New Quickie Class!
Perfect Your Query…Featuring Quick Query Feedback
Cost: $250, due upon start of class. Payment accepted via Venmo, PayPal, or Zelle.
Make sure that your query is polished and ready-to-go in this quick turn-around edit and class. All agents require queries, whether as a first step to catch their interest, or more frequently, to introduce them to the project that you’re submitting. Why do you have fire in the belly for your book, and why should they?
“Dazzle me,” they say. “Convince me why I should rep your book.” It’s a high bar, but an entirely achievable goal to catch and keep their interest. The query is basically an invitation leading them into the world—personal, reported, or hybrid—that your book is creating. And they want to come. You’ll find that you have the steps to bring them into your book already. It’s just a matter of being your most authentic self in service to your book. That’s why we all write, after all.
Monday, February 19, 2024—deadline to submit your draft queries for evaluation/edits
Friday, February 23, 2024—delivery of your edited query
Thursday, February 29, 2024—in-person Zoom (recorded, if you can’t make it) hour-long workshop and Query Q&A as you revise
Friday, March 8, 2024—deadline for query revisions
Wednesday, March 13, 2024—final edits delivered
And you’re ready to go!
Contact me if interested: jill.rothenberg@mac.com
New Class!
Begins Monday, January, 8, 2024!
Bringing Your Memoir or Narrative Nonfiction Book Proposal to Life: Workshop and One-on-One Intensive to Sell Your Project to Agents
This is an eight-week class in which you get the best of both worlds as you develop and prepare your book proposal package: first, the critical feedback and camaraderie of a small Zoom room with other writers on the book proposal journey and second, one-on-one edits and crucial guidance from your instructor.
Cost: $1,500. Due upon the start of class. Payment accepted via Paypal, Venmo, or Zelle.
Schedule: The class runs from Monday, January 8, 2024 to Monday, March 25, 2024 (taking into consideration holidays). A schedule will be provided at the beginning of the class, along with a syllabus.
Limit: Six writers
We’ll use one in-person Zoom class per week to workshop each book proposal section in turn that are industry-standard and receive suggestions and edits on each from classmates and written edits and suggestions from me:
About the Book
About the Market
Competing Titles
Table of Contents/Chapter Summaries
About Publicity and Promotion
About the Author
Agent Query
Class Description
First, a little bit more on book proposals and why they matter:
As a longtime former acquisitions editor on staff at imprints now under the umbrella of Hachette, one of the country’s largest trade publishers, I bring years of presenting agented projects—many memoirs, reportage, self-help, and crossover academic books—to editorial boards. Many went on to sell well.
We all know that a story well told, with heart and authenticity, holds our attention and just as importantly, can find a place among readers where it can be helpful and fill a niche in the cultural landscape.
But—it also is a product—I don’t like that word (I’m a writer, too) that marketing and sales people must champion in order to sell. And before it even gets to them, it needs to fill that same role for an agent, who just like an editor, wants to be both enchanted and obsessed with a book or a manuscript-in-progress and excited about its sales potential. With memoirs especially, the story is both so personal and special—and despite what many writers think—agents and editors care about good writing that’s a perfect marriage with the writer—that its care and handling is crucial.
So it follows that the book proposal, although it has to conform to sections as listed above, isn’t just a sales and marketing tool. Yes—it is that—we do need to know the why of your story and how you see it sitting on the shelf with other books and how you will speak on its behalf and connect it to the cultural moment for readers.
It also gathers the most pertinent information for agent use. One way to think about it is that you’re giving agents what they need to have a thorough understanding of your book for the marketplace. Go to any agent’s website and you will likely find submission guidelines, all of which are different. Some want a full proposal and a sample chapter, others want parts of the proposal uploaded on Submittable, and others simply a query and ten pages.
But in my experience, it’s rare that a writer gets a book deal without a book proposal. It’s in many ways a writer giving an agent exactly what they need in selling editors your project. Even if you have a viral essay, a Modern Love, a gorgeous and transformative chapter, you will most likely need a book proposal.
Agents and editors want to understand what makes you tick—what brings you so much passion for the story you want to put out into the world, especially your own. And the proposal—and the query—which we get to last, once we have the proposal in hand, is a way for you to draw them into your story and why it matters now. As a colleague and I used to say, does it pass the “pass on coffee” today test? Meaning, one or both of us was so captivated by a proposal and a writer’s work that we cancelled our afternoon pick-me-up at the coffee place across the street.
That’s the barometer we’re after, especially at a time when there is so much to care about and so much competition for our time.
Class Description/Nuts and Bolts
We’ll meet one evening a week on Zoom from 5-6:30 pm Mountain Time (4-5:30 pm Pacific/7-8:30 pm Eastern), with Wednesday being the proposed meeting time. Depending on the group and time zones, we can adjust if needed in our first class meeting. The Zoom sessions will be informal workshops where writers can ask questions and give each other feedback on sections, as well as guidance and facilitation by me. These will be recorded, too, and made available if you can’t make it that week. You can also expect a special guest or two, i.e. authors and agents.
After the first meeting, where we’ll do intros and a brief description of your book project, we’ll spend a week on each book proposal section (two on the TOC/chapter summaries) with a guiding Google doc from me on tips for writing/developing each section, as well as examples of each section to guide you. I will read and edit each writer’s weekly work on sections, with a final edit from me at the end of the class.
To sign up or Questions: jill.rothenberg@mac.com