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How does a writer progress from a concept to a published book? In a time of information overload, endless hot takes, and artificial intelligence, how can informed and researched perspectives stand out? Professor and author Robert Loss presents this class on the contemporary nonfiction market, focusing on how writers develop and sell nonfiction books to various kinds of publishers in the trade, small press, and academic markets. Loss will discuss the publishing journey of his book Nothing Has Been Done Before: Seeking the New in 21st-Century American Popular Music (Bloomsbury Academic), as well as his current project, a critical history of the musician Prince. Specific topics will include research methods, how research shapes a book, how to pitch nonfiction books of differing genres, and why it's so important, now more than ever, for authors to find their unique points of view. While nearly all of the ideas and skills discussed in this session can be applied to self-publishing, the class will focus on working with agents, editors and publishers.

Professor Robert Loss is the department head of Writing and Literature at the Columbus College of Art and Design (CCAD). He is the author of Nothing Has been Done Before: Seeking the New in 21st-Century American Popular Music, published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2017, and is currently working on a heavily researched book about the musician Prince. His writing about the intersections of culture, politics and aesthetics in American popular music has appeared in numerous publications, including the Journal of Popular Music Studies, Los Angeles Review of Books, Cleveland Review of Books, Ghettoblaster, and PopMatters. He contributed an essay about Columbus' music scene to the 2020 book The Columbus Anthology (Belt Publishing/OSU Press). A graduate of the Ohio State University's MFA program in creative writing, Loss has also published fiction and creative nonfiction. He lives in Clintonville with his wife and their pets. 

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