Op-Ed Intensive
for Nonfiction Authors
A published op-ed changes who comes looking for you.
Most authors never write op-eds because nobody taught them how. It is a learnable skill, and the bootcamp is designed to teach it — practically, not theoretically. Join us for a live program to learn how to get an idea from your book into a major publication, and get ready for what happens after it runs.
Led by Paul Martin Jensen with Carolyn Barnwell and Daniel Stone
January - February 2027 · 6 weekly live calls · Cohort limited to 10 ·
The diagnosis
You did not write a book so that it could sit on a shelf being admired. You wrote it because you think something is true that most people haven't understood yet.
The trouble is that books reach people who already decided to read them. The idea has to travel further than the book does, and it has to travel first.
That's the work an op-ed does. One argument, your name on it, in a place people already trust, in front of readers who had no prior reason to care. Editors publish it because it's new and defensible, and readers who find it persuasive go looking for whoever wrote it.
But it's hard.
Most authors never place one. It's a competitive medium with rules nobody taught them, and the rejection is silent and fast.
The rules are learnable. We’ll make it as easy as it can be.
Three places it breaks
We've watched this process fail in the same three spots for fifteen years.
1. Before you write
You have two versions of what you think. The real one, and the one you'd say on a panel. The panel version is safer. It is also the version most first drafts are based on, and editors will quickly move on to the next. They aren’t buying provocation. An op-ed that won't commit to an argument has no reason to exist, so it gets declined, and the author concludes their idea wasn't strong enough. Or, you write a solid argument, but you can’t defend it in a unique or timely way.
2. When you send it
This is the moment nobody talks about. The draft is good. And then it sits, and you open it again, and you soften one line. Then another. Maybe you add a few hundred words making additional points. A week goes by. From the outside this looks like perfectionism, or being busy. It isn't either. Putting a claim under your own name in front of a hundred thousand strangers is a genuinely exposing thing to do, and your body knows it.
Many people who fail to publish fail here because of the resistance they feel.
3. After it runs
Your op-ed gets picked up. A podcast books you. Someone with a large following restates your argument incorrectly and adds an insult. A conference invites you to sit on a panel next to someone who disagrees. You are now doing your work live, without revision, which is a condition that’s far outside of your comfort zone. It’s stressful, so you sit back and stop trying to use the op-ed to open doors.
What is the Op-Ed Mastery Bootcamp?
On our live calls, the group will receive high-level guidance and coaching:
We place equal emphasis on thought, where we help participants surface their personal insights, stories, and points of view.
And leadership, where we support participants to use their op-ed to open doors and step into more visible, public-facing roles.
We could draw out this program over months, but it’s more valuable to you to jump in bootcamp-style and be writing and pitching your piece as quickly as possible. You get insider knowledge on how to write and pitch an outstanding op-ed, and you get to execute and submit your drafts for feedback on our live group calls.
6 weeks, 6 live calls, and targeted assignments requiring just a few hours a week to get to a pitchable draft. All live sessions will be scheduled during business hours (Eastern Standard Time) and will also be recorded.
Why the two parts of this class belong together
There's a version of this class that only teaches craft: structure, pitch, peg, editor psychology. It would be a good class. But the physiological work is upstream of the sentence, which puts it upstream of the pitch, which puts it upstream of everything you actually want.
Editors and readers are sorting for writing that reads as unmistakably human, and conviction is the signal. It shows up in the body before it shows up in the prose.
We like to say that communication starts with an audience of zero. Your “inner work” will help you enjoy going farther after you publish rather than needing to recover from an overload of stress.
That's why Paul teaches the craft and Carolyn teaches optimizing the experience, in the same six weeks.
Request the password to check out our full op-ed portfolio here.
What We’ll Teach You
We’ll teach you the exact approach we use to consistently publish Op-Eds in the world’s most visible and respected media outlets, including how to:
Surface your deep insight and conviction:
Find the publishable idea inside your book, which is rarely the thesis and often something you buried in chapter six.
Avoid wasting time:
Tell a publishable idea from one that won't fly, before you spend three weeks on it.
Showcase the best work:
Write Op-Eds using your latest research, older research, or other people’s research.
Remove the guesswork from pitching and publishing:
Pitch with a reliable strategy and the follow-up timing that keeps a pitch warm and leads editors toYES.
Leverage your Op-Eds for bigger wins:
Turn a published piece into interviews, speaking, and sales, which is the step almost everyone skips. The op-ed publication is just the beginning.
Build capacity for visibility:
Whether it’s handling off-the-cuff interviews, panels, or social media comments, build the capacity to stay steady through your increased visibility.
Work with leading Op-Ed experts
For almost two decades, our team has published hard-hitting Op-Eds for leaders:
Directors and Surgeons General
Heads of state
Fortune Global 500 CEOs, CXOs and board chairs
Start-up founders
Government officials overseeing health & science policy
UN & agency leaders
Academic faculty and a Nobel laureate
Meet your facilitators
Paul Martin Jensen
Co-Founder & CEO, Etalia
Paul Martin Jensen has spent more than fifteen years placing bylines for other people. He’s collaborated with leading institutions like Columbia Business School, the World Health Organization, McKinsey, and worked alongside Fortune Global 500 CEOs, and Nobel laureates for earned placements, never paid ones, in the New York Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reuters, CNN, Forbes, and more than 20 other outlets across the US, UK, EU, Africa, and Asia.
Paul specializes in positioning experts as thought leaders and building systems for increasing their impact.
He is teaching the method he uses, unedited, including the parts that are unglamorous. His most recent placement took four months from idea to print and was declined or ignored for fifty-two days first.
Carolyn Barnwell
Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer, Etalia
Carolyn Barnwell spent twelve years at National Geographic, six on staff and six on project work for the Impact Media team, where she created its first digital series featuring scientists and explorers. She trained researchers around the world in public communication through the Sciencetelling™ Bootcamp. She was later Head of Production at the impact storytelling agency GROUND in Washington, D.C.
Carolyn is a trained leadership coach and TRE® (Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises) provider, has spent ten years preparing experts to go on camera, and now works with clients on stress resilience as their visibility grows. Her methodology is based on the idea that inner strength and clarity is foundational for real-world results.
Daniel Stone
Award-winning and national bestselling nonfiction writer
Daniel Stone is an award-winning science journalist and a national bestselling writer on adventure, history and science. He is a former senior correspondent for Newsweek and former senior editor for National Geographic. He is a lecturer in environmental science, history and storytelling at Johns Hopkins University. He was named a Distinguished Fellow with the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in 2024.
His first book, The Food Explorer, is currently in development for a film.
Who this is for
Authors with a finished or nearly finished nonfiction book who have something specific to argue and haven't yet argued it in a strategic placement.
People who value reputation and credibility. It is not a class on building a following. If your plan is volume, this is the wrong room. One placement in a major outlet will do more for your credibility in AI search than a year of posting on social, and it will keep doing it, because it stays indexed and retrievable long after a post has scrolled away.
You’ll leave with
One submission-ready op-ed drawn from your book
A pitch strategy with named outlets
A plan for the six months after publication
A stress “first-aid kit” of practical tools to help you break through the inevitable resistance and stress of publicly sharing your opinion
“I’ve written for leaders at Google, Stripe, and a long list of tech giants, and Paul is among the best thought leadership writers I’ve ever worked with. Carolyn is a powerhouse. She brings a whole other level of support for the intensity that comes with publishing and stepping into public view. Etalia’s strategy is years ahead of what anyone else is doing. If you want basic blocking and tackling, hire a PR firm. If you want a special-ops team focused on results, look no further.””
We start January 12, 2027
