Robert B. Barnett, a giant in the publishing world who negotiated book deals for presidents, royalty and best-selling novelists while acting as a kind of consigliere for many of his political clients, died on Thursday in Washington. He was 79.
His death was confirmed by his law firm, Williams & Connolly. The cause was not disclosed.
Perhaps more than any other figure in publishing, Mr. Barnett wielded enormous influence in the market for political memoirs and helped to usher in the era of megadeals. He got eye-popping advances for his clients, in the seven- and eight-figure range.
He was a tenacious negotiator. He helped Hillary Clinton win an advance of $8 million for her 2003 memoir, “Living History,” and landed a reported $10 million deal for Bill Clinton’s 2004 memoir, “My Life.” In 2017, he shattered records when he helped Barack and Michelle Obama negotiate a joint book deal with Penguin Random House for a reported advance of about $65 million.
With some of his high-profile clients, Mr. Barnett did more than just negotiate deals; he acted as a political consultant and sounding board. In “Living History,” Mrs. Clinton described how, when she was in denial about her husband’s affair with the White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky, at first brushing it off as a political smear campaign, it was Mr. Barnett who gently suggested to her that the stories of a tryst might be true.
“Bob was a dear friend, a brilliant lawyer, and an indispensable political adviser,” Hillary Clinton said in a statement.
Mr. Barnett carved out an unusual role for himself in publishing. The business is largely based in New York City, but he worked in Washington. Most deals are negotiated by literary agents, but he was not an agent; he was a lawyer. Rather than taking a commission like an agent, which often amounts to about 15 percent of an advance, he charged an hourly fee, reported to be in the $750 to $1,000 range — a relative bargain when a book deal reached into the millions.
But while Mr. Barnett was an unconventional figure in the book world, his list of prominent clients was perhaps unrivaled.
Besides the Clintons and the Obamas, he represented George W. and Laura Bush, Senator Mitch McConnell, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the Republican strategist Karl Rove and the married political consultants James Carville and Mary Matalin.
He worked with titans of business, like Lloyd Blankfein, the former chief executive of Goldman Sachs; and Jack Welch, the former chief executive of General Electric; as well as the Prince of Wales, Queen Noor of Jordan and Barbra Streisand. Bob Woodward was a client, along with other journalism stars like Brian Williams, Lesley Stahl and Brit Hume. And Mr. Barnett represented best-selling novelists, among them James Patterson, Mary Higgins Clark and Khaled Hosseini, the author of “The Kite Runner.”
Mr. Barnett played matchmaker sometimes, arranging unusual collaborations. He urged Mr. Clinton, a fan of mystery novels, to write a thriller, and introduced him to Mr. Patterson. The two hit it off and have now written three novels together, all of them best sellers.
Mr. Barnett also sold to publishers a thriller written by Mrs. Clinton with the Canadian crime novelist Louise Penny and a novel by Mr. Patterson and the country star Dolly Parton. This year, Mr. Barnett helped negotiate a deal for a novel written jointly by Mr. Patterson and Jimmy Donaldson, the YouTube star MrBeast, after a heated auction that reportedly drew offers in the eight-figure range.
“He was the man to see,” said Jonathan Karp, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster. “When you negotiated with Bob Barnett, you always knew he was being transparent, that he was telling you the truth, and that he was doing the best for his clients.”
Robert Bruce Barnett, the older of two siblings, was born on Aug. 26, 1946, in Waukegan, Ill. His mother, Betty (Simon) Barnett did sales work at a department store, and his father, Bernard Barnett, worked for the Social Security Administration. Robert attended the University of Wisconsin.
In 1967, during his senior year, Mr. Barnett met Rita Braver, a sophomore who would become a CBS News correspondent. He asked her to marry him on their first date. When she said no, he asked her out on a second date. “He didn’t bring it up again for five years,” she told Washingtonian magazine.
After getting his law degree in 1971 at the University of Chicago and clerking for an appeals court judge in Louisiana, Mr. Barnett moved to Washington in 1972 to clerk for Associate Justice Byron White of the U.S. Supreme Court; he and Ms. Braver married that year.
Drawn to politics, he found work as a legislative aide to Senator Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota, a Democrat and future vice president. “In about two weeks,” Mr. Mondale told Washingtonian, “Barnett knew more about Senate rules and procedures than I did.”
When Mr. Mondale ran for president in 1984, Mr. Barnett worked on the campaign, coaching his running mate, Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro, in debate preparations by playing the role of the incumbent vice president, George H.W. Bush. Later, when Ms. Ferraro was looking to sell a book, Mr. Barnett helped her find an agent. He soon reasoned that he would be good at striking book deals himself.
Mr. Barnett also helped Mr. Clinton in more than 20 practice debates during his 1992 presidential campaign and coached Mrs. Clinton during her debate preparations for her senate and presidential campaigns. “He was utterly devoted to his clients,” Mr. Clinton said in a statement.
Only four years out of law school, Mr. Barnett began rising in the legal world when, in 1975, Joseph A. Califano Jr., the former Johnson White House adviser and future secretary of health, education and welfare, recruited him to join his Washington law firm, then called Williams, Connolly & Califano. At the firm, a white-shoe powerhouse that came to be known as Williams & Connolly, Mr. Barnett became a power broker who struck book, television and speaking deals for many of Washington’s biggest players.
Though a staunch Democrat, he worked with clients across the political spectrum, an agnostic stance that stood out in an era rife with partisan strife.
Asked about his ability to remain above political rancor in a 2004 interview with The New York Times, Mr. Barnett replied, “In law school, I majored in tightrope-walking.”
“He was a classic of that generation where your humanity came first, and politics was not even second,” said Brian Murray, the chief executive of HarperCollins.
Mr. Barnett and Ms. Braver became a Washington power couple: He had a thick roster of prominent clients, while she worked as a correspondent for CBS. At times, when their professional lives came into conflict, one or the other would step aside. When Ms. Braver was offered the job of chief White House correspondent during Mr. Clinton’s first term as president, Mr. Barnett stopped representing the Clintons for a few years.
“I had to bow out of stories, and he had to bow out of cases,” Ms. Braver said.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Barnett is survived by a daughter, Meredith Barnett; a sister, Ilene Petersen; and three grandchildren.
His services extended beyond those of most lawyers. Mr. Barnett would sometimes act as a publicist for his clients, calling print and television journalists and landing his authors on shows to promote their books. He would join meetings with publishers to strategize everything from how to prevent advance copies of a news-breaking book from leaking early, to the cover design and marketing plans. He once helped Lynne Cheney, the former second lady in the George W. Bush administration, block a reissue of a racy romance novel that she had published decades ago and preferred to keep out of print.
Another time, when he was visiting Mr. Woodward at his home to go over a book contract, Mr. Woodward had to run out for an interview and needed someone to look after his daughter, who was about 6 years old. Mr. Barnett stayed and babysat, earning him the nickname, “the Big Babysitter.”
“He was always on duty,” said Mr. Woodward, who worked with Mr. Barnett for five decades. “In the course of a week, there was no one I would receive more calls or emails from, including my wife.”
Mr. Patterson said that he and Mr. Barnett had become such close friends that they would typically talk five times a week, even on weekends. “If he couldn’t get me for a few hours, he used to say, ‘I get nervous when I can’t find you,’” Mr. Patterson recalled.
On occasion, Mr. Patterson named characters in his novels after Mr. Barnett.
The books are rife with criminals and nefarious types, but the Barnett character, he said, is “always a good guy.”
Alexandra Alter writes about books, publishing and the literary world for The Times.
Elizabeth A. Harris covers books and the publishing industry, reporting on industry news and examining the broader cultural impact of books. She is also an author.
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