“I love books that snap a subject into focus: this is where you’ve been living this whole time; it just looks different than you expected.”—literary agent Dara Kaye
Well Published! is a live video series from MFALore.com
Every few weeks Aimee interviews prominent authors, editors, literary agents, and other book industry professionals about the experience of getting… well published!
For archived video conversations visit Well Published! at MFALore.com:
Hello Loreates, and thank you to Betsy Cornwell, Julie Neches, Julie Snider, Deborah Jones, Homi Hormasji, and many others for tuning into my live video with William Morris Endeavor literary agent Dara Kaye!
This conversation was packed with vital intel for any and all nonfiction writers—including memoirists, food writers, historians, and parenting experts—who are searching for literary representation. Dara offered meaty tips for preparing your queries and proposals and also updated us on the current state of the book business. She also shared the story of her own journey from intern at Hachette to agent at one of the biggest entertainment agencies in the world. Heady stuff!
Below, you’ll find Dara’s bio, followed by a dozen key takeaways from our hour together. As an extra for paid subscribers, I’ve also included some direct advice that Dara shared in advance of this interview. But the conversation was so rich, you’ll want to listen to it all, which you can do by watching the video above.
Write on!
Aimee
Dara’s bio:
Dara Kaye has been at WME since 2023. Before joining WME, Dara was an agent and foreign rights director at the Ross Yoon Agency and spent two years in South Korea on a Fulbright fellowship. A graduate of Smith College (BA) and University College London (MA), she lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and children.
Dara represents adult nonfiction that tells great stories, from serious history and memoir to pop science and parenting. Her clients include New York Times bestsellers and winners of major awards including Fulbright fellowships and NEH grants. Across genres, she is drawn to projects with potential for international success and books that make the familiar world feel new and surprising. She especially loves working with academics, journalists and other experts with a knack for communicating original research to mainstream audiences, and with memoirists whose unique perspective stays with readers long after the last page.
Here’s a sample of recent books she represents:
EAT YOUR ICE CREAM by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel (health/wellness)
THROUGH MOM’S EYES by Sheinelle Jones (parenting)
RING OF SALT by Betsy Cornwell (literary memoir)
DO I KNOW YOU? by Sadie Dingfelder (hybrid memoir/pop science)
DRAINED by Dr. Leah Ruppanner (self-development)
THE OTHER SIGNIFICANT OTHERS by Rhaina Cohen (narrative nonfiction)
ORTIZ’S WAR by Nick Reynolds and Katie Sanders (biography)
A YEAR OF JEWISH JOY by Rebekah Lowin (entertaining/cooking)
Top Takeaways for Submitting Authors from Well Published!
Live with Dara Kaye on the Nonfiction Book Business and Submitting Queries and Proposals
1. A proposal needs three essential ingredients: a clear idea, a clear argument, and a compelling expert.
Dara says she can’t sell a nonfiction book without all three elements in place.
“So I would say for nonfiction, you need an idea, and an argument that feels really clear, and a platform that has two elements, which is why are you the person to talk about this? And how are people going to find out that you’re the person to talk about this? If those three things aren’t here, then I can’t sell that book.”
2. “Platform” means authority and reach — not just a social media following.
Dara deliberately breaks the term apart because writers often collapse it into follower counts.
“There are people who have big reach, but they don’t have authority in the thing they’re writing about. And then there are people who have authority, but no way to reach their readers. You need both sides.”
3. Come to the table as ready as possible — even if a proposal isn’t perfect.
Dara edits and develops proposals with clients, but she still wants writers to submit as much polish as they can manage before they query.
“I cannot think of any instance where I’ve gotten a proposal in and said, yes, this is ready for submission... I would be overjoyed if someone handed me a proposal that was so crisp that it required no... room for improvement. That would be thrilling, but it has not happened to me.”
4. Avoid the “examples of a phenomenon” problem — remember that a list of interesting facts isn’t a book.
Using a hypothetical book about sandwiches, Dara illustrates how proposal chapters need a relationship with each other that develops the argument over the book. Othrwise, proposals can read as a listicle.
“It doesn’t really come together unless you tell us why you are the person to be talking about this and what you want us to take away from it.”
5. So what? Use the X, Y, Z Formula to sharpen your thesis.
Dara shares her own shorthand for testing whether a nonfiction idea has a real argument — and a real “so what.” The Formula breaks down like this:
“Most people think… X, but my research or story shows that… Y. And once we understand that, we are able to… Z. It’s that last piece that a lot of people struggle with. That’s the so-what piece. That’s the difference between sharing a fun fact and developing a thesis that you can build a book on.”
6. Write with the reader’s needs in mind, not just your own story.
For the query letter specifically, Dara wants to see that the writer understands what they’re offering a reader — not just why the book matters to the author.
“Put yourself in the reader’s shoes... What do they want from this book and what are you offering to them? Is it a new perspective?... What’s the so-what of the book? Put that front and center.”
7. Watch out for your “Least Charitable Reader” (LCR).
Writing defensively toward an imagined skeptical or hostile reader — a sibling, an ex-boss, a critical colleague — tends to distort the work through over-explaining or evasion.
“The Least Charitable Reader... plagues a lot of people where... you’re just imagining that person who’s disagreeable and uncharitable to your work or to your life as a devil on your shoulder and writing for them or writing around them.”
8. She prefers to pitch memoir on proposal rather than on a completed manuscript.
Dara advises memoirists to present a proposal, not the whole manuscript, when seeking representation.
“I think it’s tough to sell memoir on a full manuscript... I’ve had a lot more success with memoir on proposal than in a full manuscript because you leave them wanting more.”
9. Favor a meatier chapter outline over page counts or extra sample chapters.
Dara explains what she wants to see in the proposal’s structure:
“I tend to want a meatier chapter outline so that we can really get into what the argument is on the page... If you do that, you probably only need one or two completed sample chapters.”
10. Non-celebrity memoir is having a harder time breaking through than it used to — but it’s a cycle, not a permanent shift.
Dara says publishers have grown more cautious about memoirs from authors without a large following, but she doesn’t see it as the end of the genre.
“For a long time it’s been tough for non-celebrity memoir to break through unless you have a really robust platform somewhere... I think [the recent intensification of that] is a trend, not a permanent shift… but that’s definitely something we’re hearing.”
11. Authors have to build their own audience before a publisher will amplify it.
Dara points to stretched-thin publicists and a fractured media landscape as reasons why writers can no longer count on a publisher to build their readership from scratch.
“What we’re really seeing is that an author has to build something first for a publisher to augment... It’s frustrating. As an agent, I wish that with someone who was just a talented writer... I would say, here is the publisher you should work with on that. But the truth is, it’s really hard.”
12. Dara is drawn to books that make you realize the world isn’t what you thought it was.
Across genres — memoir, history, journalism, parenting — the throughline in what she chooses to represent is that reorienting, “oh my gosh” moment for the reader.
“I love books that snap a subject into focus: this is where you’ve been living this whole time! And that can be a lot of different genres. That happens sometimes in memoir. That happens in history. That happens in journalism, that happens in parenting, anything that gives you that moment of going, Oh my gosh, I thought I was here, but actually the whole place is different than I expected.”
If you plan to query Dara…
For nonfiction projects, please share your query letter and attach the full proposal as an MS Word document.
Please include your bio as part of all submissions. More details here:
*Well Published! Live is a production of Aimee Liu’s Substack, MFA Lore.
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