From Pen to Print: Insights from Prolific Professor Susan Shapiro

Thank you to Susan Shapiro for joining me on my podcast. We met this month at Zibby’s Bookshop for her live and in-person Los Angeles Summer Writing panels.

Lisa Niver, Yvonne Liu, Susan Shapiro and Melissa Monroe at Zibby’s Bookstore 7/11/2023

Listen or watch our interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or your favorite podcast platform

READ THE TRANSCRIPT OF OUR INTERVIEW BELOW

Lisa Niver:

This is Lisa Niver from We Said Go Travel, and I’m so honored and excited to be here with the prolific writing professor, Susan Shapiro. I’m so excited to actually see you live at Zibby’s Bookshop today.

Susan Shapiro:

My former student.

Lisa Niver:

She is prolific. She must’ve learned well from you.

Susan Shapiro:

She mentioned me in her fantastic memoir, Bookends. She talks about taking my class where she first got published.

Lisa Niver:

I did read about you in Bookends. You and I have a lot of connections, because I know in your book The Forgiveness Tour, you talk about the Los Angeles Press Club.

Susan Shapiro:

Yes. I’ve done great events there. I love the LA Press Club.

Lisa Niver:

I love the LA Press Club, too. One of the things everybody might not be know about you is that you have written 17 books.

Susan Shapiro:

I always say that I’m the author / co-author of 17 books my family hates. One of the rules for my class is that the first piece that you write that your family hates means you found your voice.

Lisa Niver:

You have a lot of very clever, pithy statements. What is the one about your class?

Susan Shapiro:

“Instant gratification takes too long” is my method where the goal of the class is to write and publish a great piece by the end of the class. Many people do.

Lisa Niver:

Many people have loved your books. The Book Bible, I think it’s a great name for it, because people really use that to get published.

Susan Shapiro:

Thank you, and Byline Bible, also. Byline Bible is to help people publish newspaper, magazine, literary short pieces, and in The Book Bible, I tackle 20 different book genres.

Lisa Niver:

Please tell people about your upcoming class this summer. In your book you talk about: pitch vs write and the core part of a pitch “why you, why me, why now?”

Susan Shapiro:

What’s really exciting is the online class. I taught in person for 25 years. During the pandemic, I realized how much fun the online classes are and how successful they are. The goal of the class, in five weeks, is to publish a piece in a good newspaper or magazine or literary journal and get paid for it.

Through trial and error during the pandemic, what I found was that what people loved the most was meeting editors, because especially people who were outside of New York just never get a chance to meet people from the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Magazine, and they just don’t know who to pitch. They don’t know which editor to try.

What I started doing is having as many great editors as I can during the class. What people hated the most was, in my long, 15-week, four-hour-a-week classes, we used to read long pieces that people wrote, modern blogs or a thousand-word pieces, and people hated that online. They just thought it’s really boring.

During the pandemic, it seemed as if there was a switch where, instead of wanting full, fleshed-out pieces, a lot of editors would prefer short pitches. So, you say the title of your piece and what your piece is about. As you said, why me, why you, why now? And a lot of editors were saying yes, and they’d prefer to see the pitch first with the title of the piece and the subtitle, one line about you. So, they like short pitches.

Since what people like the most is meeting editors and what they like the least is reading long pieces, I focused on pitches. The first time I tried it, it was like a miracle. Out of 40 people in the class, 30 got published right away in the LA Times, the New York Times, New York Magazine, 500 dollars, 1,000 dollars, and then in the Washington Post, and then people started selling books. They would publish a short piece, and an editor would say, “I love this. Is there a book in it?”

It just got so exciting. What’s really interesting is a lot of my students in New York just want a refresher course, so they started Zooming in too. Another great thing is that anybody that’s getting published, the five-week class is 500 dollars. So, everybody that’s making 500 dollars or more takes the class again because they want to meet 15 new editors.

I had one student that said one of the editors who pays 500 dollars a pop, she said she has done 12 pieces in a row for him. Because it is online, it’s not only all around the country now, but I’ve had Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brussels, India. On one Zoom, you’ll see people from Asia, and it’s light out, and they’re outside on their balconies in the morning, and in the same Zoom in Brussels and Italy, it’s night, and you could see that it’s dark.

What people say is that even if they have to start really early or stay up late, there’s really no other way to meet all these editors. I’m constantly switching them around because they’re all switching around themselves.

It’s perfect for a beginner. I’ve had a 14-year-old, and I’ve had a 90-year-old in different fields. It is okay if you don’t know where to start because you get these great editors that’ll just say, this is what I want. I’m looking for short, funny pieces that are 700 words that play off the news, and this is what I don’t want, and could you…and they’re so specific, and it’s exciting, and then, interestingly, I’ve been getting, lately, a lot of book authors whose agents and editors say to them, okay, your book is coming out. Now you have to do short pieces. Go try to publish a few short pieces in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, and they say, how do I do that?

And they take his class. I’ve had a lot of authors, who you would think…they certainly know how to write, but they just don’t know how to pitch this specific thing. So, it turns out, I get this really fascinating mix of people, and I’ve got a lot of students who’ve taken my classes before, and what’s so funny is they say, I took it last time, and I published three pieces, but are they the same editors coming?

There’s some of the same editors, because if they keep buying stuff from my students, that’s the goal. So, I’m going to keep having them come, but I said, what? They were 15, and you only sold work to 3. So, that leaves 12 that you didn’t get a yes from yet, so might be worth it to take again, and then they take it again and get more clips. I didn’t expect it because I’m a technophobe, but it’s really fun.

I also feel like people have been publishing some really important stuff, especially during the pandemic. There were a lot of brilliant George Floyd pieces, including a book that came out of it. There’s articles in response to anti-Semitism and anti-Asian, horrible slurs that were happening. People have taken on a lot of medical misconceptions concerning what was going on with the pandemic as well as abortion. Important work is coming out of it which is so cool.

Lisa Niver:

Wow. I’m ready to sign up. It sounds fantastic. I know one of the things that I’ve read about you say: write the story only you can write. Can you talk a little bit more about what does that mean?

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