Metaphor, Math, Editing, & How You Can Get Your Message to Your Reader Effectively

The Manuscript Academy

We are so excited to welcome math teacher Ben Orlin to the podcast! Ben Orlin is a math teacher who can't draw. His book Math with Bad Drawings (2018) has sold more than 100,000 copies worldwide, and has since been followed by Change is the Only Constant (2019), Math Games with Bad Drawings (2022), and most recently, Math for English Majors (Sept 2024). His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Popular Science, Slate, Vox, and The Los Angeles Times; he himself has appeared in the lines to ice cream stores everywhere. BBC star and leading mathematician Hannah Fry once described him as "terribly bad at drawing" before kindly adding “he’s also fantastically clever and charming.” We discuss: * How to position your proposal as an expert in your subject, for an audience who is not as well-versed * Using metaphor to connect and create new meaning * The ways agents seek out nonfiction clients * How to incorporate math in your querying and editing process Learn more about Ben and his new book here: https://mathwithbaddrawings.com