Watch the archive of my two-hour class, and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about what agents, editors, and publishers look at when considering a new manuscript – and all they’re really looking for.
When I started in book publishing in 2000, the entire industry looked so different than it does now. We were on the cusp of figuring out how to sell ebooks, self-publishing was newly arrived on the scene and very much frowned upon by the industry, and the only audio books I listened to were clunky 8-disk volumes that I rented from the library. How times have changed!
My goal during this course is to pull back the curtain on an industry that’s little understood by its key players—writers and authors. If you want to succeed in book publishing, you must see what publishers see when they’re acquiring books. Writers and authors have a hard time accessing the information they need because the industry is famously opaque and complex and subjective. If you ask five people for advice, you’ll get five different answers. Plus, publishing has been profoundly disrupted in recent years, in ways that writers welcome and find challenging.
All of this is why I want to spend these two hours with you—sharing what I’ve learned as an industry insider for the past twenty-plus years. I’ll share what I know about what makes authors successful from my tenure as Executive Editor of Seal Press for nine years, and now as Publisher of She Writes Press for the past ten years. I’ll challenge you to get grounded in realistic expectations about what publishing a book can do for you and how to harness the power of your book beyond simply book sales. There is so much more to being an author than just selling books! Finally, I’ll share with you what agents and editors and publishers are really looking at and looking for—and how to work with that, or around that as might need to be the case.
This class is about giving you a bird’s eye view of an industry you are a part of already if you’re an author (or intend to be). The more you know, the more you grow. I’ll lay it all out there for you in my signature transparent style—and I’ll encourage you to grab the reins of your own publishing journey and be the director of the experience that awaits you.
Please join me,
– Brooke
Brooke Warner is the publisher of She Writes Press and SparkPress, president of Warner Coaching Inc., and author of Write On, Sisters!, Green-light Your Book, What’s Your Book?, and three books on memoir. Brooke is a TEDx speaker, cohost of the weekly writing podcast “Write-minded,” and the former executive editor of Seal Press. She is the former Chairperson of the Independent Book Publishers Association and sits on the boards of the Bay Area Book Festival and the National Association of Memoir Writers. She writes a monthly column for Publishers Weekly.
You and a guest could win two tickets to the class of your choice.