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The Business Side of Writing
So, you’ve been pounding away at the keys for months, and finally your novel is ready for to be seen by people other than your mom and your writing group. It’s time for you to switch “hats,” and starting thinking about your project from a business perspective. As a literary agent, the biggest mistake I see hopeful writers make is not adopting a professional, savvy, business attitude about their work. But it’s not easy to suddenly start thinking about your “baby” as a product. In The Business Side of Writing, I’ll teach writers how to think about their work in a whole new way: the way that will help their project get SOLD. I’ll talk about platform for non-fiction and fiction authors, how to talk about and “pitch” your project to agents and editors, how to sell your project in a query letter, what authors can do NOW to help market themselves and their book, what sells and what doesn’t, and what to expect from your agent and publisher as you embark on a writing career. This class will best benefit writers whose projects are finished or close to being finished. All writers are asked to bring a short description of their work to the class.
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Taryn Fagerness is the owner and president of the Taryn Fagerness Agency, LLC. She primarily represents foreign, audio and film subsidiary rights on behalf of literary agents and publishers. The Agency also represents a select number of authors domestically. Taryn Fagerness comes from five years experience as the Subrights Manager and an Agent at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency, one of the most powerful literary agents on the West Coast. She’s worked with New York Times' bestselling authors, first time authors, and everyone in between, in nearly all genres including literary fiction, thriller/suspense, commercial fiction, romance, popular science, history, self-help, business, and children's. Taryn Fagerness's domestic sales have included STUFF: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy Frost and Gail Steketee (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, spring 2010); ROWING THE ATLANTIC: Lessons Learned on the Open Ocean by Roz Savage (Simon & Schuster, October 2009); SOMETHING MISSING by Matthew Dicks (Broadway, July 2009) and WHO TOOK ALL THE PAPERCLIPS: Fun Things to Do with Office Supplies When the Boss Isn’t Looking (Running Press, November 2008). She has a very hands-on, collaborative approach to editing authors’ work, and looks to build authors’ careers in the US and abroad. 
