Voices on Writing: Bonnie Nadell
by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

Bonnie Nadell is vice president of Fred Hill Bonnie Nadell, Inc., and based in Los Angeles. She represents both fiction and nonfiction writers including Sonia Nazario, Antonya Nelson, Rebecca Solnit, and the late David Foster Wallace.

BDB: How did you become an agent, Bonnie?

BN: I moved to San Francisco in the mid 1980s after working in publishing in New York. I met Fred Hill who had started an agency in 1979 and started working with him as an agent. I had no clients, so I began by reading the slush pile and answering the phone and the first client I took on was David Foster Wallace and The Broom of the System.

BDB: Of everything you represent, from general fiction to business to health and science, what do you especially love repping?

BN: I actually don't have a favorite kind of book since, if I take it on, I have to believe every project is useful in some way.

BDB: Do you ever take anything on because of what you might consider the sheer marketability of it?

BN: I have tried that over the years and it always come back and bites me on the ass. Sorry to be coarse, but that has never worked for me—to take something on because I think there is money in it.

BDB: Any projects you later wished you hadn't turned down?

BN: Certainly there have been books that I turned down that have gone on to be successful, but very few that I regret.

BDB: Can you explain why agents can go from overwhelmingly interested and enthused to treating you like you have bad breath, sometimes overnight?

BN: I can't say that I have ever done that. I certainly have explained to a client that I don't like their new book or that I don't feel like I can help them anymore, but I don't screen calls and I tend to confront the problem, whatever it is, straight on. It winds up being much easier that way.

BDB: How much should writers expect from their agents? For instance, should an agent (unless they're a per-project agent) offer advice as to the direction their clients career take?

BN: I always give suggestions and feel like I am guiding someone's career. Many of my clients, we have done three, five, 10 books together, so that is very much my guiding their writing life. We are not in this for the short term, rather this is for the long haul. I also get real pleasure out of building someone's career.

BDB: If you weren't an agent, what would you be doing?

BN: I think I would be a flower arranger or florist, silly as that may sound.

BDB: What's your feeling about e-books: Are they going to take over?

BN: I have no idea. I personally have only seen other people's e-readers, so as someone who does not use them, it is hard to judge how popular they might become in the next decade.

BDB: What's on your nightstand right now?

BN: Several New Yorkers, a manuscript I am reading and editing, and I think the collected Curious George that I am reading with my daughter.

BDB: Do self-published or POD books impress you?

BN: It depends on the subject matter and the sales of course. I am impressed when people have the gumption to do it all themselves.

BDB: What if someone comes to you, seeking representation, and says his or her self-published book sold 5,000 copies, might this compel you to take them on?

BN: Depending on the subject matter of the book, absolutely.

BDB: How do you like to be contacted? (Email, snail mail?)

BN: I prefer snail mail for queries and such. The volume of email is so great that I feel like it is insanely easy to delete email queries immediately. And very little sounds good to me on email. We do accept both these days, though we do delete emails with entire manuscripts on them if they come unsolicited.

BDB: How have all the twists and turns publishing has taken lately affected you?

BN: It has certainly been a bad autumn for a large number of houses and now a bad holiday season. That said, what I have found is that the books that sold well before continue to do so and those that did not, do not fare any better. I do think we will see a further drop off of sales in 2009 as all the royalty statements and information I have is for 2008 and that it will get worse for some time to come like the rest of the retail sector. I don't think this is the end of publishing as we know it, however. Digital publishing, while gaining momentum, is not taking over the business, as some people seem to claim it is.

BDB: Is there reason for writer to be encouraged? Or should we find another profession—or another way of transmitting words to the public?

BN: If writers are looking for a "big deal" in the old sense of a large advance and going on tour, then perhaps they should rethink their profession. But writing is about communicating to others and the writers I know are still writing. Should they find another way to communicate? If someone is a blogger and loves that world, then that's what he or she should do, but if you are writing books and publishing them, why would you switch to blogging or making YouTube videos instead? It's a different world with different expectations.

BDB: Should literary fiction writers try to write more commercially because it's easier to sell?

BN: I have never thought a writer can or should tailor his or her writing style to be more commercial or saleable. In theory, a writer has thought long and hard about how he or she chooses to tell a story and is telling it in the best way possible. It always feels fake when writers try to be something they are not, and readers sense it and I think shy away from it. It can feel manufactured or manipulative, so my answer is no—you write what you love and either it works or it doesn't.

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Contact Information: Bonnie Nadell, Fred Hill Bonnie Nadell Inc., 8899 Beverly Blvd. Suite 805, Los Angeles, CA 90048.

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is editor of The ASJA Monthly and author of the award-winning best-seller, Pen on Fire (Harcourt, 2004), in its seventh printing. She hosts Writers on Writing, which podcasts at http://writersonwriting.blogspot.com