Jane Friedman has 25 years of experience in the publishing industry, with expertise in business strategy for authors and publishers. She’s the co-founder and editor of The Hot Sheet, a paid newsletter for authors, and has previously worked for Writer’s Digest and the Virginia Quarterly Review. In 2023, Jane was awarded Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World; her newsletter was awarded Media Outlet of the Year in 2020.
You might know Jane because of her experience with AI book fraud, which she wrote about in August 2023. Here’s a roundup of the extensive coverage and interviews about what happened.
Jane’s latest book is The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press), which received a starred review from Library Journal. Publishers Weekly said that it is “destined to become a staple reference book for writers and those interested in publishing careers.” In collaboration with The Authors Guild, she wrote The Authors Guild Guide to Self-Publishing.
In addition to being a professor with The Great Courses, Jane has been featured across countless media outlets, including The New York Times, CNN, Wired, BBC, The Guardian, CBC, The Washington Post, NPR, and Fox News. She offers a free newsletter, Electric Speed, published since 2009, that has more than 25,000 subscribers. Her paid newsletter, The Hot Sheet, has more than 2,400 subscribers.
Since 2001, Jane has delivered keynote talks across the globe, including the Writer’s Digest annual conference, Stockholm Writers Festival, San Miguel Writers Conference, The Muse & The Marketplace, Frankfurt Book Fair, and Digital Book World.
She’s also served on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Work Fund, and is currently a board member at The Facing Project. And for a while she even flirted with academia, holding positions as a professor of writing, media, and publishing at the University of Cincinnati and University of Virginia.
In her spare time, Jane writes creative nonfiction, which has been included in the anthologies Every Father’s Daughter and Drinking Diaries. If you look hard enough, you can also find her embarrassing college poetry and secret newsletter.
