New authors looking to get into the publishing business deal will need to have a book proposal to get a publisher or agent to even look at their work.
Publishing consultant Jane Friedman (not to be confused with Jane Friedman, the Open Road CEO/former HarperCollins CEO) outlined some great tips for writing a book proposal. These steps are great insights to help you get started in writing a book proposal. Here is an excerpt:
Editors care about one thing only: A viable idea with a clear market, paired with a writer who has credibility and marketing savvy.Knowing your audience or market—and having direct, tangible reach to them (online or off)—gives you a much better chance of success. Pitch only the book you know has a firm spot in the marketplace. Do not pitch a book expecting that the publisher will bring the audience to you. It’s the other way around. You bring your audience and platform to the publisher.
On Spec or Proposal?
Would you like to buy my book?
When you want to sell a book, there are two options. First, you can write the book, hoping that it will sell. We call this writing “on speculation,” or “on spec.” It means you are taking the up-front risk of time and effort to write, in the hopes that someone will buy. It’s the usual method of writing fiction and almost all new authors must follow this.
A second way to write is to create the concept, a couple sample chapters and put together a book proposal. This is common for experienced writers, nonfiction topics and series.
What goes into a proposal?
A proposal includes a clear concept and samples of the writing that will appear in the finished manuscript. Let’s look at non-fiction and fiction separately.
Fiction Proposal
Concept: For fiction, a book proposal a high-concept catchy one-liner is helpful. “Boy meets girl” isn’t enough. You’ll need something interesting enough to carry the proposal, so think about how to phrase the one-liner, the hook.
A love affair with a twist: she wants his bite, but he wants her humanity.
Chapter Breakdown: Usually the first book in a series must have a couple lines per chapter. The editors will want to know that you can, indeed, plot a tight story. Each chapter should include a couple lines about the major actions of the story.
Characters: Sometimes, it’s helpful to include short sketches of each major character. Nothing long, a paragraph at most. Make sure each is unique and interesting and contributes to the story.
Series Outline: If you’re proposing a series, then you’ll need half a page or so on each title. Include an overview with the main problem, major complications and a resolution.
Your Bio: Why are you the best person to write this story? What are your past publications, etc. Keep this specific to the proposal, yet general enough to cover your career.
Writing Sample: You must include a sample of the writing for this book, so the editor has a clear idea of what they will get for this contract. Don’t be skimpy. Write three solid chapters and polish them, put your best foot forward.
Letter: This is the usual business letter that you would include with any query or submission letter. Be sure to include the series hook and a hook for the first book.
NonFiction Proposal
The nonfiction proposal includes everything above, except maybe the character sketches. For a biography, though, you’d include it as well. The extra for a nonfiction proposal is the bibliography. You course, you’ll uncover many more resources as you write your story, but you need enough here to let the editor know you have material to write about.
Especially important here is your access to sources. If an editor gets two similar proposals for stories about George Washington, s/he’ll look at the access to sources. Writer A has done online research and has uncovered interesting info. Writer B, though, has contacted Mount Vernon and has an invitation
Getting Past the Arguments and Past the Gatekeepers
Guest Expert: Carolyn Howard-Johnson
An excerpt from the introduction of The Great First Impression Book Proposal: Everything You Need To Know To Sell Your Book in 20 Minutes or Less with seven basics to get you started.
Those who haven’t learned to write a book proposal are haunted by that gap in their knowledge. It lingers much like the first horror story your counselor told you as you roasted s’more over a campfire at summer camp, and it becomes more frightening every time the prospect of a new book looms.
Book proposals are not something that are going away any time soon. In fact, they have becoming more omnipresent. Once only writers of nonfiction needed to write proposals to get their ideas past gatekeepers, the editors, agents and publishers. Now some publishers ask their novelists to write them. That is especially prevalent for novelists under contract for more than one novel, genre novels, and novels that are part of a series.
Many writers are put off by books on proposals. “It takes a whole book to learn to write one?” they say. “First we have to read a whole book, then we have to write a proposal which is practically like writing a whole book and then we have to write the darn book?” They’re right. It all seems like too much.
And it may be. There are lots of books out there on how to write a book proposal and I recommend a few at the end of this short piece. But it is easy enough to learn all that you absolutely have to know in a nutshell and that’s what this article seeks to do for you.
It’s easy to make short stuff of the subject of writing book proposals simply because there is no one way to write a proposal. You need to know the basics but every proposal will vary with the project depending on the author’s style, the genre he or she is writing in, and the way he or she visualizes the book. In this article, I give you a detailed version of a proposal for a nonfiction book, one that works because it makes it easy on the agent or publisher to find what he or she needs and digest it. Obviously, those writing proposals for fiction (and keep it mind it is rarely required that the writers of fiction books use proposals) will need to adapt these guidelines.
So, what is a proposal all about and why are we so uncomfortable with them?
A book proposal is a marketing tool and a tell-and-sell document. Writers tend to be artistic or academic or reclusive and probably never pictured themselves hawking any kind of product, much less something that they’re so invested in. That doesn’t mean they won’t have to and it doesn’t mean they can’t learn to write a real kick-butt proposal. In fact, most already have the instincts for it, they just think that they must switch from real writing to brazen or boring. And know that once past the query letter, if your proposal doesn’t impress a gatekeeper, all is lost.
So I’m giving you the seven top rules for writing a great book proposal. For details you’ll want tosplurge on The Great First Impression Book Proposal: Everything You Need To Know To Sell Your Book in 20 Minutes or Less.
Rule #1: Don’t slide into your business-letter writing mode. In fact, don’t do that when you write business letters. Let your per
