Small Press Publishing with a Debut Seminar with Emily Jon Tobias—Feb. 22

Looking for a publisher to call home for your manuscript? Emily Jon Tobias can help narrow the view and give you direction.

In this seminar, Emily will share the successes and failures along the journey to find a home for her debut story collection, MONARCH.

She will share details that can only come with experience including, but not limited to, writing query letters (agents vs. presses), tracking submissions, the research process, fees, red flags, green flags, how to best navigate technology with productive, simple tools, and, perhaps most importantly, how to handle the emotional pressure of rejection after rejection.

During this time together, she will share experiences and methods that aren't offered in traditional academic settings.

Engage in an honest, forthcoming dialogue about the pressures and joys of the small press publishing experience itself!

What You Will Learn

• Leave with a query letter template to be used for publishers and/or agents

• Be familiar with the top online resources for getting your work published

• Learn the foundations of how small press publishing works along with pro's and con's

• Gain a clearer vision of which publishers might work best for your projects at hand

• Knowledge of the industry and an empowered sense of community that might be previously untapped

Workshop Takeaways

• A PDF of the class materials with live links to all online resources offered

• Query letter templates geared at small presses and agents

• A sense of community and belonging

• Ideas of where to go next with your manuscript

• A firm understanding of the way in which the pursuit of publishing work

Additional info

If you can't attend this class live, it will be recorded! Students will receive a recording the day after the class, and it will be available for 30 days.

About the Instructor

Emily Jon Tobias is an American author and poet. She is an award-winning writer whose work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, along with other honorable mentions, and has been featured in various literary journals and magazines. Her debut collection MONARCH: STORIES (Black Lawrence Press, 2024) won the American Book Fest International Book Award and an International Impact Book Award. The collection was further honored as a 2024 finalist in the American Book Fest Fiction Awards, a distinguished favorite in the NYC Big Book Award, second place winner in the Story Monsters Royal Dragonfly Award, and a third place winner in the 2025 Feathered Quill Book Awards Program. Currently, Emily is a proud mentor in the PEN Prison Writing Mentorship Program. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Pacific University Oregon. Midwestern-raised, she now lives and writes on the coast of Southern California.