From Page to Pitch to Submission

An 8-Week Memoir Publishing Intensive

with Brooke Warner, Grant Faulkner, Courtney Maum,
Dan Blank, David Henry Sterry, and Arielle Eckstut

$1995

• 8-week course
• 3 submission sessions 
• Query evaluation
• Live Pitchapalooza

WEEK 1 — Pitch Your Book, Position Yourself, with Courtney Maum

September 7 @ 2pm PT | 5pm ET (1.5 hours)

Most memoirists know their story. What trips them up is explaining it to someone else. Brooke Warner and Grant Faulkner will open with the big-picture framework (aboutness, positioning, market, readership), followed by the heart of this first class: Courtney Maum showing you how to actually execute, with best practices, tips, and hands-on learning.

This class introduces students to both the written and verbal pitch. The goal of this course is to support you to develop both. The course is building toward Pitchapalooza, the eighth class and final event in this series.

Homework: You’ll be tasked with working on your pitches, one written and one verbal. A guidance packet is provided with explicit guidelines for word count, what notes you’re trying to hit, and examples that will serve as templates for your own work.

WEEK 2 — The Almighty Author Platform, with Dan Blank

September 14 @ 2pm PT | 5pm ET (1.5 hours)

Dan Blank has spent more than fifteen years working with writers on the question that trips up almost every memoirist: How do I talk about my work before my book is out without feeling like I’m selling something? His answer is simple: stop thinking about platform as a megaphone and start thinking about it as a campfire. You’re not broadcasting; you’re gathering.

Platform is a word that makes many writers want to close their laptop and go lie down. It conjures follower counts, algorithm anxiety, and the creeping sense that being an author is synonymous with being a content creator. Dan Blank is here to reframe all of that.

In this class, Dan will walk through how to build an author platform rooted in passion, specificity, and genuine connection. Brooke and Grant will bring class to a close guiding students to make a plan and a commitment to grow their author platforms. We’ll talk about the value of consistency and focus, keeping grounded in the guiding principle: Thou shall not get overwhelmed. 

Optional Homework: Draft a one-paragraph mission statement for your author platform: Who are you writing for? What ideas, topics, and writing will you share beyond your memoir itself? What do you want readers to feel when they find you?

WEEK 3 — Mindset 1: Vulnerability, with Grant Faulkner

September 21 @ 2pm PT | 5pm ET (1.5 hours)

Grant Faulkner has written extensively on what it takes to be honest on the page, in addition to the courage memoir demands. Good writing, he notes, requires an openness of spirit that can feel genuinely dangerous. The same goes for submitting and publishing your story.

Grant Faulkner will lead this class as both teacher and fellow traveler. No stranger to vulnerability on the page, Grant will teach about how unlocking your writing requires unlocking yourself, and how by sharing your truths, you will connect with others in ways that nourish and sustain you. Memoir is an act of exposure. You’re not inventing characters to carry your themes. In memoir, you are the character, and ask such, in order to pitch your book with confidence, you first have to make peace with what’s in it.

This class will include writing time to explore fears and vulnerabilities—both on the page of your memoir and in the act of making it public through publishing—in order to name them and examine them. Sharing will be optional, but the goal of this class is to air out any fears, and to discover that you are not alone.

A note: This class will require courage. It may also bring up feelings. That’s the point. Grant creates a space where writers feel genuinely held.

WEEK 4 — Book Proposal 1: Editorial Components

September 28 @ 2pm PT | 5pm ET (1.5 hours)

The editorial components of your book proposal are where agents and editors decide whether they trust you as a writer and a thinker. This is where your voice either lands or doesn’t. Brooke Warner will guide you in this first of two hands-on workshop classes on how to think about and create the editorial components of your book proposal—the overview (or synopsis), the author bio, and your chapter summaries. You’ll see examples and learn best practices. The class will cover voice, what tense to write in, and the art of synopsizing. We’ll also address what role, if any, AI should play in drafting your proposal—and why it’s essential that your voice be unmistakably your own.

In this class, Brooke will offer examples of weak vs. strong synopses, and will cover what your bio needs to include, as well as the ideal length of your future chapter summaries. 

Optional homework: Work on your Overview, which is a cousin to the written pitch. You may even have overlapping writing in these two elements of your proposal, which is expected by agents and editors.

WEEK 5 — Book Proposal 2: Marketing Components

October 5 @ 2pm PT | 5pm ET (1.5 hours)

Brooke Warner will guide you in the second half of the hands-on workshop classes, this one focusing on the marketing components of the book proposal: target audience, marketing plan, and comp titles. This is an insider’s look at how the publishing industry thinks about readership and why comps matter. We’ll cover the most common comp title mistakes, including why choosing a bestseller from five years ago can actually hurt your proposal, and what makes a comp truly useful to an agent or editor.

This class will show you how identifying your target audience helps publishers see that your work is worth championing. We’ll workshop students’ comp titles in real time, using Amazon as a live research tool to identify comps during class so that you can leave with a method you can use on your own. During our time together, we’ll look at the five elements publishers want to see in a marketing plan, from specific reader communities to media hooks. The goal here is to design a proposal to impress, regardless of your existing author platform or connections. And yes, you can and will impress!

WEEK 6 — Mindset 2: Rejection, with Grant Faulkner

October 12 @ 2pm PT | 5pm ET (1.5 hours)

Every memoirist who puts their work into the world will face rejection. Probably a lot of it. The question that obsesses Grant Faulkner is: How do we use rejection to our advantage? He believes the answer to that question determines who we become, as writers and as people.

In this class, Grant will lead a candid, generative conversation about the inevitable rejection that comes with submitting your work. Yes, we’re getting ahead of it, both to normalize it and so that it really sinks in that rejection is more of a rule than an exception when it comes to submitting your work. This is a business that requires building up a bit of a tough skin, but Grant also knows firsthand that there are gifts in rejection, and he’s eager to share that hard-earned wisdom with anyone who’s setting out on this journey.  

In this class, Grant will talk about the fork in the road of what happens when a rejection asks you to choose between doubling down or revising. He will share psychological research on rejection, author case studies, and resilience exercises that are part of the book he is writing on rejection. This class will encourage you and prepare you to build resilience. Grant will offer practical strategies, not platitudes, for staying in the game.

WEEK 7 — Submissions Planning and Pitch Prep, with Brooke Warner and Grant Faulkner

October 19 @ 2pm PT | 5pm ET (1.5 hours)

This is the final of the hands-on classes that have been building toward Pitchapalooza. You will have done the inner work. You’re working on your proposal. You’ve written at least one or two drafts of your query letter and verbal pitch. Now it’s time to figure out exactly who you’ll shop your work to—and how.  

This class, co-taught by Brooke Warner and Grant Faulkner, will cover: (1) shopping to agents or editors at publishing houses; (2) pitching to literary magazines and other online sites as a platform-building strategy; and (3) practicing pitches in preparation for Pitchapalooza. We’ll cover one of publishing’s most underrated skills: how to respond to soft rejections in a way that keeps the door open for a resubmission, deepening your relationships within the industry.

Before class ends, we’ll introduce you to the Google drive where we’ll be encouraging you to upload your pitches in advance of Pitchapalooza.

Homework: Following Class 7, we invite you to submit your query letter or your verbal pitch (or both). Between Classes 7 and 8, Brooke or Grant will review and critique your pitches in a Google drive where students can see each other’s work to learn from one another and to see the constructive feedback. You’ll have enough time to tweak and enhance your pitches in advance of Pitchapalooza.

WEEK 8 — Pitchapalooza, with David Henry Sterry and Arielle Eckstut

November 3 @ 2pm PT | 5pm ET (2 hours)
Open to the Entire Memoir Nation Community

You’ve written your pitch. You’ve rehearsed it. Now you get to say it out loud in front of publishing professionals who will help you make it better.

Welcome to the finale.

Pitchapalooza is an event! It’s fun and encouraging, never humiliating. Twenty students will be selected in advance to go on camera and deliver their book pitch in sixty seconds to the legendary Book Doctors, David Henry Sterry and Arielle Eckstut, two of the most knowledgeable, generous, and entertaining publishing guides in the business. They’ve done this more than 500 times, from Alaska to Miami, Brooklyn to Stockholm, and they’ve seen it all. They know what lands and what doesn’t—and they’ll tell you, with warmth, humor, and the kind of specificity that makes feedback actually useful.

What happens at Pitchapalooza:
• Twenty pitchers. Sixty seconds each. Every word counts.
• David and Arielle critique each pitch. They do not tear it down. The goal is to make it stronger and to support people listening to learn from the experience.
• At the end of the event, the judges select a winner. That winner will receive an introduction to a literary agent or publisher appropriate for their specific book
• Every person in the Zoom room will walk away with a deeper understanding of what makes a pitch work, what makes a memoir marketable, and what the industry is looking for right now.

If we have more than 20 enrolled students, Brooke and Grant will hold a separate pitch session to ensure that every student enrolled in this course gets heard.

Submission Sundays

One of the toughest parts of publishing your book is the most necessary step: submitting it! For all kinds of reasons—self-doubt, imposter syndrome, procrastination, fear of rejection, or all of the above—people have a tough time clicking “Send.”

For three Sundays we’ll gather online on Zoom to submit. It’s like an accountability writing session, except for submitting. We’ll have a brief talk about any topic related to submitting to kick things off, and then we’ll dive in and submit, submit, submit. We’ll share breakthroughs and tough moments, and we’ll support each other through this labyrinth of a marathon of a mountain climb and make it fun.

Dates:

November 15, 11–12 Pacific | 2–3 Eastern

December 13, 11–12 Pacific | 2–3 Eastern

January 17, 11–12 Pacific | 2–3 Eastern

INSTRUCTOR BIOS

Brooke Warner is the publisher of She Writes Press and the co-founder and co-host of the Memoir Nation podcast alongside Grant Faulkner. She is the author of multiple books on writing and publishing, including Write On, Sisters! and Green-Light Your Book, and has championed women’s and marginalized voices in publishing for more than two decades, first as an acquisitions editor at Seal Press and then as a publisher, coach, and industry advocate. Brooke writes the weekly Substack, “Writerly Things,” which focuses on publishing and memoir.