Knopf Nets Agassi Memoir

by Matthew Thornton -- Publishers Weekly, 3/28/2007 2:28:00 PM

Sonny Mehta at Knopf has emerged as the winner of a protracted auction for world rights to an untitled  memoir by Andre Agassi; Richard Pine and Michael Carlisle at Inkwell made the deal and Jonathan Segal will edit. Terms were not disclosed, though a source familiar with the negotiation estimates Knopf's payout at $4.3 million. By Friday the price of the book, which had started with a $4 million floor offered by one of five interested publishers, had risen to $5.3 million.

Mehta purchased the book after meeting with Agassi and without seeing a single page of writing. He cited the tennis superstar's extraordinary life and career, as well as his commitment to education reform—he started a college preparatory school in an underserved Las Vegas neighborhood in 2001—as factors in the proposed book’s appeal. No word yet on whether a writer has been selected.

Agassi met with editors at eight imprints, including Doubleday, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Random House, Twelve (formerly Warner Twelve) and Crown, over two days in Las Vegas the week of March 12. After a meeting with Agassi and a tour of his school, each publisher had half an hour to make his case. HarperCollins, Doubleday, Simon & Schuster and Random House all made bids, but Agassi was reportedly influenced in his decision to go with Knopf by friend and former President Bill Clinton, another Knopf author, according to what Pine and Carlisle told the losing bidders.