AMG, Lukeman pact on lit

Adds Bly, L'Hereux, Rawley to stable

By JONATHAN BING

NEW YORK -- Mike Ovitz's AMG has secured a stronger foothold in the Gotham lit market, forming an alliance with Lukeman Literary Management, which will provide a deeper pool of material to feed AMG's TV and film divisions on the West Coast to begin next month.

AMG's lit division, Renaissance, already has a Gotham office. But effective Feb. 1, Noah Lukeman, who founded Lukeman Literary Management in 1996, will come on board as a full-time consultant to help manage the company's expanding lit management and production opportunities.

Lukeman's eclectic stable of 100-plus clients -- including widely published and award-winning fiction writers like Carol Bly, John L'Hereux and Donald Rawley -- doesn't add many brand-name authors to AMG/Renaissance, whose list already includes such heavyweights as Tom Clancy, Michael Connelly and James Lee Burke. But Lukeman's fast-growing business has shown a leading interest in new publishing technologies. He created PrePub.com, a Web-based book-tracking system that he sold to Inside.com.

Lukeman also reps the fiction of thesp Gene Hackman and writers Ellen Cooney, G.K. Wuori and Joe Jackson.

Alliance, which comes in the wake of the William Morris Agency's acquisition of the Writers Shop, may signal a movement toward consolidation in the agenting biz. In a statement, Lukeman stressed the benefits of aligning himself with a large Hollywood management company.