A few moments with the late, great “Ike” Willams

John Taylor “Ike” Williams was my agent and publishing lawyer. He died on December 26, 2024 at the age of 86.

Ike was a commanding presence at his literary agency, Kneerim & Williams, and law firm, Sennott & Williams. Six-foot-six and good-looking, he had a unique combination of unshakable Boston Brahmin confidence and good humor. He was exactly who you wanted on your side in a negotiation, but even if you were on the other side, you knew he was going to give you a fair shake.

Ike’s literary clients included Norman Mailer, E.O. Wilson, Howard Gardner, Tim Berners-Lee, and Howard Zinn. He would casually drop names, and you would certainly be impressed. His network was vast and diverse, which was a help to everyone in it. If you want to get to know who he was a little more, spend a moment with his obituary in the Provincetown Independent.

Moments with Ike

I didn’t know Ike well. But what struck me most about Ike was his combination of confidence and expertise. When it came to books, he knew just what was possible and how to convince everyone to do it. That’s how a lot of great books got signed and published.

When I worked at Forrester, I inherited Ike from another analyst-author whose book deal he’d closed. I dutifully sent him my detailed and definitive book proposal for a book about the future of the television industry, a topic on which I was arguably a top expert. I had a lot of confidence in my chances for publication, since I’d meticulously followed the guidelines in a book called How to Write a Book Proposal.

Ike got back to me and said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t sell this.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because business books are about people and stories. There are no people and no stories in this proposal. It reads like a research report.”

Ouch. It read like a research report because writing research reports was what I wrote for a living. He was right. And I have not just adopted his pointed advice but shared it with many other authors in the decades since he said that to me.

My favorite moment with Ike was during the pitching of my book with Charlene Li, Groundswell. Ike had sent Charlene and me on a tour of publishers in New York who were interested in our proposal and told us “Don’t try to impress them: the purpose of this tour is for them to impress you.” That made no sense to us — surely we were auditioning in some way — but of course Ike was exactly right. The day after we met with the New York publishers, we met with what seemed like the entire management team of Harvard Business Publishing, the parent organization of Harvard Business Review and the publishing imprint Harvard Business Press. About two minutes after we got out of that meeting, Charlene turned to me and said, “We really should choose Harvard, I like them the best.” Charlene had an MBA from Harvard Business School and it it was clear to me that she was looking forward to impressing her old professors, but to be fair, HBP did indeed look like a great partner. But I wanted to see what level of offers we got from Harvard and other publishers before committing.

A few days later Charlene was back at home in California and I was in Ike’s modest Boston office on the morning he’d set for the auction of the book. As the initial offers poured in, he continually fielded and replied to emails and worked the phone. He knew we liked HBP but was intent on maximizing our advice. As the numbers climbed and the bidders dropped off, he called the team at HBP and suggested a “pre-empt” — that is, an offer we could accept immediately and end the bidding. The number for the advance, well into six figures, seemed unimaginably high to me for a book by two first-time authors. And I have to admit, at this point, I was pretty close to peeing myself from the tension.

Harvard made the pre-empt, we accepted it, Charlene was happy, and so was I. I excused myself and went to the bathroom. Harvard Business Publishing (now known as HBR Press) did indeed become the perfect partner, and there’s no way we could have gotten that deal at that level without Ike. (The acquisitions editor at HBP who had bought Groundswell, Hollis Heimbouch, later moved on to Harper Business where she ended up acquiring my book Writing Without Bullshit.)

My final memorable moment with Ike occurred when HBP sent us their contract. Ike was an experienced publishing lawyer, not just an agent. He went through that contract and just changed a bunch of things, including increasing our percentage from subsidiary rights like foreign translations. He just crossed out the old numbers and suggested higher ones. HBP accepted every change. One value of an experienced publishing lawyer is the ability to know where the publisher is going to negotiate (like subsidiary rights) and where they won’t (like the core royalty rates). As Groundswell was published in about 20 foreign languages, all those changes netted thousands of additional dollars for us.

Ike’s firm received 15% of all the advances and royalties from Groundswell, which ended up being more than $70,000. He was worth every cent.

Some more about confidence

I remember when Forrester’s chief counsel, a pretty expert lawyer in her own right, said she wanted to review the publishing contracts as well. Ike certainly wasn’t going to object to that, since Forrester was the author of record and owner of the intellectual property of our books. But he still wanted us all to know he was the real expert. He described our lawyer’s additional layer of review in the most Massachusetts Bay way possible, as “lobster stuffed with lobster.” (It was still worth doing.)

Ike knew a bit about a vast and boundless collection of topics, because he dealt with so many authors and books. This meant that when he reviewed our proposals, he’d often come back with substantive suggestions that seemed sort of reasonable, but went well beyond his expertise. As the actual experts on the topics, we weren’t going to make the changes he suggested, but they did highlight areas that were a little muddy to generalized acquisitions editors.

Even so, he was so persuasive that you had to watch yourself. If you didn’t do what he suggested, you sure needed to have a very good reason.

I was blessed to be able to interact with Ike, and I don’t just mean financially. He enriched my life and put me on a path as an author that I remain on to this day. I once heard him refer to my writing skills as a “force of nature,” which may be the most cherished compliment I ever received.

I imagine Ike, standing tall with a healthy head of grey hair, stepping up to the Pearly Gates to talk with Saint Peter. He smiles a wry smile and in an unmistakable Boston accent, says, “Thanks for meeting with me. Would you like to learn a little bit more about overt religious symbolism in Christian philosophy? I’d love to tell you more about that — maybe we can get together with the rest of my friends that are just on the other side of those gates . . . “