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2002: Nashville, TN Book Publishing Tips Gail Ross Presented at the 2002 RNA book panel, Nashville 1. Make sure it's an original idea. Hundreds of books get published each year. Do your homework. Check Amazon. 2. Make sure your idea is worthy of a book and not just an extended magazine piece. In other words, will people pay $25 for it? Who is your target market? Do you have ways of getting it to them, i.e., speaking, Web sites, etc. Sometimes the only way to be sure is to write a proposal and find an agent who agrees with you. 3. Write a smashing book proposal. Show yourself off-your idea, how well you have thought out the chapters, your writing style, your endorsements, how much you have thought out the audience and marketing, etc. Publishers are looking for partners to create breaks and get "impressions." 4. Find a great agent. Ask friends for recommendations. Look at the acknowledgements page in books that you admire. When you spark someone's interest and they want to work with you, do your due diligence: knowledge of the genre, time to devote, clout, etc. Believe it or not, it is better to have no agent than a bad one. 5. The phrase "publishing business" is an oxymoron. It is up to you to remain informed, vigilant and careful. Learn about the process, read Publisher's Weekly, talk to more experienced authors, ask questions. Write the best book you possibly can, then be an unabashed promoter. Do all you can to create breaks. Enjoy the small successes-PRAY for the big ones. The Book Proposal In the old days, a publisher needed to see a finished manuscript before offering a contract. Luckily, at least for non-fiction, this situation has changed. Most editors make decisions based on a proposal summarizing the book, and perhaps a few sample chapters. This allows authors to have a guaranteed (more or less) home for their book before they spend all those years writing it. The first thing to remember when writing a book proposal is that it is an advertisement. You are trying to convince an editor that 1. there is a story that must be told, 2. the story hasn't been told, 3. there is an audience that wants to be told and 4. you are qualified to tell it. You are not trying to set in stone the final organization of the book, since this is impossible to foresee before you have gathered all the materials. Your job is to give the editor a basic picture of how the final book will appear. Different topics demand different types of proposals (more on this later), but there are a few ingredients that every proposal should have. The Overview Your proposal won't have much time to prove itself in a harried editor's life, so it is essential that a reader be riveted from the start. Often the best way to present your book is as an answer to a problem. The overview should convince your reader that there is a pressing need that demands immediate attention, e.g., "Never before has homelessness worn so many faces," "The story had huge impact, but to date no one has traced its effects," "Americans need a reliable source of information on…" The overview should have all the elements of a good short story; take your reader from the initial problem to the exciting finish. You may want to start the proposal with an anecdote or example that draws the reader in. Overviews can range from one page to fifty, depending on your subject. If your overview is on the long side, you should add a brief summary at the start. Author Qualifications This is your time to shine. Get out your best active verb vocabulary from your resume and convince the reader beyond doubt you are both interested and qualified to write the book. Of course, it's not always possible to be 100% qualified, so if there are areas where your experience sags, consider forming a panel of experts who will read your manuscript, or even finding a co-author who might be a good foil for any weakness. You might also consider asking a well-known expert to write a forward or introduction, or even provide a blurb for the jacket cover. If your qualifications are especially important for the book's success, you may want to include resume/curriculum vitae as well. Marketing This section should answer questions such as: Who is the audience for your book? Is it increasing all the time? Have there been any recent articles or television shows that suggest your topic is hot? Have any well-known experts told you (or anyone else) that more information is needed in your area? Are there any special groups, organizations or newsletters that might be interested in your book? Do you have any special connections with these groups? Competition For this section, you'll need to research thoroughly any other books that might compete with yours. Pick out the ones that look like the most direct competition, and discuss them in this section, carefully explaining exactly how yours will be different. This is not the time to trash other books (though you can politely point out faults) but to demonstrate how yours will fill in a gap. You may want to list the competition by title and author, or you may want to refer to the competition as a whole (i.e.: "All the current books on recovery concern x, while my book will…). If your book will be truly unique in the marketplace, then you can simply state that. Chapter Outline As best you can, give a chapter by chapter description of your book. Sample Chapter(s) Not all proposals need sample chapters. Generally, the harder your topic is to explain, the more a sample chapter(s) is needed. A proposal on health quizzes you can take at home, for example, is not a difficult idea to grasp: a summary of the idea, a look at home test popularity, the author's qualifications and a few sample tests should be all that's needed to explain the concept; the information, not the writing is what's important. A proposal on violence in Latin America, however, would need more explanation-there are many different ways of presenting this material, and your writing style will be of crucial importance. Except for these basic ingredients, book proposals vary widely. Some authors begin with a lengthy anecdote, some with statistics, some give extensive chapter outlines, some just a sketchy summary, some write in narrative form, some in straight, matter-of-fact prose. Use whichever presentation style you think works best for your particular topic. Length When Alice of "Alice in Wonderland" asks how long she should read a story out loud, she is told to start at the beginning, read through to the end, then stop. The same can be said for proposal length: write until you have said all you need to say, then stop. In other words, how long your proposal is depends entirely on how hard the idea is to explain: the more difficult the idea, the longer the proposal. Generally, proposals range from approximately fifteen to fifty pages. Proofreading This sounds basic, but it's amazing how many writers skip this phase. After you've read your proposal a zillion times, the last thing you want to do is read it again. Do it anyway. Spelling errors, missing pages and poor printing can all hurt your cause. An editor won't turn down a proposal because of misspellings, but a sloppy proposal does beg the question "if they couldn't take the time to proofread a proposal, will they take the time to write an accurate book?" Usually, it's best to let a willing friend or spouse do your final proofread as your eyes start to glaze over mistakes. Writing your book proposal may be the hardest writing assignment you'll ever have. Take heart. It often takes many drafts to get it right, and we usually read and edit several versions of a client's proposal before it is ready for an editor's eyes. You only get one shot with each publisher, so it's essential that the first one be your best. Selling Fiction With only a few exceptions, there is no such thing as a fiction book proposal that works. Even great works of literature couldn't be sold on a summary ("distraught son sees ghosts after father's death" wouldn't make an editor reach for the phone) and a novel that is great in the first half often fizzles by the end. So unless you're Tom Clancy or John Grisham, and can sell your next book with only a synopsis, you'll have to finish the whole story before an editor can offer you a contract. If you have published any of your writing in magazines, if you've won any writing awards or if a well-respected writer is willing to endorse your book, you should certainly add this to the submission. All of this information can be used by a publisher's marketing department to help sell the book, and it will increase the chances that an editor will read your manuscript carefully.
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