Agent Advice: Julie Hill of Julie Hill & Assoc.
The best way to get advice from literary agents is to go directly to the source. In this post, get agent advice from Julie Hill of Julie Hill & Assoc.
“Agent Advice”(this installment featuring agent Julie Hill of Julie Hill & Assoc.) is a series of quick interviews with literary agents and script agents who talk with Guide to Literary Agents about their thoughts on writing, publishing, and just about anything else. This series has more than 170 interviews so far with reps from great literary agencies. This collection of interviews is a great place to start if you are just starting your research on literary agents.
This installment features Julie Hill of Julie A. Hill and Assoc., LLC. Julie's specialty is nonfiction.
She is seeking: nonfiction in the following subjects: Reference, Biography, History, Religious, Mind/body/spirit, Health, Travel, Lifestyle, Science. Send all submissions via snail mail. Never send a complete ms unless requested. Send to Julie A. Hill and Assoc. LLC, 1155 Camino Del Mar, #530, Del Mar, CA. 92014.
GLA: How did you become an agent?
JH: I was writing for periodicals. My friends, who were screenwriters and also going through the finding-an-agent process, suggested I'd be good at it. And here I am.
GLA: What's the most recent thing you've sold?
JH: Lately I've been doing a lot of contract negtotiating for other people, but I did most recently sell a title to Barricade Books that releases in October 2008, Return to Naples: My Italian Bar Mitzvah. My most well-known book of late is A Blessing in Disguise by Andrea Joy Cohen, MD, from Penguin, released January of 2008. I always have the Florida travel guides from Frommers and Dummies (by Laura Lea Miller), which get updated yearly. I'd love to do more travel guides. Cafe Life: Venice Pubs in September '08 is the third in the Cafe Life series. Two more are due out next year: Seattle and San Francisco.
GLA: What are you specifically looking for right now and not getting? For example, a great nonfiction book about massage...
JH: Really great writers for travel, travel and travel. Also memoir, self help, and advice. I am also looking for anything that is in regard to Jewish titles, such as books about the Holocaust.
GLA: Your website says you are actively seeking queries from good nonfiction authors with a platform. Can you help define what separates a decent platform from a great platform?
JH: A great platform includes an author with great name recognition through a regular writing or performance gig: a column, a show, with a large audience. Their books traditionally do better than unknown writers, though there are exceptions. Having a big web presence is also in the great platform category. If you get a million hits a month, your platform is one publishers will care about.
GLA: What happens when you get a writer with good visibility and platform, but not in the subject they want to write in? Can that still work?
JH: If they have an outside editor to work with and some viable ideas, yes.
GLA: Do you consider yourself to have any weird quirks as an agent? In other words, have you ever been on an agent panel and heard all the other agents agree on something while you yourself thought differently
JH: YES. Most agents do not handle travel guides and I love them. They seem to shun "work-for-hire" like travel guides and related content.
GLA: Do you find that writers who break into nonfiction books and prove themselves as a reliable writer are in a position to get further book assignments from publishers?
JH: Abso-friggin-lutely, especially if their platform and sales history is impressive.
GLA: Will you be at any upcoming writers conferences where writers can meet you?
JH: None planned at present - sorry.
GLA: Any other bit(s) of advice concerning something we haven't discussed?
JH: Know how to write a great book proposal!
Chuck Sambuchino is a former editor with the Writer's Digest writing community and author of several books, including How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack and Create Your Writer Platform.
