBride, an editor at Oxford University Press who acquires academic and trade books on politics and sociology. “There’s a level of high-profile author that we’re simply not going to get anyway, but for some mid-level people who I think are really good who may have been signed up by, oh, I don’t know, Random House or Simon & Schuster two or three years ago, we might be better situated now.”

Esther Newberg, the co-chair of ICM’s literary division in Manhattan, said she expects to be more conservative in the projects she commits to.

“I’ll be very careful in what I’ll take on,” she said. “It’s a tougher time to sell new things. People will automatically go after those authors that they’re comfortable with.”

Ms. Golomb, too, said she fears tougher times ahead for the talented young nobodies whom she loves so much to bring out of obscurity.

“I think the bar probably gets raised,” she said, in between calls from breathless editors asking her about the novel she’s selling. “Things either have to be so ready to just go and so clearly on the page that no one has any qualms about what might happen in the editing process, or it has to be completely riveting and brilliant.”

According to Mr. Abate, though, it’s not Ms. Golomb who should worry, but less established agents who have not yet developed the sort of reputation that will move editors to return their calls.

“People like Susan are going to thrive in this market, because it’s not simply commercial books that work,” Mr. Abate said. “She’s established, people know her taste, she’s delivered time and again. That’s the type of person that a publisher is going to trust enough to put a big advance in. It’s the people who are on their way up who are going to face challenges.”

Could it be that the structural obsolescence everyone’s been crowing about for the past decade—defeat at the hands of digital media, Amazon.com, etc.—would have been less painful than this, or at least more world-historically meaningful? What lies ahead instead is a necessary scaling back of ambition: an age in which the gambling spirit that has kept book publishing exciting gives way to a shabby, predictable environment that cows its participants into avoiding all things adventurous and allowing only the proven few a seat at the table.

Will the survivors envy the dead?

No! says John Oakes, who was an executive editor at the independent boutique Atlas Books before financial troubles there led him to leave the company earlier this fall. Mr. Oakes is working with a university in Manhattan on establishing a new summer training program for college graduates seeking careers in the publishing industry. Two such programs, both six weeks long, currently exist—one at Columbia, the other at New York University—and though between the two of them they already send more than 200 young people onto the job market every year, Mr. Oakes is confident there are still more eager beavers out there in need of training.

“From what I’ve seen of their operations, they seem grand, and really wonderful setups with great histories and some important people,” Mr. Oakes said Monday, shortly before flying off to the Frankfurt Book Fair. “But I think that a good overview can be provided in less time for less money, and these days, from what I understand, people seem to be concerned about their time and their money.”

Mr. Oakes envisions an intensive, “nimble” course, with guest speakers who work in the industry providing lessons on every aspect of the business, from design, manufacturing and digital distribution, to marketing, royalties and contracts.

“Particularly in rough times, this makes more sense than ever,” Mr. Oakes said when asked whether the course he’s developing amounts to sending lambs to the slaughter. “Jobs are hard to get, absolutely, but what was wonderful about publishing is still wonderful about publishing, in that it’s a mysterious and wonderful art. Some of the smartest people still stream into publishing, so a course like this can maybe prepare them for what to expect. And there are some jobs out there, and maybe via a program like this they can meet people that will help them get those few jobs that are available.”

Mr. Oakes would not reveal what university will host the program because the plans are not yet finalized, but he said his idea has so far been met with enthusiasm.

“I’ve spoken to some potential participants, people who are in the industry, and the reaction has been uniformly warm,” he said. “Even people who won’t give me a job will come speak at my little institute.”

lneyfakh@observer.com

We heard earlier this week that Mr. Abate was boldly asking for $5 million, but apparently someone has since offered him six. All that without Ms. Fey writing any sort of proposal or taking any meetings, according to Mr. Kelly, which really brings that whole "book publishing is like gambling" meme you read about recently in New York Magazine to a new level.

Then again, maybe the seemingly astronomical price tag is not so strange, considering recent books by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have both sold extremely well.

Mercifullly, according to the Post, Ms. Fey is not interested in writing a memoir, but rather a humor book.

According to an announcement from HarperCollins, the first novel in Mr. Del Toro's series will launch next summer, and will center on "the invasion of New York City by a vampiric virus."

According to an industry source, the book is set in America, and runs from the 1960s to the near future. The protagonist is a man named Chandler Forrest whose participation in LSD experiments administered by the C.I.A. has given him superpowers.

Richard Abate, who works out of the New York office of the talent agency Endeavor, sold world rights to editor Sean Desmond on the basis of 25 pages of material and what was described as a video trailer that editors had to log on to a Web site to see.

Crown is a unit of Random House.

UPDATE: Richard Abate just called to say that the trilogy, which we identified as a "sci-fi/alternative-history trilogy" based on what someone who'd seen the proposal told us, is only going to have a little bit of sci-fi in it. Mostly alternative history, in other words.