The 7 Deadly Ins:
What to Absolutely, Positively, 100% Put in Your Book Proposal
A “Special Report” by Rusty Fischer, www.requestedmaterial.blogspot.com
Introduction
Let’s talk about your book proposal.
Like query letters, agents and publishers themselves, much has been written – and posted, and published, and blogged – about the book proposal. And I’m quite sure you could find dozens of books, articles and blogs better versed about proposals than myself.
However, that being said, I do tend to write about 5-6 book proposals a month on behalf of some of the most amazing people, stories and ideas you may never read about! But it’s certainly not for lack of trying!
Fact is, I’ve made quite the study out of writing proposals and take great pride in the fact that, regardless of the author, the subject matter or the genre I can typically get at least a dozen or so agents/publishers to at least read the proposal.
And if you can get a busy agent or publisher to read your proposal these days, you’re doing pretty well. Of course, that’s only half the battle; it’s getting them to sign a contract based on the proposal that really counts.
But here’s the thing about a book proposal: no matter how many rules you think apply, or how many books on technique and theory you’ve read, what I’ve learned about proposals over the last five or six years of steady publishing success is this: you are in control of the words.
Once you get over the hyperventilation, panic and ulcers that come with starting a book proposal, you can finally dig down deep and start to create a really well-crafted, 30-50 page document that will knock their socks off.
In this “special report” we will discuss what I call the “7 Deadly ‘Ins’ of Book Proposals.” That is, the seven most vital things that go IN your book proposal to avoid that “deadly” pain of rejection.
In order, they are:
General Overview
Author Bio
Platform, Publicity and Promotions
Target Audience
Competitive Analysis
Annotated Table of Contents
Sample Chapter(s)
Now, every agent, publisher or book will tell you different, but for me these “7 Deadly Ins” are what make up every one of my book proposals.
So get ready, we’re going to pick your proposal apart and put it back together again until you are happy, confident and satisfied that yours is the best it can possibly be!
The First Deadly In:
General Overview
A lot of folks freak out about the Overview because, naturally, it’s the first thing people read of your book proposal. But the way I calm them down is to tell them this should read like back cover copy; brief, fat-free, to the point, get the agent interested, get the editor nodding his or her head, not shaking it.
Generally speaking, the Overview should be 5-6 pages long and answer the following 5 questions:
What is the book about? Don’t get all cute and cryptic; straight up tell people what the book is about. If it’s “How to Dress for Young Professionals,” tell them that. If it’s “How to Heel Your Dog,” tell them that. Just like a query letter, consider the opening paragraph carefully. If you can find a great statistic or quote or recent headline that pertains to the topic of your book, all the better; use it!
What problem does it solve? If you feel that young professionals today dress really sloppily, and can find data to support your belief, this is the problem you are solving. Tell them what the problem is, “According to recent data nearly 8 out of every 10 employer is dissatisfied with what their employees wear into work…” State the problem clearly and be just as clear that, with your book, you are going to solve it.
Why should people read it? Just because YOU think young professionals dress sloppily isn’t really enough of a reason to get a busy editor to care about your project – to say nothing of a busy reader/consumer. This is why statistics, quotes and headlines can be important. Proving that 4 million CEOs, middle managers and HR interviewers agree with you that America is “dressing down” really tells agents and publishers why people should read your book.
What will they get out of it? People want results; they want to buy your book, learn something, and walk away better informed to deal with the stated problem. Don’t just state the problem and walk away; tell people what you’re going to do to help solve the problem, such as, “This book will provide readers with the walk-away tools they’ll need to dress better for work, earn more money with more promotions, impress their employers/clients and find career satisfaction. Each chapter will feature a self-quiz, an action plan and a take-away worksheet to help readers dress better, one chapter at a time…”
Why are you the person to write it? Here is a chance for you to provide a brief, mini-bio of yourself that pertains to why, specifically, you are the person to write this book. Always put “like with like” when you write this section. In other words, your experience should lend itself to the topic at hand. Hopefully if you are writing about gardening, you work in a nursery, have a horticultural degree or, at the very least, an award-winning garden! Likewise, if you’re writing about dressing better in corporate America here would be the place to list your degrees in fashion and design and your MBA from Stanford!
So, if you answer these 5 questions – in about a page or two for each question – you WILL have a kick-butt Overview you can be proud of.
The Second Deadly In:
Author Bio
The Author Bio is pretty straightforward; write about yourself in a way that pertains to the book. Don’t just copy and paste your resume. Instead, write a 4-5 paragraph summary of your accomplishments, your unique qualities and abilities, degrees and awards, etc.
Play up what pertains to the subject you’re writing about – your degree in botany, your MBA, the number of people who read your blog – and play down or leave out what doesn’t.
For instance, where you live is important – it can tell agents and editors how available you’ll be for a book tour or media placement – but adding two paragraphs about winning the Christmas tree design award for your street for three years running doesn’t really help your case. (Unless, of course, you’re writing a book on Christmas tree design!)
If at all possible, include a recent picture with your bio. Believe it or not, even busy agents and editors like to put a face with a name!
The Third Deadly In:
Platform, Publicity and Promotion
This part of the proposal comes up early because it’s extremely important to agents and editors. The Platform, Publicity and Promotion section is just that: a list of how you can successfully help promote this book.
In this section you might include:
Speaking gigs you have done or plan to do
Awards or recognition you may have earned
Your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.com “numbers”
Traffic stats for any blog or website you run
Previous publications, if any
Any recent magazine, website or TV appearances
Etc.
Some of my clients find this portion easier than others. For instance, if they have a radio show featuring 140,000 listeners every day at noon they’re obviously going to have a captive audience – and plenty of opportunity to market themselves.
On the other hand, if you’re a regular civilian (like myself and a lot of my clients) with no special media recognition or massive audience, this section can be a stretch.
Mainly, be honest here; if all you can commit to doing is throwing up a blog about the book and trying to increase the traffic every day, say that. If you can speak at a few rotary luncheons, say that.
I always start this section with a paragraph or two about why the book is media-ready and my experience, if any, in this field. Then I break down what I pledge to do into a bullet list (see above) with a subtitle in bold and a short paragraph in regular print.
For instance:
Prominent contacts at major local newspapers: Having worked in local Journalism for five years, author Ed Harris has editorial contacts at 8 of the 9 local newspapers, including the Toledo Herald and the Telegraph Gazette. The combined readership of these papers is over 120,000 paid subscribers.
Do that for as many bullet points/paragraphs as you can and hold your breath. If I’m sounding flip, it’s because this section is the most frequently tweaked, edited and rewritten section of every proposal I’ve ever written.
Oftentimes, agents won’t even look at you until they’ve given you a list of things to do to add to this section – and you’ve actually done them. So do your best, be honest and trust a good agent to help you fine tune this.
The Fourth Deadly In:
Target Audience
To help convince an agent that your book is worth pitching to publishers, you’ll have to first prove there is an audience for it in the first place. Oftentimes this section is really overstating the obvious, but that’s why it’s important to take it seriously: tell them something new.
For instance, if you’re writing a business book, it’s not enough just to say, “The 4-Hour Workweek sold gobzillion copies and so will I…” Duh! They already know that. (Well, that first part at least.) Tell them, specifically, who will read this book – and why.
If it’s for middle-managers, explain how many middle-managers there are in the country. If it’s for gardeners, try to find how many nurseries there are. If it’s for pet-lovers, get a good statistic on how many millions of people own cats, dogs, lizards or mice.
You get the idea. My main point is to take this section seriously and write 2-3 solid pages about the very specific and unique audience for your book.
The Fifth Deadly In:
Competitive Analysis
In the Competitive Analysis section of your book proposal your main job is to provide a list of popular, recent and well-published titles that are similar in tone and tenor to your own.
Why popular? You want to compare your book to books people actually read. I mean, just because three books have already been published on Dressing for Corporate Success doesn’t mean anybody read them!
Try to find books with a lot of reviews, with high rankings and with as much buzz as possible so that your book becomes “guilty by association” with this popular list.
Why recent? Publishers want to know that you are writing in a field that is a.) still popular and b.) still going strong. I never list a book that hasn’t been published in the last 2-3 years because, to publishers, that signals the genre might already be old news.
Why well-published? Remember, “Like with like.” Good publishers want to know that what you’re writing about is important enough to be published by other good publishers.
Where do you find these books? I confess I do all my competitive research on www.Amazon.com. It has everything I need: author name, publisher name, publisher date and great editorial reviews.
So if I’m looking up a book on gardening for young people, for instance, I would start with those keywords – gardening + young people – and go from there. Same with “business + dress” or “pet grooming” or any other keyword you can imagine.
This way I can find the title, author, publisher, year of publication and brief description – the five key ingredients to every competitive book title listing in your proposal – on one convenient website.
Why go to all the trouble? Basically, in this section you are telling agents that your book is a lot like these 6-8 other bestselling titles, but just different enough so that they can go on the shelf next to them and still stand out.
The Sixth Deadly In:
Annotated Table of Contents
It’s not enough merely to list your chapter titles in a row; agents and editors want to see specifically what is contained in each chapter.
Even if your chapter title is really, really obvious like “10 Signs Your Boss Doesn’t Approve of Your Mini-Skirt (Even on Casual Friday),” they still want to get a sense of what, exactly, those signs are, how you address them and if they’re interesting enough to keep readers’ attention.
I typically devote 3-4 paragraphs of text to support every chapter, and I handle this one of two ways. If the book is already complete, I simply find the best – or first – 3-4 paragraphs of existing text and “excerpt” them under the chapter title.
On the other hand, as is most often the case, if the book isn’t yet complete I describe the chapter as if I were writing more back cover copy.
For example, “Does your boss roll his eyes whenever you get off the elevator in the morning? Does she frequently write you up for ‘wardrobe malfunctions,’ even in the dead of winter? If any of these sound familiar, you could be dressing improperly at work – and in danger of losing more than your wardrobe allowance! In this chapter I address the 10 biggest faux pas of young professionals who think Casual Friday means Casual Every Day…”
Or something like that. The main point in describing your chapters is not just to fill the page and make it look like you worked real hard on this section, but to really give agents and editors a taste for what readers will find in each chapter and, of course, your writing style.
To that end, your proposal really has two halves. The first half I consider the “marketing material,” i.e. your Overview, Bio, Target Audience, etc.
These sections are basically designed to show agents and editors the marketability of your book and are written as such. The second half contains your “sample material,” i.e. your Annotated Table of Contents and Sample Chapter(s).
This is where agents and editors really start to get a sense for how the book will actually be written, so be sure that both of these sections really represent your writing style.
The Seventh Deadly In:
Sample Chapters
Finally, every proposal contains at least one – and preferably two – sample chapters. Ideally, I like to write three sample chapters: two to include with the proposal and one to hold back to a.) keep the proposal length down and b.) just in case an agent or editor is on the fence and, even after reading the proposal, asks to see “another sample chapter.”
However, I have sold numerous book proposals on just one sample chapter alone, but more and more these days I hear agents wanting at least two sample chapters, so it’s best not to scrimp in this area (if possible).
I typically do the Introduction and Chapter One here; most agents like to see chronological chapters because they like to see that you’re going to engage readers and keep their interest from page one. Merely pulling the “best” chapter from the middle of the book doesn’t show them that.
Earlier I said your proposal has two halves; I meant that literally. So, if you have a 50-page proposal you should really make half of that your actual sample material, i.e. Table of Contents and Sample Chapters.
The key to including sample chapters is to really show agents and editors what this book will read like, sound like, even “feel” like.
I’ve pitched proposals from movie stars, millionaires, Playmates, CEOs, reality TV stars and the like and, no matter how famous, rich or well-connected they are if the agent or editor doesn’t connect with the sample chapters included at the back of the book proposal, they’re still not going to commit to signing the book.
So if you’re scheduling your time for the writing of the proposal, make sure that whatever time you spent writing the first half – Overview, Bio, etc. – you spend two or even three times that long compiling, writing, editing, re-reading and re-writing your sample material.
The Proposal as Lasagna:
A Few Parting Words on Trusting the Many “Layers” of Your Proposal
Once your proposal is done, trust it! I can’t stress enough the vibe of confidence that shines through a really, really well-written proposal.
In this special report I have shared with you the “7 Deadly Ins of Proposal Writing” and described each one; but don’t take my word for it: read as many sample proposals as you can.
You’re in luck: many agent websites feature sample book proposals they’re proud of and want you to use as a guide, if not an actual template, for your own. Read them, re-read them and then read them some more.
Proposal writing is a process; I often tell my clients that writing a proposal is like making lasagna: it’s only done when all the “layers” are in place.
It can take weeks, even months, to write a really good proposal, and that’s because you need to read and re-read, write and re-write each section unto itself, as a pieces-part, and then read all the sections together and possibly re-read and re-write the entire piece as well.
Continue to layer your proposal with quotes, statistics, better book comparisons, longer chapter descriptions, more bullet points in your sample chapter or a better figure for your Target Audience. Pick apart your Overview and see if it really answers those 5 questions I shared with you; then pick it apart again.
Then, once you’ve read it so many times it’s making you nauseous, trust it. Trust it and query it and pitch it and submit it and feel good about it. I can always tell a rushed proposal from a fine-tuned, polished one – and so can agents and editors.
About the Author:
Rusty Fischer
Rusty Fischer is a bestselling ghostwriter whose collaborations with many influential clients have been published by such respected houses as Wiley & Sons, Simon & Schuster, McGraw-Hill and Kensington, among many others.
Rusty runs the popular and informative “Requested Material” blog, which can be found at www.requestedmaterial.blogspot.com.
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