In this class, publishing industry expert Jane Friedman will help you understand how publishing professionals evaluate nonfiction book concepts and make decisions on what to publish. This workshop will cover how to:

• Identify a viable target market. Nearly all successful book projects start with an intimate understanding of the audience you wish to serve. The better you know your target reader or primary market, the better you’ll able to pitch a successful book. Someone must care about your message or story—and that someone can’t be defined as “everyone.” This class will help you grapple with issues of target market and whether your idea of audience is too broad, too narrow, or too nebulous to support a successful pitch.
• Research competing titles. You need to discover and study the books that currently exist on your topic or serve the same audience. If you can’t find comparable titles, you’re either not looking hard enough, or you’re doing a book that’s too weird for an agent or publisher to accept.
• Surface useful insights about your market from online sources. You should have knowledge and familiarity with the mainstream media, online content, bloggers, podcasts, and anyone else who serves the same audience as you. You need to understand how your audience might be fulfilling its needs for information from online and multimedia sources.
• Identify authors, experts, and influencers on your topic. You should dig deep into the platform and reach of authors and experts that you hope to emulate or compete against. How do you fit among them? How will you set yourself apart? Are there hints about how you need to develop your own platform to be competitive in the eyes of a publisher?
• Understand problems inherent in memoir. One of the most challenging categories to sell in today is memoir. We’ll talk about why so many memoirs fail to interest agents and editors, and what you can do to improve your chances.

Your final pitch or proposal must resonate in such a way that agents or editors immediately grasp the market potential of your book and why you are the best person to write it. Unfortunately, a large majority of book concepts or stories have not been carefully thought through, and must be re-conceptualized if they are to succeed in the market. This class will help you avoid the disappointment that comes when you realize your concept or approach was flawed from the outset.

• First-time nonfiction authors
• Journalists thinking about writing and pitching their first nonfiction book
• Professionals who are experts in their field and want to write a nonfiction book
• Unpublished memoirists
• Undergraduate or graduating writing students studying creative nonfiction

The webinar is broadcast via the internet with live audio delivered through your computer speakers or over your telephone. The live webinar’s visual presentation is displayed directly from the Presenter's computer to your computer screen. The Q&A is managed through a chat-style submission system with questions being read and answered by the Presenter for the entire class to hear. In the event some questions are not answered during the live session, an e-mail with questions and answers will be sent to all webinar attendees.

By attending the live webinar and/or asking questions, your full name may be stated during the live event and captured in the recording.

If you have questions about the program or have any technical difficulties, please contact [email protected].

Writer’s Digest does not offer any refunds for the webinar. All sales are final.