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6. Close your overview with something that sums up the benefits or merits of the book, reminding the reader of the book's importance.
7. Try and do all this in no more than four double-spaced pages, and ideally two.
• Market Analysis. In this section, you need to explain who the audience is for your book; that is, who's going to go into a store and plunk down six dollars for a paperback (or thirteen dollars for a trade paperback or twenty-two dollars for a hardcover) version of your book. What evidence can you offer that your assessment is accurate? Use facts and figures you have researched. How many people belong to organizations or subscribe to magazines that deal with this topic? What other books out there have proven there is a successful and eager audience for your proposed book? Why will these people still be interested in reading about your topic in two years' time, or five years' time (what publishers call a book's backlist life). Give statistics about groups who may be interested in buying copies of the book. Go online, and haunt the library. You have to be factual and realistic. It won't help to be sloppy or overly generalized in your assessment. If you have experience or knowledge in selling, marketing or promoting, mention that. Do you have a seminar you take around from place to place? Do you lecture to groups of people regularly? What can you do to translate your experiences into book sales? A strong marketing plan accompanying a book proposal will go a long way in helping to sell the proposal. Are you a member of organizations who will help publicize your book and, ideally, buy lots of copies? Could you help sell bulk quantities of your book to organizations who might want to give them away as gifts to members? Do you have a connection to well-known people who might endorse your book and help increase book sales that way?
• Competing Books. What we mean here is a list of a half dozen or so of the most successful and most recent books published in the field you propose to write about. Nothing breeds success like success, particularly if you have a new take on a successful idea. In your comments about the books, include title, author, year of publication, publisher, a one- or two-sentence description and a statement pointing out the difference between your book and the published book. Every competing book gives you an opportunity to make a new point about your book idea, so take advantage of the opportunity. Again, use the library and the Internet for your research.
Browse the bookstores in your area; befriend bookstore owners; chat with book people in general. If there is nothing in the field to compare with your book, make certain you convince editors and agents there really is a market for the book, and you're just the first person to have spotted a hole and decided to fill it.
The Features Section
• Table of Contents. Here you explain how the book will be organized and what it will say. The simple table of contents will list the number of chapters you intend to have in your book and what the subtitle of each chapter will be (for example, Chapter 1: Joe Is Born; Chapter 2: Joe Goes to School; Chapter 3: Joe Discovers Baseball for the First Time, etc.). The TOC provides an at-a-glance guide to the book's content and organization, and, through your subtitling, perhaps a glimpse of the wit or seriousness you intend to bring to the project. At least 75 percent of a book proposal's success lies in its organization. You may have a great idea, but if you present it poorly, it shows not only a poor writing ability, but also poor thought processes, and in nonfiction a logical exploration of an idea and an easily graspable progression of thought is more or less what you are offering, beyond the originality of the idea in question. Agents and editors look for books that are logical, well written and organized according to a plan that is obvious and accessible to your readers. For example, a client of mine proposed a book about parent activism in educational reform by profiling a dozen or so schools around the country that have been turned around by parent activism. In the end, however, we decided a better structure was to identify a dozen or so things parents could do, from starting a new school and hiring teachers to improving a school's looks, and then use the examples of the schools to show how some problems were solved. The reader was more immediately interested in a book of problems and solutions than in profiles of success stories.
• Chapter-by-Chapter Descriptions. Now that you've nailed down the overall structure of your book, write a half-page to one-page description of what you plan to cover in each chapter. The key here, as throughout the proposal, is your ability to write succinctly, yet dynamically, about your subject. In general, state your premise and then explain how you will develop it. Make sure that, as in your overview, your passion and interest for your subject come through. An effective second-person voice can work here: "Have you ever thought about what life would be like without access to water? Your life, and the lives of those around you would be vastly different. ..."
• Sample Chapters. This is self-explanatory. A nonfiction book needs a mixture of narrative, emotion, and logic to work well. So it doesn't matter what chapters you include, but you should aim at about fifteen to twenty pages. No more than two chapters needs to be included. If you use partial chapters, make sure everyone knows these are not the complete versions of the chapters.
• Author Biography. Nowadays you have to be an expert, or a professional writer who is working in collaboration with one or more experts, to get a nonfiction book successfully published. You have to be an expert because you will be competing with others who are experts who have published books in this field, even if their books aren't very good. So establish you credibility both as a writer and as an expert in the topic you are proposing. That may mean writing articles on your proposed subject and getting them published in magazines before you start querying editors and agents with your book idea. Try and write your bio in third person, rather than first person, unless you have a life experience that makes your view particularly valid.
• The Cover Letter. This should be brief and warm and probably contain the hook. It should include your address and phone numbers and other relevant information, such as you're a prize-winning writer, a member of this or that group, an expert in the topic you propose, referred by a writer or agent, whatever. Mention the book's title and what kind of book it is, then let the proposal do the rest of the work.
THE FICTION PROPOSAL
The fiction proposal is a simpler document. In nonfiction, you're selling an idea, well organized and well presented. In fiction, you need to reassure an editor that an idea for a novel can be expanded successfully to a book-length manuscript, usually three to four hundred pages in length, double-spaced. So editors tend to want to see the whole thing rather than trust to luck.
If you have not published fiction before, unless you are writing fiction based on your widely recognized field of expertise (for example, you're a NASA astronaut writing a science fiction thriller based on your experiences), editors are not likely to take a chance on an unfinished manuscript. They don't really need to, because there are so many accomplished writers out there, eager to get published, who already have finished manuscripts to choose from.
Most fiction proposals that succeed in getting an author published come from experienced writers an editor knows can provide a well-written finished manuscript. The editor is concerned not with, "Can he write a good novel?" but with, "Is this a good idea for a novel that we can successfully sell to the public?"
The fiction proposal will once again provide the hook and a brief overview. It will also include a synopsis of the story, detailing, in broad narrative strokes, the beginning, middle and end of your story over the shoulder of the main characters). It should include a bio of the author, emphasizing writing experience and publications, and the first thirty to fifty pages of the book. If the first few chapters aren't the best in the book and don't hook the reader, it doesn't matter how brilliant the rest of the book is, the reader will never get to it. If a writer of fiction chooses to send chapters other than the first chapters to an editor, the suggestion is that the first chapters need work and, consequently, the book is not ready for submission.
; If the book is part of a series of books, it's a good idea to include a half-page or one-page description of a couple of further titles in the series, as well as a brief series overview.
Propose ideas one at a time.
Don't inundate an editor or agent with a shopping list of ideas at one time on the basis of, "If you don't like this, then try that." It's unprofessional and shows a lack of commitment and passion to the project.
SAMPLE PROPOSAL
What follows is a sample nonfiction proposal. It was originally submitted by my client Christine Goff and is an excellent example of the kind of nonfiction proposal structure I've been discussing in this chapter. Note that the sample chapters are not included here but would be included with the actual proposal.