Hi, I’m Jennie.
I’m on a mission to help writers write books worth reading.
I’m the founder and CEO of Author Accelerator, a company that trains and certifies book coaches. We are leading this new industry to establish standards of excellence in book coaching.
How does a book coach help writers write better books? We give writers editorial feedback, accountability, support, and marketplace intelligence while they write.
Want to know more about book coaching? Listen to me talk about it on more than 50 podcasts. You can also read blog posts I’ve written all over the internet. Check it all out HERE.
Does being a book coach sound like your dream job? It’s a great side gig or a whole new career for people who love words, ideas, and project management. Learn all about it over at bookcoaches.com/abc (abc = about book coaching, obviously!)
If you are a writer who wants to work with a certified book coach, go over to authoraccelerator.com and tell us about your project. We’ll match you with a coach who is a perfect fit for what you are writing. We have more than 100 coaches and counting.
All my best advice for writers can be found in my Blueprint books and courses. Get all the info HERE.
My journey to book coaching started in fourth grade
In fourth grade, our class published a book of poetry. Submissions were optional, but the acceptance policy was generous: all entries would be included. From the moment I understood what we were doing, I wanted to see my name in print. I knew what being published was all about, because my dad was a writer. He wrote on a green-keyed typewriter in a study at the end of the hall, and his books sat on a bookshelf underneath the window.
I somehow knew that those books also went out into the world, into the hands of people who loved them. I wanted that for myself, so I wrote poem after poem for my class book. We made cardboard bindings with crinkled tissue paper covers, and the pages were run off on the purple-inked mimeograph machine. I can still remember the thrill of seeing my byline for the first time: by Jennie Nash.
I was hooked.
Then things got more serious
My first job out of college was at Random House, where I worked for a fiction and a non-fiction editor at a time when manuscripts came into the office by mail, on floppy discs.
I spent several years on staff of a slick New York magazine where I learned how to edit a story, meet deadlines and crank out catchy copy.
I began writing for a wide range of publications — everything from The New York Times to GQ to Child.
I published my first book at age 25, and have published seven total—four novels, including The Threadbare Heart, The Only True Genius in the Family and The Last Beach Bungalow; and three memoirs, including The Victoria’s Secret Catalog Never Stops Coming and Other Lessons I Learned From Breast Cancer — a book that has more than 100,000 copies in print. (What?! That was thanks to a special cross-promotion I did with Ford Motor Company.)
I self published my last novel, Perfect Red. It was pretty much a total sales failure, even though it's a good book. The startup gurus say you're so supposed to fail fast in order to maximize learning. Done!
But we're not here to talk about my writing. We're here to talk about YOURS...
I began coaching other writers when Lisa Cron, a colleague who was teaching with me at the UCLA Extension Writers’ program, asked me to guide her. She landed a two-book deal at Ten Speed.
My second client, Sam Polk, wrote a memoir called For the Love of Money. It came out from Scribner in 2016 to enormous acclaim in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Slate and many other news outlets. Sam's favorite review was in The New Yorker. He appeared on The Today Show, The Tavis Smiley Show, CNN, NPR and Oprah.
By sheer chance, another book I helped bring into the world came out the same week as Sam's book -- Wear and Tear by Tracy Tynan. (Read this rave review of Tracy's book in the Los Angeles Review of Books.) It's not every day that a book coach can go to one of our nation's most awesome independent bookstores and see *TWO* books she helped bring into the world on the front table.... but that happened to me at Book Soup that wonderful week in July.
I stopped writing to take up book coaching full time
Why did I make the shift? I'm a good writer. I wrote some good books that have touched a lot of readers and I'm very proud of my work. But it turns out that I am an exceptional book coach.
I love the creative process — not just mine, but yours. I am a student of how people make things, of how they take nothing and create something, and of why they do it, and why it is so satisfying, and why it involves so much pain, and so much courage. I am a devotee of the creative process, and I get as big a kick out of coaching and guiding and inspiring you as I do out of doing it myself.
My coaching clients have landed top New York agents; snagged 5- and 6-figure deals from publishers such as Scribner, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, Norton, Ten Speed, and Hachette; hit the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller list; been chosen for the Reese Witherspoon Book Club; and won dozens of national indie book awards.
These are some of my clients’ books.
In 2014, I started Author Accelerator to train other book coaches
The goal was to bring my book coaching systems and strategies to a wider audience. We have trained more than 100 book coaches, and in 2019, we launched a book coach training and certification program.
The Blueprint method is the heart of what we teach. I wrote a book on the Blueprint for fiction and one on the Blueprint for nonfiction. You can learn more about the method and get some free resources HERE.
We’re on a mission to transform the way writing is taught and we are fierce in our commitment.
I teach, talk, and write about book coaching in a lot of different places
These are some of the places where I have appeared as a guest expert. You can find all these podcasts and more HERE.
Does book coaching sound like it could be the perfect side gig or your dream job?
Come visit us at bookcoaches.com/abc to learn all about book coaching.
Sign up for my Substack newsletter, The Art & Business of Book Coaching — it’s free.