A prequel to Paragraph’s wildly popular Pitch Wars, this one hour session will teach you how to craft a compelling and memorable pitch for your book. Hosted by editor and Pitch Wars judge Brenda Copeland, this is more than learning to tick off the boxes. The professionals behind Pitch Wars will show you how to evaluate your project and identify its place in the market.

Brenda Copeland (editor) is an editor with more than twenty years’ experience at the big five publishers and over ten years’ experience as an adjunct professor in the graduate publishing program at NYU. She has published a robust list of fiction and non-fiction, quality books with strong commercial appeal, including The Good House by Ann Leary, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks, and A Big Little Life, Dean Koontz’s first non-fiction book. Now an independent editor, she works closely with authors through all stages of the writing and publication process, helping them reach their creative potential.

Dana Isaacson (editor) works with major publishers, literary agents, published writers and debut writers. In addition to conceptual editing and line-by-line edits, he has book-doctored numerous projects and ghost-written novels. Most recently at Penguin Random House, Dana has also worked at Pocket Books/Simon and Schuster and ReganBooks/HarperCollins. His experience in New York City book publishing includes editing both fiction and non-fiction. He has abridged books and worked as a literary agent. Dana’s writing has appeared in The New York Observer, the New York Times (syndicated in Palm Beach Post, Seattle Times and Fort Worth Star-Telegram), and the Racine Journal Times. Dana also blogs on the website CareerAuthors.com—named by Writer’s Digest in 2020 as the #2 “Best Writing Advice Website.” He has a BA from the University of Wisconsin and lives in New York City’s East Village.