In Memory of My Agent, George Nicholson
My wonderful agent, George Nicholson, passed away last week. Although it wasn’t completely unexpected, it still leaves me feeling rather adrift. I have never been without George.
It was my mentor, Joyce Sweeney, who got me together with George. She read my book, Breathing Underwater and encouraged me to send it to him. I sent it in February or March, and he got back to me in LATE JULY! This is probably as good an example as any of the glacial pace of children’s literature because he really, really liked the book (He said he cried!), and yet, it took five months for his response – despite a referral by another client.
However, he made up for this earlier slowness by selling it really quickly. With no revisions, Breathing Underwater sold in October to the perfect editor, Toni Markiet at HarperCollins.
Some people wonder whether it is worth having an agent for any purpose other than to sell your book. In my case, it definitely was. He helped me to deal, early on, with two of the most difficult things a writer deals with, reviews and promotion.
My first review was extremely traumatic for me. It was, as such awful reviews often are, from Kirkus, and they HATED it. When one is a first-time author, one is used to hearing one’s book praised. Everyone at the publisher is “very excited” about the book (whatever that means). Of course they are – they wouldn’t have bought it if they hadn’t been. Everyone in one’s critique group loved it. I was probably more insulated than most because I don’t have one of those “This book got rejected by 35 publishers before I finally found one” stories. I was extremely lucky. My book was snapped up. So, of course, everyone was going to love this book.
Well, the Kirkus reviewer, whoever she was, didn’t. She hated the characters, hated the language, and concluded with, “many teens may overlook its major flaws . . .” (In retrospect, this is my favorite type of bad review, the, “This book sucks, but teens might like it anyway because they’re stupid” review). My editor waited, I now realize, several days or maybe weeks to tell me about the review, in apparent hope that a better one would come in.* When it didn’t, she called George and asked him to tell me.
I still remember this phone call the way older people remember where they were when Kennedy was shot or my generation remembers the Challenger explosion. It was a Friday. I was at a kids’ birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese. My phone rang, and it was George. “They seem to have misunderstood the book” he said.
There was something so calming about his voice, so convinced it wasn’t a big deal and that other, better, reviews would come in. I’m not saying I wasn’t upset, but I didn’t go crazy. And, on Monday, he called to let me know there was an excellent review in PW (My book was eventually a Flying Start and has done quite well, thankyouverymuch).
It was also George who let me know what was what about school visits and appearances, who told me about the geniuses Bill Morris and Catherine Balkin at HarperCollins and who encouraged me to call them. I know I seem outgoing, but I’m not; I’m shy. I’m just really good at forcing myself to do stuff I don’t want to do. George’s encouragement really got me to call people, and that led to some opportunities I might not have gotten otherwise.
Although some might consider me a difficult person, I don’t think I was a difficult client. I heard all the horror stories about clients who called their agents constantly, needing all sorts of hand-holding, and I didn’t want to be one of those horror stories, so I tried not to call. It’s probably notable that I didn’t check the status of my manuscript in that five month period when George initially had it. But, at some point, I realized other clients were calling more often. In some cases, a LOT more often. I was in touch with a writer of his whose books sold no better than mine (Okay, I’m pretty sure they sold worse), who seemed to call him every week to whine about it and maybe borrow money. Eventually, they came up with an idea that would be profitable for this writer. So I decided I was going to call more often, to pick his brain, to ask burning questions that had formed in my mind, instead of asking an e-group, which I knew he hated anyway.
It was because of this that I had some of my best conversations with George. George has been around since the dark ages of YA publishing. He discovered S.E. Hinton and worked with Richard Peck. He likely edited every YA novel I actually read as a teen. So he knew all about every trend and cycle. He was an encouraging voice of reason, and yes, he was a cheerleader. I think he really got me through a difficult period in YA, a period in which the genre in which I wrote was fading and many of the authors I’d come up with were fading with it. Because of him, I think, I didn’t fade.
Over the years, I have met other agents who had qualities George did not, such as being very aggressive promoters of their clients’ work. George was never aggressive, though he did his share of promoting. But one quality I saw in George that I don’t see in a lot of other people’s agents was his positivity. I can look at a list of writers George represented, and there are a lot who are more successful than I am, both critically and money-wise. But George never represented anyone whose work he didn’t legitimately admire. For that reason, I never felt the disappointment that other writers felt from their agents when their books didn’t do as well as expected. I never heard him gossip about anyone or laugh at anyone’s misfortune, as I have heard others do. George was a true gentleman, and it was a privilege to work with him.
There was a scene in My Fair Lady, when Eliza, the flower-girl-turned-lady described the character of Colonel Pickering, saying, “He treats a flower girl as a duchess.” George was my Colonel Pickering. There have been moments in my career when I was a duchess (New York Times bestseller that got made into a movie) and moments when I was a flower girl (My book, Diva, one of my best-reviewed, didn’t earn out until the Beastly movie came out five years later), and though George was certainly happy in the good times, he treated me no differently in the bad.
Several years ago, I ran into one of these other agents I mentioned at a conference in Orlando. He came up to me and said, “You’re represented by George – when’s he retiring?” The answer I gave then turned out to be true: Never. He loved his work too much.
And those of us who had the good fortune to be represented by him loved that he loved it.
*The interesting thing about having “old school” editors and agents (and both of mine were/are) is that they still remember the good old days before the Internet, when authors were completely in the dark about things like reviews or what other authors were doing. They liked it that way, and after years in the business, I am starting to see its charm too. Why worry about things you can’t control? In any case, my editor waited until the review was on BN.com before she told me about it.
It was my mentor, Joyce Sweeney, who got me together with George. She read my book, Breathing Underwater and encouraged me to send it to him. I sent it in February or March, and he got back to me in LATE JULY! This is probably as good an example as any of the glacial pace of children’s literature because he really, really liked the book (He said he cried!), and yet, it took five months for his response – despite a referral by another client.
However, he made up for this earlier slowness by selling it really quickly. With no revisions, Breathing Underwater sold in October to the perfect editor, Toni Markiet at HarperCollins.
Some people wonder whether it is worth having an agent for any purpose other than to sell your book. In my case, it definitely was. He helped me to deal, early on, with two of the most difficult things a writer deals with, reviews and promotion.
My first review was extremely traumatic for me. It was, as such awful reviews often are, from Kirkus, and they HATED it. When one is a first-time author, one is used to hearing one’s book praised. Everyone at the publisher is “very excited” about the book (whatever that means). Of course they are – they wouldn’t have bought it if they hadn’t been. Everyone in one’s critique group loved it. I was probably more insulated than most because I don’t have one of those “This book got rejected by 35 publishers before I finally found one” stories. I was extremely lucky. My book was snapped up. So, of course, everyone was going to love this book.
Well, the Kirkus reviewer, whoever she was, didn’t. She hated the characters, hated the language, and concluded with, “many teens may overlook its major flaws . . .” (In retrospect, this is my favorite type of bad review, the, “This book sucks, but teens might like it anyway because they’re stupid” review). My editor waited, I now realize, several days or maybe weeks to tell me about the review, in apparent hope that a better one would come in.* When it didn’t, she called George and asked him to tell me.
I still remember this phone call the way older people remember where they were when Kennedy was shot or my generation remembers the Challenger explosion. It was a Friday. I was at a kids’ birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese. My phone rang, and it was George. “They seem to have misunderstood the book” he said.
There was something so calming about his voice, so convinced it wasn’t a big deal and that other, better, reviews would come in. I’m not saying I wasn’t upset, but I didn’t go crazy. And, on Monday, he called to let me know there was an excellent review in PW (My book was eventually a Flying Start and has done quite well, thankyouverymuch).
It was also George who let me know what was what about school visits and appearances, who told me about the geniuses Bill Morris and Catherine Balkin at HarperCollins and who encouraged me to call them. I know I seem outgoing, but I’m not; I’m shy. I’m just really good at forcing myself to do stuff I don’t want to do. George’s encouragement really got me to call people, and that led to some opportunities I might not have gotten otherwise.
Although some might consider me a difficult person, I don’t think I was a difficult client. I heard all the horror stories about clients who called their agents constantly, needing all sorts of hand-holding, and I didn’t want to be one of those horror stories, so I tried not to call. It’s probably notable that I didn’t check the status of my manuscript in that five month period when George initially had it. But, at some point, I realized other clients were calling more often. In some cases, a LOT more often. I was in touch with a writer of his whose books sold no better than mine (Okay, I’m pretty sure they sold worse), who seemed to call him every week to whine about it and maybe borrow money. Eventually, they came up with an idea that would be profitable for this writer. So I decided I was going to call more often, to pick his brain, to ask burning questions that had formed in my mind, instead of asking an e-group, which I knew he hated anyway.
It was because of this that I had some of my best conversations with George. George has been around since the dark ages of YA publishing. He discovered S.E. Hinton and worked with Richard Peck. He likely edited every YA novel I actually read as a teen. So he knew all about every trend and cycle. He was an encouraging voice of reason, and yes, he was a cheerleader. I think he really got me through a difficult period in YA, a period in which the genre in which I wrote was fading and many of the authors I’d come up with were fading with it. Because of him, I think, I didn’t fade.
Over the years, I have met other agents who had qualities George did not, such as being very aggressive promoters of their clients’ work. George was never aggressive, though he did his share of promoting. But one quality I saw in George that I don’t see in a lot of other people’s agents was his positivity. I can look at a list of writers George represented, and there are a lot who are more successful than I am, both critically and money-wise. But George never represented anyone whose work he didn’t legitimately admire. For that reason, I never felt the disappointment that other writers felt from their agents when their books didn’t do as well as expected. I never heard him gossip about anyone or laugh at anyone’s misfortune, as I have heard others do. George was a true gentleman, and it was a privilege to work with him.
There was a scene in My Fair Lady, when Eliza, the flower-girl-turned-lady described the character of Colonel Pickering, saying, “He treats a flower girl as a duchess.” George was my Colonel Pickering. There have been moments in my career when I was a duchess (New York Times bestseller that got made into a movie) and moments when I was a flower girl (My book, Diva, one of my best-reviewed, didn’t earn out until the Beastly movie came out five years later), and though George was certainly happy in the good times, he treated me no differently in the bad.
Several years ago, I ran into one of these other agents I mentioned at a conference in Orlando. He came up to me and said, “You’re represented by George – when’s he retiring?” The answer I gave then turned out to be true: Never. He loved his work too much.
And those of us who had the good fortune to be represented by him loved that he loved it.
*The interesting thing about having “old school” editors and agents (and both of mine were/are) is that they still remember the good old days before the Internet, when authors were completely in the dark about things like reviews or what other authors were doing. They liked it that way, and after years in the business, I am starting to see its charm too. Why worry about things you can’t control? In any case, my editor waited until the review was on BN.com before she told me about it.
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