Nelle Andrew
We spoke to Nelle Andrew of Rachel Mills Literary about the importance of knowing your worth, setting boundaries and the trends she anticipates will emerge in the publishing industry.
Nelle Andrew is an agent at the Rachel Mills Literary Agency, where she began working in early 2020. Prior to this she was at PFD for eleven years, and before that her first role was working in international sales for Pan Macmillan. She became an agent in 2013 and has twice been nominated Agent of the Year at the British Book Awards. Nelle represents several bestselling authors, from Bryony Gordon and Elizabeth Day to Pandora Sykes and Heidi Perks, the Costa Award winner Sara Collins, HWA Goldsboro winner Beth Underdown and Jing-Jing Lee who was longlisted for the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction.
'I think everyone has two standout career achievements: the one where you're proving yourself to other people and the one where you prove something to yourself.'
What would you say has been your proudest career achievement to date?
I think everyone has two standout career achievements: there's the one where you're proving yourself to other people, in which case, both the Agent of the Year nominations and being named a Bookseller Rising Star are always things I can cite and that feels really good. But then there are the career achievements which prove something to yourself, which are much harder to define. One example of this for me would be representing Jing-Jing Lee and How We Disappeared. It’s a difficult, but brilliant, novel about Singaporean comfort women and when I first sent it out we got a lot of rejections. A lot of people said the writing was great but people weren’t that interested in diverse voices at the time – and certainly not in diverse, challenging stories – but I felt that it was a really important subject matter that she dealt with so beautifully, it was completely unique and I felt very passionate about it.
So I kept pushing and eventually found Juliet Mabey at Oneworld. She is an extraordinary publisher and she took it on and sold the rights to the US. Last year it was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Walter Scott, and the HWA. That was one of those moments where I really felt a huge sense of personal achievement – even even when lots of people are telling you that your taste isn't right, or that the market isn't ready, or you're facing rejections and you sit in a space of self doubt, like ‘okay maybe I've got it wrong’ or ‘maybe my finger isn't on the pulse as it should be’. It gave me self-validation: actually, I was the progressive one who was ahead and everyone else needed time to catch up. There are a lot of times, especially when you're starting in your career, where people say no to you a lot, or they make you feel as if your instincts are off, and it's a fine balance between absorbing information and intel that will make you stronger, while also listening to your gut and sometimes the two things really do collide and you have to make a choice to listen to your gut.
'There are a lot of times, especially when you're starting in your career, where people make you feel as if your instincts are off.'
You have been described as a ‘fearless negotiator and a forensic editor’ – would you say these are the key skills to hone as an agent?
I do think that to be a good agent you do have to be a careful editor, because if you spot something wrong in a book, other people will spot the same issues and I think the days of being able to acquire based on potential is over. It’s really difficult to get someone to buy a book because it's not just an editor reading: it's often a decision by committee and so the more people involved in that decision, the more likely they are to find something wrong with it and to find more of a reason to say no. I sometimes feel that with a submission you’re starting on a no – I know editors say it’s the other way round, but as an agent you always feel that’s where you are. People's time is limited and they are not going to read it for the sake of it, so as an agent I've got to make sure that any submission is as absolutely watertight as it can be.
In terms of negotiation, you want to make sure your authors are protected but that they’re also given the best possible opportunity. You want them to feel valued. That’s not just in monetary terms, but also about the promise of what the publisher is going to deliver and the ways in which the author will be positioned, so that they do genuinely feel that no matter what happens when things are taken out of your control – like for example a global pandemic – this is a team that really believes in you and has confidence in you and supports your overall career. To do that requires a level of earnestness and effort on behalf of the agent to sense check with the publisher that they really are invested in the project, that they know what they are getting and that they value it appropriately in all areas.
'Look at childcare as an investment in your career. Yes it is expensive, but look at it in the same way you would an MBA course, or practical training.'
As a working parent, what advice would you give to those who are struggling to manage their time?
There are two pieces of brilliant advice I received when I was first trying to juggle working with parenting. The first was to look at childcare as an investment in your career: your earning potential, your opportunities will be far more than if you abdicate yourself out of the workforce. Yes it is expensive, but look at it in the same way you would an MBA course, or practical training. See if as a reinvestment in yourself to keep you on that ladder, because in the future you will be thankful. If you take three years out because you can’t justify the expense it’s much harder to get back to where you need to be and there is a chance you will always be behind. The second is that you don’t have to explain why you’re doing what you’re doing. I would never tell clients when I was in the office or why I was out of the office. I would never apologize and tell them when I was working from home with my son that day, I would just say I'm not available that day. Women always feel the need to explain and justify ourselves but nine times out of ten people won’t ask! Just be very clear about when people can contact you and when you’re not going to be available and don’t explain why.
'Be honest with how you need to work to achieve your best.'
I'm very blessed to have a partner who is completely 50/50 on childcare. I put down very clear markers when I went back to work as to which days I would be responsible for our son and which days he would be responsible. I remember there was a moment early on where he called me up when I was in the office to say he had a conflict on his day, and I told him that he would have to figure it out. That was really hard and he was really angry with me. But I said that my career is just as important and I cannot be his first port of call.
Now I am his last port of call in a crisis and actually what that means is that when he does come to me I will drop everything because I know that’s the case. So there’s not that resentment. It makes me feel valued in our relationship. In the same way, in the pandemic we were very clear about splitting up the day – he would take the morning and I’d do the afternoon, say – we were mutually hands-on and there was no hierarchy of whose job was more important. It’s also important to be honest with how you need to work to achieve your best, whether that’s better in the mornings, one day in the office, whatever, and be very boundaried with your time. There was a period during the pandemic where I would only agree to zooms on certain days because if I spread them out through the week I recognized I wouldn’t be as productive.
'It’s important that publishing looks beyond its very prescriptive type. There was a joke when I started that publishing was full of middle class, white Emmas.'
In your recent article for The Bookseller you spoke so eloquently about the need for diversity, not division, within the publishing industry. What are the changes you would most like to see?
We need people from different backgrounds in publishing. There was a joke when I started that publishing was full of middle class, white Emmas. Looking at the editorial list, it was clear everybody either knew each other or they came from a similar background. That can breed a very nepotistic, or entitled air which I found very difficult.
It’s important that publishing looks beyond its very prescriptive type, which is people who attended public schools and certain universities and completed specific kinds of degree, and actually think more about ‘what does this person have to say?’ I think we need to reestablish our criteria as an industry in a big. big way, about the perspectives we're looking to bring in and why.
'We need to pay people more. Until you value people properly you’ll find it really difficult to get people of value.'
The second thing is that we need to pay people more. One of the big reasons I left trade publishing is because I thought the wage people were on was pathetic. When I left to go to PFD as an assistant I immediately received a pay bump – I had a three month probation period on £23k and after that I would be on £25k. At Macmillan, my salary was £18k. I had such Stockholm syndrome that I didn’t ask about the salary during the interviews, I was too scared to, so I just assumed it would be the same. But when I got the email I screamed, because a £7000 pay rise was just inconceivable. I remember I had to take housing benefits to keep myself going when my husband was doing a masters and I was the only one bringing in a wage, which is just madness. It’s much better now than it was, but you have to pay people properly. So that to me is how publishing needs to change. Until you value people properly you’ll find it really difficult to get people of value – no wonder people leave in droves. They are incredibly ambitious and want to stay, but find it impossible to justify keeping going. Things add up and salaries still don’t match the cost of living and inflation.
'There’s no escaping that money and childcare are two of the biggest reasons women fall out of the workforce.'
What advice would you give to the person reading this interview?
There’s no escaping that money and childcare are two of the biggest reasons women fall out of the workforce. Being a mum, I was astonished by how hard it was to combine parenting and working and not because of the job, but because of the very antithetical way of working that seems to be prescriptive across the industry. There used to be a level of obsession with presenteeism and I think what has been really fascinating about the pandemic is it showed everybody that was simply not necessary. I'm not saying we need to go to an extreme where no one goes into the office, but the sheer level of obstacles that were put in place just for flexible working was essentially infantilizing the entire workforce. It’s like saying ‘I don’t trust you unless I see you’.
I feel like actually is one of the best things to come out of the pandemic is that finally bosses had no choice but had to let people just get on with it. So my advice would be fight your corner. I don’t think you should have to justify to your employer why you need to work in a certain way – rather, I think the conversation needs to be more around what it is that your employers think you cannot do and cannot implement in the way that you're putting forward. It’s time to turn the conversation on its head, because so much of the onus on young women is that they need to prove themselves and jump through hoops to earn their dues. Of course, you do need to earn your dues but I think the question is ‘how is this way of working going to make me better at what I do?’
'Know your value. You need to have a strong sense of your core values and your worth.'
The other bit of advice is know your value. You need to have a strong sense of your core values and your worth: from a monetary perspective, from an industry experience perspective from a work ethic perspective. I think you need to look at what it is that you bring to the table, and you need to create a value system for yourself, and then periodically be checking in with your workplace and thinking, is this in line with my value system? How far away is it from my value system? Can I bridge the gap or would I be better served finding somewhere else? The point at which I think you really start to know your worth is when you stop feeling grateful that you have a job and start thinking about whether or not your employer should be thinking that they’re so grateful to have you. Women in particular are taught to be obsessed with the notion of gratitude and I feel that gratitude is the biggest impediment to female advancement in the world.
If you're ever getting to a stage where you feel undervalued and underappreciated, you don't feel like you’re being respected, you don’t get the sense that people feel your worth, then you're not going to bring your best and you're going to end up hating your position, or you might end up hating this entire industry. Equally, you do have to find that balance between not seeming arrogant but being able to advocate for yourself. And that is always something I think is really difficult to do. It's very difficult to be an outspoken female in this industry without being slapped down, without being made to feel as if you're arrogant or you don't know your place. But therapy is brilliant for unpicking this and I think therapy should be endemic throughout the industry!
'The idea of ordinary people doing extraordinary things is something that we really resonate with.'
What trends do you think have emerged since the pandemic hit, and what do you foresee emerging over the next year?
I think people want the opposite of what they are going through right now – so stories of redemption and hope. They’re looking for topical issues, things that resonate with their day-to-day lives: issues about female violence, family conflict and resolution, race, gender, love, infertility. Those big life decisions and questions about our place in the world, what we think that is and how we come to find it. For the first time I think we’re looking at a generation of people who aren’t on the hamster wheel of thinking you need to always be striving to be achieving. People are questioning if their measures of success truly are the 9-5 job or owning a three bedroom townhouse in north-west London. It’s asking big questions without the arrogance of thinking you have all the answers – we’re moving towards an interrogation of our landscape and I think that’s because we’ve spent a lot of time indoors with ourselves. The volume on yourself has been turned up so loudly that we can't really escape our own thoughts, but we also therefore can't escape our own perceptions of what it is that actually makes us happy. When you remove all these different distractions, do you actually like the life that you have? So I think my trends are moving towards kind of big questions told in familiar and comforting ways. And the idea of underestimation – take for example Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club. One of the reasons why, as a concept, I really thought from the announcement it would fly is because it's that idea of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. I think that's always something that we really resonate with.
Finally, could you tell us about another woman in the publishing industry who inspires you?
I would say Sharmaine Lovegrove and Katy Loftus. Sharmaine inspires me because she really did come from nothing and created something on her own terms and in her own way, that now the landscape feels so much richer for having. In some ways it feels like she’s been around forever but she hasn’t and it’s a really difficult thing that she’s done. I think everyone can see what an incredible achievement it is. The fearless daring and the kind of self belief that it took to do that is incredible and to be both advocate and activist is a very difficult space to inhabit, and I think she does it with such pride and aplomb. I’m in awe of her spirit!
The reason I say Katy is because I think I think she is a phenomenal talent. She is the perfect blend of publisher and editor – she can find a product, take it and make it the best it can be creatively, and then create a publishing campaign and package that brings it out to a wider audience. The brilliance of her commercial eye and level of execution is just fantastic. I have loads of authors with her and they all just absolutely love her. I have never disagreed with her, which is really rare!
I chose these two women because I think they’re genuinely brilliant people. They are so much better than me! I think that's kind of what you want when you're admiring someone, you want them to be people that you aspire to be. They challenge you to be better and braver. But there are lots of brilliant phenomenal women in publishing, don't get me wrong, I think we're very blessed. There are lots of people and I found it really hard to narrow it down to just two!
