2025 publishing intensive

January 29 to March 26, 2025; eight Wednesdays 6:00pm-8:30pm PT, on Zoom
Maximum 12 participants

General Registration is now open for my 2025 publishing intensive with Lisa Manterfield, an information-packed course that covers nearly everything you need to consider, decide, and know in order to successfully publish or be published. This year, we will be offering this intensive even more intensively: as a hands-on, roll-your-sleeves-up, let’s-do-this-together series of workshops. In other words, in addition to sharing our extensive and varied experience, we’ll be sitting down and working with you in small groups. You will also get the chance to meet and learn from three industry experts: a bookseller, an agent, and a book marketer. As should be evident from the syllabus below, this program has been designed to give you concrete tools and actionable plans that have been discussed, challenged, and contributed to in group, in order to fast-track you towards your publishing goals. Why not make it happen in 2025?

PRELIMINARY SYLLABUS

WEEK 1 - 01/29/25
How to think about your book

We will not only discuss but practice how to stop thinking about your book as your art or brainchild, and start thinking about it as a product you want to sell. We will teach you how to pin down genre, audience, and those slippery things called ‘comps’—and we will hear from a professional bookseller to get the inside scoop on why such things are important.
Homework: Market position worksheet

WEEK 2 - 02/05/25
How to talk about your book

We will begin our second meeting by going straight into workshopping, to take a closer look at your homework and discover where you have deduced you fit in the market. Having challenged and refined this position, we will teach you how to craft your all-important “elevator pitch”—that punchy yet pithy encapsulation of what your book is all about—and then how to translate it into that elusive thing called the query letter, which every author needs to acquire an agent. One big tip: be prepared to leave your plot behind.
Homework: Elevator pitch and query

WEEK 3 - 02/12/25
How to pitch your book

Again we will begin our meeting by workshopping our homework. When we’ve fine-tuned our query letters so that they are tightly on track, we will explore a variety of different techniques to find the most appropriate agents to receive our pitches. We will spend approximately half of the entire meeting in the company of a guest agent who will answer your questions and give you a glimpse of the agent acquisition/pitching process from the other side of the desk.
Homework: Agent targeting worksheet

WEEK 4 - 02/19/25
What happens next—Traditional publishing

After comparing notes on our targeted agents, and sharing suggestions and feedback, we will take a look at the world that an agent can open up to you: traditional publishing with all its options and advantages. We will also make sure you’re well-versed in what you’ll be expected to know, by giving you a broad understanding of royalties, rights, and contract negotiations, and we’ll consider the differences between the publishers themselves and how this might impact the business relationship.
Homework: Imprint targeting worksheet

WEEK 5 - 02/26/25
What happens next—Alternative paths

After comparing notes on our targeted imprints, we will take a look at where the publishing landscape is in most flux. This week we’ll explore the exciting new alternative paths for getting your book out into the world. What are the pros and cons of these non-traditional ways forward? Depending on your individual goals, what would work best for you? We’ll make a pragmatic evaluation, teach you the steps you’ll need to take, and we’ll even get concrete about the $$ involved.
Homework: Traditional vs. alternative worksheet

WEEK 6 - 03/05/25
Donning your marketing hat

After a class discussion about the best publishing paths for you, we will turn our focus towards marketing the book to the end consumer, your reader. Whether you opt to be traditionally published or choose an alternative route, you are going to have to assume primary responsibility for marketing your book. So we will look at tactics and strategies for marketing your current book, and for building your long-term author’s platform. (In a nutshell, your platform is your ability to reach an audience, which is developed by marketing YOU as opposed to any specific book.)
Homework: Marketing worksheet

WEEK 7 - 03/12/25
More ideas for book marketing

We will begin our meeting by sharing the marketing strategies we’ve developed. We will put the hive mind to work and brainstorm tactics (and maybe even more strategies!) to flesh these out. Then we’ll seek advice and bounce our ideas off a professional book marketer who will give you invaluable insight on how to put your best foot forward to help ensure your book’s success. At the end of this class we’ll discuss how to synthesize all we’ve learned into a strategic, actionable plan that launches your book—and your journey in publishing.
Homework: Publishing action plan worksheet

03/19/25—NO MEETING
Submission deadline for Publishing Action Plans. Use the rest of the week to catch up and complete all your course homework!

WEEK 8 - 03/26/25
Your publishing action plan and next steps

We will begin our last session together by taking a closer look at a selection of your publishing action plans, using them to generate class discussion on how you can keep the victories coming. You’ll get my personal top three tips and you’ll get Lisa’s, and we’ll end the course with a generous Q&A session to mop up and address any remaining questions you might have. Feel free to pour yourself a “well done” beverage for working so hard and for now having an actionable plan and the first draft of some key materials in hand!

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We hope you find this proposed syllabus as exciting and robust as we do! The fee for this high-touch 8-week course, including close mentorship, class notes and additional resources, a folio of worksheets, your critiqued query letter and elevator pitch, as well as your drafted publishing plan, is $1,080, payable in two installments: 50% deposit to reserve your seat, and the 50% balance one month before class starts.

To register, simply click here, fill in your details and select a payment option. The limited seats will be secured in the order in which payment is received and we will send you an email confirmation.