Navigating Non-Fiction Publishing with Literary Agent Alia Hanna Habib

Episode Summary

What does it actually take to get a non-fiction book published in today's market? In this episode, literary agent and author Alia Hanna Habib pulls back the curtain on the publishing industry. Alia shares insights from her new book, Take It From Me, a practical guide for writers looking to navigate the complex journey from idea to bookshelf. Whether you are a debut author or a seasoned writer, this conversation explores the essential elements of a successful non-fiction proposal, the evolving role of a literary agent, and how to stay resilient in a competitive market.

Key Takeaways & Timestamps

• [00:00] Introduction: Meet Alia Hanna Habib, literary agent at The Gernert Company for acclaimed writers like Nicole Hannah-Jones and Clint Smith.
• [02:15] The "Why" Behind the Book: Alia discusses what inspired her to write Take It From Me and why transparency in the publishing process is more important than ever.
• [07:40] Crafting a Winning Proposal: The non-negotiable elements every non-fiction writer needs to include to catch an agent's eye.
• [15:20] Delivery & Acceptance: Insight into Alia’s Substack newsletter and how she uses it to share candid, behind-the-scenes industry advice.
• [22:10] The Author-Agent Partnership: How the relationship works and what authors should realistically expect during the publishing cycle.
• [30:05] Closing Thoughts: Practical steps for writers who are just starting their non-fiction journey.

About the Guest: Alia Hanna Habib

Alia Hanna Habib is a veteran literary agent and the author of Take It From Me: A Practical, Behind-the-Scenes Guide to Getting a Non-Fiction Book Published. Named one of New York Magazine's "most powerful New Yorkers you’ve never heard of," she represents leading voices in journalism, history, and literature. She also writes the popular Substack newsletter, Delivery and Acceptance.

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

• Book: Take It From Me by Alia Hanna Habib (Available January 28th)
• Newsletter: Delivery and Acceptance Substack
• Website: Writers with Wrinkles Official Site

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• Ask a Question: Have a question for Beth and Lisa? Send it our way for a future "Ask Beth and Lisa" episode.
• Visit the Blog: Find more show notes and author resources at writerswithwrinkles.net.

Transcript

Beth McMullen: Hi friends, I'm Beth McMullen.

Lisa Schmid: I'm Lisa Schmidt!

Beth McMullen: And we're the co-hosts of Writers with Wrinkles. This is Season, Episode. And today, we're excited to welcome Aliyah Hannah Habib to the show. Aliyah is a literary agent and the author of Take It From Me, a practical, behind-the-scenes guide to getting a non-fiction book published.

Alia Hanna Habib: She represents acclaimed writers, including Clint Smith and Nicole Hannah-Jones, and was named one of New York Magazine's most powerful New Yorkers you've never heard of.

Beth McMullen: She also writes the Substack newsletter Delivery and Acceptance, where she shares candid industry insight for writers navigating publishing. So welcome, thank you so much for being here, we are excited to have you on the show today.

Alia Hanna Habib: Thank you for having me, I'm delighted to be here.

Beth McMullen: So, your book… now, is this your first book?

Alia Hanna Habib: It is my first book. Oh my goodness. My last book, so…

Beth McMullen: I totally understand what that feels like. So, by the time this episode drops, the book will already be available. It comes available on January 28th, but right now, we're recording a little bit before that. So, I just want to get a sense of how you're feeling. Are you excited?

Alia Hanna Habib: I am excited. I'm excited. I mean, I'm really in a unique position as a writer because I work in publishing. So, the stuff that I think makes other writers anxious, the not knowing what it feels like to have your book published—of course, I don't know what it feels like personally, but I've watched it happen hundreds of times. And I also don't primarily identify as a writer. I'm an agent, first and foremost.

And in the middle of… I'm very much in the middle of doing my day job while I'm doing all of this, and my day job is kind of my primary… it's also how I think of myself. I think of myself as an agent. So, it's hard sometimes to balance those two identities, and I'm just, you know, answering my work emails on behalf of my other writers all this week, and all next week, and very much thinking about that, and then I think, oh my gosh, I have a book coming out, I have a book coming out! And I would say that my brain, for the past, gosh, 2 years, has been torn between these two things, and more than anything, I'm really looking forward to going back to having one job. I've had 2 jobs for a really long time now.

Lisa Schmid: Does that mean that you're only going to do one book, or are you thinking about doing other books and writing other books in the future?

Alia Hanna Habib: Well, I think that one of the things I learned from doing this book is you kind of can't force it. And I think in the past, even I, as an agent, have really pushed writers to figure out what their book is, and that's important. You can have these iterative, creative conversations about what a book is, and I do that all the time with my clients. But I don't have an idea for another book, and I… so… and because at this point I don't, I'm not thinking about a second book.

I'm not gonna force it, and I don't feel a strong desire, just… I'm not going to write a book just to write a book, so I'm just concentrated on this book, and it was… it is very challenging to write a book. It was really hard to do it while I do my day job, and so I'm not in a hurry to do it again. I'm just kind of enjoying this moment while it happens, and also getting to see what it's like to be a writer from this side, and then I'll just be really happy to go back to just being a woman who answers emails.

Beth McMullen: Did it give you any insight into some of the behaviors that you see with your writers?

Alia Hanna Habib: Oh my god. Oh my gosh, of course, of course. I mean, writers are very anxious for feedback. And if you… and I write about this quite explicitly in the book. If you are sending something to an agent or an editor to be read, you alone are sitting there waiting. On the other side, they have an inbox full of other things to read. But you don't feel that. You don't feel that as a writer, you just think of you alone. So now I know what it's like. And I have self-awareness about it in a different way, because I am on the other side of those emails, but I know what it's like to anxiously await feedback, in a visceral way, and to feel like, well, why haven't I heard? Why haven't I heard? And… but then there's also the just… the practical stuff that I learned about writing a book from actually having to sit and write a book, which I… I couldn't have learned theoretically. You just learn from doing it.

Lisa Schmid: It's funny, when I was going through the process of negotiations with my first book, I had a literary attorney that was managing the contracts for me, because at the time, I didn't have an agent. And I remember I was so anxious, like, I was just… I was so self-centered. It was like everything was about me. Like, why isn't everyone getting back to me? I'm over here spinning and freaking out about, like, the negotiating process that was going on, and I remember very clearly. And she was very… she had that very—and I hate to stereotype, but very New York mentality. And she just emailed me back, and she said, you need to settle down, because both myself and the managing editor have other things to do. You are not our only client or person, and it was just like, peach, peach, peach!

Alia Hanna Habib: I would never be that blunt, but have I had that thought? Yes.

Lisa Schmid: I'm so blunt! And then right then, I was just like… that was… but it was such a good learning moment for me, because I was just like, you need to settle your stuff down, because she's right. You know, it just… you think the deal's gonna fall apart, because she's not getting back fast enough.

Alia Hanna Habib: Totally. Of course you think that, but it's literally just her job, and you are part of her job. And I think it's important to—and this is a more serious point, I interviewed someone from my Substack, an editor that I'm friends with, Yadon Israel, and it's one of the most popular interviews I did on my Substack. And he talked about… that… one of the things you have to keep in mind is that people are not just their job function. And it is very easy, when you are a writer, to see all the people you interact with as functions.

This is the publicist, and that's what the publicist does. This is what a marketer does, and this is what they're going to do for my book. But… it's obvious, but it's true. These people are also people, and have rich lives outside of what they're doing for your book, and they're also doing stuff for other books, and they're not just living and working in service of your one book, they're doing it in service of everything else. And if you keep that in mind, not only well, you have a better, less anxious… you'll have a less anxious experience. It's not just the right thing to do, but you're not going to be sitting there being like, oh, I haven't heard anything, it's a problem, it's a problem. No, they're doing a job, and the kinder and more patient you are, the more you'll… liked you'll be by your team, and probably the less you'll drive yourself crazy.

Beth McMullen: Absolutely. It's… I mean, you really do have to have that… that moment with yourself where you just… think… put everything on a 24-hour delay. Don't ask questions, don't nudge, don't… wait 24 hours, and then you'll talk yourself out of it, because it's not necessary. And again, it's like you are one piece of a much larger puzzle, and getting to that point and accepting that point, it's just part of the gig. You gotta get that as a writer, or you're not going to survive in this profession. It'll drive you so much.

Alia Hanna Habib: It'll make you very unhappy. I also have this… I have a trick that I do, because I have to wait for… I have to wait for news all the time, too. So I, myself, I'm like, refresh, refresh, refresh. When I ask myself a question when I'm in that mode, which is: am I sending this email because I need an answer, or am I sending it to soothe my own anxiety? And if it's the latter, I wait. Because I'm probably not gonna soothe my own anxiety. It's… it's not gonna make things better.

Lisa Schmid: It's like… inside my soul right now.

Alia Hanna Habib: Ask yourself that.

Lisa Schmid: I do. I do that, and Beth is always telling, like, I'll send something, or she'll be like, don't, don't, don't email Leslie. Leslie's my agent. And I'm like, too late, I already emailed her. That is, like, the best. Like, everyone, I want you to take a moment, stop, and listen to what was said.

Beth McMullen: Write it down.

Lisa Schmid: Write it down. Put a sticky note on your computer that says, "stop," and take a moment, because we all do it. We send an email, and then you're just like, oh my god, I can't believe I just did that, my agent's busy, and I just annoyed her with, like, a ridiculous, like, fear, or question, or something I want to change in my manuscript. Like, how many times have we all done that?

Alia Hanna Habib: Oh my god.

Lisa Schmid: Again, can you change this line on page 28?

Alia Hanna Habib: I mean, I can't be the only one that's ever done that. No, in fact, this friend of mine who's an editor at Simon & Schuster, her Instagram handle is "not done with my changes".

Beth McMullen: That's perfect! It's great! 11 books, and I still want to change the first one from, like, you know, 15 years ago. It never goes away. Never goes away. So, okay, about the book. What was the moment that you realized that you wanted to write this book? Now, writing a book, as we have discussed already, is no small thing.

Alia Hanna Habib: It's unpleasant, yes.

Beth McMullen: It does. I think we can absolutely give it that label. It can be very unpleasant, especially in the middle, when all that energy that you had when you were so excited at the beginning is gone. So what was it in your head that you felt like this book needed to exist?

Alia Hanna Habib: It was something that I needed to talk about. It was a very clear moment in time. I remember exactly when it happened. I do a lot of… not outreach, but presentations and kind of public service for people who want to be writers, and I also occasionally get asked to speak. So I was doing this workshop at Stanford for academics who want to do public-facing work. And a lot of my writers are academics who do public-facing work. And I love doing it, I love teaching.

And I was thinking about how to expand this workshop into a semester-long course, and I was… so I take a nap in the afternoon quite often, and I call it "having my thoughts," where I… it's my time to kind of retreat and organize my day. I actually just did it just before we got on this call. And I was thinking, what would this class look like? And then I was thinking, oh, I would need to assign readings. And then I was thinking there isn't a book to assign that's about nonfiction publishing. I know all these great publishing guides that are about fiction, but there's nothing about nonfiction. And then I thought about exactly what such a book would contain. And then I got up from my nap, and I texted my colleague, Meredith Pafel Simonoff, who's an agent, and also my very, very good friend, and I said, "Meredith, there's no book that's just a guide for a nonfiction writing career. What do you think if I… how about I write one?"

Meredith said, which is great advice—A, she said, "that's a really good idea. Why don't you write two paragraphs to me?" At this point, she was not my agent, she was just my friend, explaining what that book would be. So I wrote her two paragraphs, then she wrote back, and she immediately started doing a markup, went back and forth. And then, a couple weeks into that, I'd had a proposal. Very early on, she said, "let's do this together." So that's how it happened, but it was very clear, like, it was like a lightbulb. I was like, oh, this is a book I wish I had. It'd make my life easier. It'd make my clients' lives easier. I know it's not out there, because I work in this field, and it very quickly kind of unfurled itself.

Lisa Schmid: How long did it take you to write? This is a two-part question. How long did it take you to write? And I did not… so the nonfiction world is all very new to me, and I didn't realize that everything is done on proposals in nonfiction. So when I read that, I was like, no way!

Alia Hanna Habib: Yeah. That's one of the reasons I wrote the book, and that's also why the advice in other books is not helpful, because that's central. And people come to me all the time who are like, "I've written this manuscript for my nonfiction book," and oh, you… you didn't need to do that, honey.

Lisa Schmid: Oh my god, there's a million people right now switching their careers that are listening to this. They're just like, what?

Alia Hanna Habib: I'm saving them from themselves.

Beth McMullen: Often, the advice is delivered as, "this is what you do for fiction," and then "if you're doing nonfiction, do something else," and there's never any real depth to it.

Alia Hanna Habib: I really tried to get in the guts of it. So, the proposal, I wrote quite quickly. For me, because I edit them, I knew how to write a proposal. Once I sold my book, I had, I think, a year and a half to deliver it, and I could say this—I actually got a divorce in the middle. Very unexpected, very, very difficult situation. It was horrible. Basically, a lot happened to me very quickly; my dog died, my marriage fell apart, and then I had to leave my home because of the divorce. I lost my home.

Beth McMullen: Terrible, we are so sorry you went through this. This is rugged.

Lisa Schmid: I'm gonna reach through and hug you.

Alia Hanna Habib: Thank you! So it delayed my book a little bit, as you could imagine. But, it ended up taking, I would say, two years to write, and then it takes a really long time to come out. A lot of people on the outside don't realize how long our timelines are. They're long with fiction, or even longer with nonfiction, because you go from proposal to having to write the whole book. In my case, they held the book for a really long period of time because I delivered it in September, but my publisher said, "if we schedule it a year from now, it'll come out in September. That's not a good time, that's when all the big, mega-famous people get published. Why don't we do this as a January book, so the peg is New Year's resolutions: I'm gonna write my book this year". So I've just been waiting and waiting. You shouldn't do this unless you really want to do it, because you're really in it for the long haul.

Beth McMullen: It's a big surprise to people that it can be years that you're waiting. Oftentimes, your book comes out, and you can't even remember what it's about.

Alia Hanna Habib: Oh, yeah, I have lines quoted to me from my book, and I think, "I wrote that? Oh, that's really good!" But also, often I'm pitched nonfiction books that are very timely. You can't just chase headlines. You have to be thinking, what's going to be relevant in two years? We just got a pitch from a reporter in Venezuela. It doesn't matter how much Venezuela is in the news today; we have no idea what the news is going to be about Venezuela in 2 years.

Lisa Schmid: Right. What's your read on the nonfiction landscape? How do people determine what's going to be relevant in 2 years?

Alia Hanna Habib: It's more art than science. In the aftermath of George Floyd's murder, there was a big boom in nonfiction on racial and social justice. Right now, we're kind of in an escapist moment. Nonfiction is really kind of struggling. People want to read escapist Romantasy, cozy mysteries, rom-coms. So, what we're seeing in nonfiction is practical nonfiction that makes your life better or gives you hope. I also see a turn coming toward books that are tech-critical and skeptical about our online lives. And a lot of agenting… I do it in a very gut way, based on what I want to read.

Lisa Schmid: Do you feel like that's the secret to your success, predicting what's gonna happen?

Alia Hanna Habib: I mean, I'm not psychic. But I don't overthink the market. If something is fascinating to me, it'll fascinate other readers. I fall down rabbit holes all the time and just allow myself to do it, because that is what reading is.

Beth McMullen: It's an interesting business model where you're really guessing at a future version of the world.

Alia Hanna Habib: We get things wrong all the time. It feels really good when you get things right, because then you do look like a genius, but a lot of it's dumb luck.

Beth McMullen: When somebody actually sends you a proposal, what stands out to you, and what do you see people do wrong?

Alia Hanna Habib: I'm gonna start with wrong. The bad stuff I see, I call "death by PowerPoint". People know marketing and platform are important, so they lean too much into that and forget that the person getting this is a reader. We're looking for a reading experience. If it reads like a PowerPoint presentation, I have no faith in your ability to write.

I often suggest that instead of starting with a summary—is anything more boring than a summary?—start in the voice of the book with a scene. If you opened a book and it started with a summary, would you want to keep reading? No. I have this great book coming out called Dark Season about the summer Frankenstein was written. The proposal starts with him recreating the coach ride of Mary Shelley, Percy, and Byron up the mountain in Switzerland. You're immediately immersed. He's not just saying, "Today I'm going to tell the story of how Frankenstein was created."

Beth McMullen: I want to read that book! It's almost like you want to start in the same way that you would start fiction—you have to grab the reader.

Alia Hanna Habib: Exactly. You're being judged by how you tell a story, not by how great you are at bullet points.

Beth McMullen: People want to push their expertise, but that's the medium you're delivering the expertise in.

Lisa Schmid: When people think nonfiction, they think it's dry and information-packed. I have to say, you're one of our funniest guests.

Alia Hanna Habib: Thank you! My book is really funny. It has a Thong Song joke in it. I don't think nonfiction has to be dry. When I was in college, my boyfriend broke up with me because he said I wasn't funny. A couple of the reviews for this book have said it's really funny, and I kind of want to send them to him anonymously, like, "hey buddy."

Beth McMullen: Who's laughing now, baby! I think your next book should be a semi-autobiographical rom-com.

Lisa Schmid: Years ago, a writing group leader told me, "This could be really funny, but it's not." We spent three days with the hashtag #LisaNotFunny.

Alia Hanna Habib: Oh my god. We were living parallel lives! I had a mean writing teacher in college who would bring in a big pile of gummy bears and eat them one by one without sharing. There was a lack of generosity in her comments and this weird power dynamic.

Lisa Schmid: For writers developing their first nonfiction proposal, what do people tend to overthink, and what do they underestimate?

Alia Hanna Habib: I think they underestimate the importance of laying out a plan. You need chapter outlines or an overview that explains how the story will unfold. You're not just presenting an interesting topic; you're trying to get people to keep turning the pages.

You need an engine—plot, storytelling, or argument—to solve the "page 100 problem." What's going to sustain this book over 80,000 words? And folks overthink the marketing. Most of my proposals simply explain what you're bringing to the table in terms of platform and expertise. Bad marketing sections get into hypotheticals like "I will make custom t-shirts." Publishers decide the marketing budget and tours, not you. Use that section to say what you're bringing to help the publisher market the book.

Beth McMullen: That's a really good distinction. So what are you looking for right now in submissions?

Alia Hanna Habib: I love things that provide guidance or reframe someone's life. I love a good story, historical true crime—I'm working on a Regency era true crime story right now. I also have a hybrid literary criticism/memoir called My Jane Austen Breakup Album. It's by a man who found out his partner was cheating on him, lost his home, and spent a year couch surfing with his collected Jane Austen, reading her for romantic advice while navigating the gay dating scene in Manhattan.

Beth McMullen: Oh my god! These are all books that I want to read. I've always loved "disaster books" like Into Thin Air—the human versus nature element. I stumbled into the Jane Austen Festival in Bath this past summer by accident. There were thousands of people in beautiful costumes, and my husband and I stumbled in covered in mud after walking the Cotswold Way.

Alia Hanna Habib: I wonder if my author and I could go together as part of the book research!

Beth McMullen: You really should. I'm breathlessly waiting for all of these books to come out. Aliyah, thank you so much for being here.

Alia Hanna Habib: Thank you for having me, it was delightful.

Beth McMullen: And listeners, remember, you can find out more about Aliyah by visiting writerswithwrinkles.net. We will be back next time with an "Ask Beth and Lisa" episode. Until then, happy reading, writing, and listening!