We love this episode! Emmy Nordstrom Higdon, agent at Westwood Creative Artists, was kind enough to join us for a live coffee break with our members—and we ended up talking about so many things!
We cover:
— How agenting is a style choice
— Why writers should have more confidence
— How even the IRS probably can’t figure out royalty statements
— How to reverse-engineer your search for agents from editor data
— How the people you naturally like are the ones you’re going to work with, so there’s no point in forcing it
— What in the world agents really want in a synopsis
— Why murder is their comfort read
— A fantastic explanation of how a book earns out its advance
Learn more about Emmy and book a consultation (after September 8 for non-members) here! manuscriptacademy.com/emmy-nordstrom-higdon
Emmy (they/them) holds a PhD in justice-oriented social work with a focus on critical animal studies from McMaster University, with peer-reviewed publications in public health and psychology. In 2019, they made a lateral career move into publishing after four years as a bookseller at a local indie, and now work as a literary agent with Westwood Creative Artists. They are a queer, trans, and non-binary colonizer, who is autistic, has psychiatric disabilities, and a hormone-related chronic illness.
As an agent, Emmy represents across age categories and genres, specializing in identity-driven works. They work in both fiction and non-fiction, from picture book to adult, including commercial, upmarket, book club, and literary. They specialize in contemporary books grounded in reality, with and without speculative elements. Mystery, thriller, suspense, romance, romcom, women’s fiction, LGBTQ2S+, magical realism, fabulism, horror, graphic, narrative non-fiction, true crime, religion and spirituality, and humanities and sciences are all areas that pique their interest! Murder is their comfort read.
