All about the biz: Jane Friedman, and my 2025 Publishing Intensive

I first met Jane Friedman at a Litquake event in 2014. We were both on the faculty, yet I remember being so star-struck when Jane bent to wash her hands beside me, I nearly turned into That Stalker who accosts presenters in the ladies’ room.

Jane had recently wrapped her arms around all the publishing paths open to authors in the inaugural Key Book Publishing Paths infographic. It is an overview of the publishing industry that Jane continues to update annually and distribute generously, just as she distributes an unequaled wealth of publishing information via her website. If you are an aspiring author and you do not have her website bookmarked, your industry research is probably incomplete. And if your hesitation is that there’s too much there to sort through, Jane has addressed this with her thoroughly readable book, The Business of Being a Writer, soon to appear in its second edition. Jane celebrated this milestone at least in part by coming to speak to us on Thursday, November 21. The recording is now below. Enjoy!

And if you’re at that point in your journey when you’ve completed your book (or close to it) and you now have to work on getting it published, I also invite you to consider joining Lisa Manterfield and myself for our annual eight-week Publishing Intensive, beginning in January 2025. This time, in response to some of your suggestions, we are offering the intensive even more intensively as a series of facilitated workshops. Lisa and I will be rolling up our sleeves and sitting down with you to work through and brainstorm the specifics of your individual publishing strategies, and to develop key materials that you will need to execute it, such as your elevator pitch and query letter. At the end of the course, you should have an actionable and well-challenged publishing strategy in hand, and the drafts of an invaluable folio of materials. Here’s what we hope you’ll get out of it:

But don’t just take our word for it. Here’s what a 2024 participant had to say, and she didn’t even benefit from the hands-on, we-workshop-with-you, more-intensive intensive format.

I've finished this latest draft of my book and am thinking through which publishing path I want to pursue and am working through the slide deck from the Publishing course you taught. It is so good! The deck is so packed with information that it is sending me down many rabbit holes (in a good way!). I really appreciate how comprehensive you were in that class. So, thank you again!

—Lynn E

To see how intensive we intend to be, here’s a peek at the preliminary syllabus. If you’re ready to launch your publishing journey in 2025, I really hope you will join us, which you can do by reserving your seat here.