Little Effort . . . Big Payoff

Over here at the Cook Household it's been an exciting week. We bought a house, for one. But a second bit of excitement has me bubbly too.

When I wrote my first book proposal, I included a short couple of paragraphs about possible future books that the publisher might want me to write. I think I called it "Companion Books". Well, in our discussions, it turned out that they were interested in one in particular. Now that my edits are done on that book, they are willing to start to talk about the next book.

I still have some work to do, I have to make sure all my research is up to date and I have valid statistics . . . but they want more of a synopsis from me rather than a full out book proposal. It's like a proposal without the two or three sample chapters.

When you are writing your proposal, don't forget the companion books section. It was just a couple of paragraphs long and is now saving me a PILE of time!

Writing Your Book Proposal - Part 3 (of 3)

Ok, if you've followed along with part 1 and part 2 then you're ready for part 3.

1. Title Page
a. Name, sub-head
b. Your name, any representation (like your agent)
c. “A Non-Fiction Book Proposal”

2. Proposal Table of Contents
a. Note: not the book’s table of contents, but the proposal’s

3. Overview
a. This is a one page summary of the book and may include: Statistics; Possible or confirmed interview subjects; Some structure (i.e., Each chapter will include sidebars that highlight the most important take-away points for readers to remember…)

4. About the Author
a. Written in third person
b. Reads like the back flap of a book cover
c. About the Author (used in Rookie Reiner):

Heather Cook spent several years working in the reining industry as an assistant trainer, traveling as far as Austria to one of the country’s premiere facilities to teach reining and horsemanship lessons. She has worked for several notable trainers, including World Champions Bob and Jason Grimshaw. Currently Cook is an editorial team member with Canada’s number one western horse magazine, The Western Horse Review, a monthly columnist for The Quarter Horse News, has been published several times in The Reiner, the official publication of the National Reining Horse Association, and is an international reining correspondent for PhelpsSports.com. Using a humorous and conversational writing style, Cook has written about every aspect of the reining horse industry. She has covered recent rule changes and their effect on the industry, profiled top professionals, written training articles and spoken with hundreds of reining horse enthusiasts from the first time rider to the highest money earning rider of all time.

5. Target Audience
a. Write as much as you know about your audience
b. Stats from StatsCan
c. Research studies
d. Angus Reid Polls

6. Comparable titles
a. Include: title, author, publisher, format, page count, price
b. Two sentence summary about the book
c. Two sentence summary about how your book is different (and presumably better)

7. Marketing and Promotion
a. “The author is committed to promoting and has investigated the following:
i. Web site (including regular newsletter/promotion)
ii. Events you can attend
iii. Advertising in specific publications or sponsorship for events

8. Format and schedule for delivery
a. How many words?
b. How many photos, graphics and charts?
c. Full-colour or black and white?
d. When can you complete the manuscript?

9. Companion books
a. Pitch more books in the same line, propose a series or smaller supplementary books

10. Chapter Outline
a. All chapters should include number, title and a short description
b. You can use bullet points (no more than five) or a five sentence paragraph.

11. Sample Chapters!
a. Up to three
b. Normally it would be the first three chapters but can be any three if you already have some portions written, but be ready to answer the question “why didn’t you give us the first chapter?”
c. You will calculate the book length (from #8) by multiplying the number of chapters by the word count in one chapter. For example, a 50,000 word book with ten chapters should be 5,000 words per chapter.
d. If the math doesn’t work out, make a note that this chapter is slightly longer because…
e. You can include some formatting such as text boxes or “call outs”. No graphics, however note where a graphic might be include with


So that's about it! Now get to work!

Writing Your Book Proposal - Part 1 (of 3)

Recently I gave a talk on writing book proposals and I thought I'd share some of the info here for all you future authors wondering where to start.

From Book Proposals That Sell by Terry Whalin: “According to a survey from the Jenkins Group Inc … 81% of Americans feel they should write a book …” and yet, only 2% of the population has ever actually written a manuscript, let alone gotten it published.

Writing fiction and non fiction is very different. At least it is for me. In fiction I feel like I can experiment, start from the middle, work my way through the story. But with non-fiction there is a lot more structure. It needs to be logical, it needs to have a straight forward plot.

Writing from word 1 through to word 50,001 may not work. You need to build a framework and then fill it in so you can be sure not to miss portions of the book or run into structuring issues.
Some things to think about AFTER the lightening strike IDEA and before you start the proposal.

To flesh out the idea before you put it on paper:

Readers very selfish, “what’s in this for me”. Publishers are also selfish, “what’s in it for me and will my customers (readers) like it.” The big question your proposal needs to answer, “will it sell”?

Why publishers like book proposals:

• You are looking for a publisher to make an investment so this is almost like asking a bank to finance a project, except you are assuming no financial risk. $50,000 per book. Sales projections are calculated so that the publisher can factor costs right down to the amount of ink needed to create the book.
• A proposal is a snapshot of the project as a whole and are used to take the book through the approval process from editorial, planning, concept, marketing meetings. All decisions are done by committee.
• Proposals show how well the author knows her subject and that she has recognized that the publisher needs to examine many different aspects of the project

Stay tuned tomorrow for some more...