special section ▪ LITERARY AGENTS55 POETS & WRITERS^1968, and secrets about the mother’s
past. Intrigued, Emily took him out
to lunch the next time he was in New
York. The two dined at the Morgan
Library, across from the Wendy Weil
Agency. (Fun fact: At the end of The
Nix, there is a scene set in the dining
room of the Morgan that was drawn
from this visit.) For two years after-
ward, the two kept in touch.
It’s worth slowing down for this
part and considering: two years. After
getting encouragement from Emily,
he didn’t rush through a draft of his
novel; he wasn’t despondent after the
rejection of his stories or panicking that
his window of opportunity was closing.
He took the time to write the best book
he could write. In the meantime Emily
had moved to Brandt & Hochman, but
eventually Nathan wrote to her again:
“Okay, remember my novel?” Emily re-
calls him writing. “It’s now also about
cell-phone distraction and Occupy
Wall Street and multiplayer online
games and the housing crisis. Are you
still in?” After Emily assured him she
was, another update would arrive every
six to eight months.
“Nathan was canny because he
waited,” Emily says. “When he finally
delivered The Nix, he waited quite a
while for me to read it.” Why is this
important? Because the manuscript he
delivered, in the summer of 2014, was
275,000 words. (Some math: the typi-
cal double-spaced manuscript page con-
tains 250 words, which means this draft
was roughly 1,100 pages, or more than
two packages of standard printer paper.)
About six months of revising and
editing between agent and author fol-
lowed. “Every draft he gave me, he had
worked very hard to get to and had spe-
cific questions but was also very open
to feedback...just open and creative in
the way he addressed comments and
revision,” Emily says. “I think he really
enjoyed being in this book, so I don’t
think he was hurrying.”
Finally, after cutting 35,000 words
and moving some sections around and
pushing the manuscript as far as they
could, Emily sent it out to editors,
in advance of a blizzard, at the end
of January 2015. She submitted it to
twelve editors, and additional editors
requested it after there was a “very
noisy response from foreign publish-
ers.” I ask Emily what this means. How
could foreign publishers know about
it? “I guess the scouts got it,” she says,
meaning one of the editors she sent
it to must have forwarded it to one of
those “spies of the literary world,” as
Anjali Singh had joked. This can be a
good thing—it was a very good thing
in this case; fire spreads—but it doesn’t
always work out that way. “If you have
a quiet literary novel that is going to
find its way but might take a lot of sub-
mitting, it’s likely that it’s going to be
old news by the time it’s gone out. You
don’t want anything to be shopworn.”
In other words the scouts can note a
lack of enthusiasm, too.
But in this case the fire spread, and
Emily was fielding requests to see the
manuscript, including one from Tim
O’Connell at Knopf, who was not one
of the original editors to whom Emily
submitted it but who nevertheless made
a preemptive bid (or preempt, the pur-
pose of which is to end a bidding war
immediately by offering a significant
advance). It worked. “Knopf was great,”
Emily tells me. “They were really be-
hind it, their offer was strong, and we
got to keep foreign rights.” (Marianne
Merola, the foreign-rights director at
Brandt & Hochman quickly sold rights
in fourteen countries, so that detail
about the foreign rights turned out to
be a very good business decision.)
Nathan and Tim did another round
of edits, cutting an additional thirty
thousand words or so. This work did
not come as a surprise to Nathan; be-
fore accepting the offer from Knopf, he
had spoken with Tim, who wanted to
make sure he conveyed exactly what was
expected of the process. Nathan was
all in. “It was very much about mak-
ing sure the novel was as compulsive as
it could be,” Emily says about the final
round of editing. Meanwhile the gears
were starting to turn on the market-
ing and publicity side of the businessas well. Early on, Nathan returned to
New York and met with Emily and rep-
resentatives from the publicity depart-
ment at Knopf. Emily says she expected
maybe four people at that meeting. The
conference room was full.
The purpose of such a meeting is to
brainstorm ideas and explore possible
ways of getting the word out about the
book in advance of publication, but
it’s also an opportunity for the folks
in publicity to meet the author and
see for themselves what he’s like—his
style, his personality, his communi-
cation skills—as arguably the most
important spokesperson for the book.
Despite not knowing the crowd of pro-
fessionals in the room, he made an im-
pression, especially with Knopf’s vice
president and editorial director. “I just
remember Robin Desser whispering in
my ear as we were leaving, ‘He’s a rock
star,’” Emily says.
Before it was published on August
30, 2016, The Nix landed a coveted
spot on the Editors’ Buzz panel at
BookExpo, held that year in Chicago.
(BookExpo America, or BEA, is the
country’s largest book trade fair, and
it’s where editors, publishers, agents,
and authors from around the world
promote their forthcoming books to a
captive audience of booksellers.) It was
also reviewed in all the usual places,
and Nathan was profiled in the New
York Times four days before the book
was published. A month later, Warner
Bros. optioned the novel for a televi-
sion series adaptation, with JJ Abrams
set to direct. Meryl Streep was initially
attached to the project but no longer;
as of this writing it’s still being cast.
Hope for the best; expect the worst.
If Emily had a pregame speech—
something she told her authors be-
fore she sends their work out on
submission—that would be it. “In
general I think that stance is helpful
for going through the world and es-
pecially going through the world as a
writer,” she says. And sometimes, as
Nathan Hill’s story illustrates, you
work hard then hope for the best, and
that’s pretty close to what you get.