An award-winning author and Stanford writing instructor demystifies the business of writing with this practical, procedural guide to creating successful pitches, impressing editors and agents, negotiating compensation, and more. Published multi-genre writer Laura Goode had an epiphany after finishing her MFA and building a freelancing career: Nobody is teaching writers how to wield their persuasive storytelling abilities to make money from their writing. So she decided to write the business-of-writing handbook she needed most. Pitch Craft draws on Goode’s experience as a novelist, poet, essayist, filmmaker, and creator of a pitching and publishing course to uncover what nobody else will tell you about the business strategy that creates a writing career. With unapologetic honesty earned from years of navigating the publishing world, each chapter in this valuable insider's guide close-reads a distinct element of putting your work out into the world, such as: • Constructing effective author bios and websites • Leveraging your social media platform • Developing a reliable template for pitches and queries • Cultivating relationships with publishing gatekeepers • Strengthening your self-advocacy skills Pitch Craft is for writers in all genres and of all experience levels, whether you're just getting started, are considering applying to a graduate program, or have been in the trenches for decades. After reading and completing the assignments in Pitch Craft , you'll hold a finished pitch in hand and the knowledge and skills to navigate your dream literary career. Laura Goode is the author of a collection of poems , Become a Name , and a YA novel, Sister Mischief, which was a Best of the Bay pick by the San Francisco Bay Guardian and a selection of two ALA honor lists. With director Meera Menon, she wrote and produced the feature film Farah Goes Bang , which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and won the inaugural Nora Ephron Prize from Tribeca and Vogue . Her nonfiction writing on intersectional feminism, female friendship, motherhood, gender, and race in culture, TV, film, and literature has appeared in BuzzFeed, New Republic , New York Magazine , Longreads , Elle , Catapult , Refinery29, and elsewhere. She received her BA and MFA from Columbia University and currently teaches at Stanford University, where she was honored with the 2025 Walter J. Gores Award, Stanford's highest award for excellence in teaching. Chapter 1 Confidence Is Performance And How to Do It I’ve learned to address the craft of pitching in both practical and psychological terms. The pitching templates and Q&As are coming, but first I want to start with a double portrait. Here is a snapshot of my professional life story, otherwise known as an author bio. I’ll follow that snapshot by telling you more about how that biography feels inside my skin. I’ve been publishing for about twenty years. I published my first poem when I was sixteen and got my first magazine staff writer position at age nineteen. I received my BA and MFA from Columbia and finished my formal education when I was twenty-four. After graduating, I got a full-time writing job in an intercultural newsroom in San Francisco, and I acquired a literary agent who helped me sell my first novel when I was twenty-five. I spent two years reporting in that newsroom and teaching writing in the Santa Clara County juvenile justice system, and I published that novel, a gay YA hip-hopera called Sister Mischief, in 2011. In 2012, I raised $150,000 from Kickstarter donations and private investors to produce the independent feature film I co-wrote with my friend Meera, Farah Goes Bang, and that film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2013, where it won the first $25,000 Nora Ephron Prize from Tribeca and Vogue. I also published a collection of poems, Become a Name, with a small press called Fathom Books in 2016. Throughout all of this, I’ve published nonfiction about gender, race, culture, and media in magazines such as BuzzFeed Reader, ELLE, New Republic, Catapult, and The Cut, and that nonfiction work has garnered me fellowships from San José State University and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. I’m now an associate director at the Public Humanities Initiative and a lecturer in English and feminist, gender, and sexuality studies at Stanford University. Why would I give you this bird’s-eye view of my résumé? Well, you don’t know me. It’s incumbent on me to be able to provide you with this snapshot, because for our work together to succeed, you need assurance of my credibility as an authority on the subject of pitching and publishing. To demonstrate that credibility, I’m going to choose proper nouns you’re likely to recognize: Columbia, MFA, San José State, Tribeca, Bread Loaf, Stanford. I chose this language because the way I’ve been educated means I already know a few things about you too: You’re probably bright and interested in institutional rec