How To Prepare An Excellent Book Proposal

by Wendy Keller, Senior Agent

© Keller Media, Inc.

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A book pro­posal con­sists of 5 cru­cial parts, as well as a few sam­ple chap­ters.  The fin­ished doc­u­ment is typ­i­cally between 25 and 60 pages long, depend­ing on the length of the chap­ters.  This is a very, very quick overview of how you must pre­pare your book pro­posal to max­i­mize its sale.

A pub­lish­ing deci­sion is made by com­mit­tee with sev­eral diver­gent par­ties: edi­to­r­ial, sales, mar­ket­ing, etc.  Each sec­tion of the pro­posal appeals to a dif­fer­ent party, there­fore some redun­dancy may occur. The only sec­tion that will cer­tainly be read by every com­mit­tee mem­ber is the Overview, which makes it the most important.

Please note that we will edit the mate­r­ial some­what if we believe it has strong enough com­mer­cial poten­tial.  Our edit­ing deci­sions are a reflec­tion of our expe­ri­ence in what works with an editor’s mind and a publisher’s objectives.

The five parts of a proposal:

• Overview
• Author’s Bio (when the author’s cre­den­tials are at least as impor­tant as the con­tent, e.g., if the author gets a lot of media atten­tion already, has pre­vi­ous suc­cess­ful books, is some sort of celebrity/expert)
• Chap­ter Sum­mary (This jux­ta­poses with the Author’s bio if the author’s cre­den­tials are sec­ondary to the con­tent of the book.)
• Com­pet­i­tive Analysis
• Mar­ket­ing Plan

These are added to the sam­ple chap­ters, which always includes Chap­ter One and the “best” of the remain­ing chap­ters, not nec­es­sar­ily chap­ter two.  “Best means most descrip­tive, inter­est­ing, valu­able to the end reader, etc.

A brief descrip­tion of each of the 5 sec­tions and instruc­tions in prepar­ing them:

 Overview:

The pur­pose of the overview is to pique the editor’s inter­est suf­fi­ciently to get them to read the bal­ance of the pro­posal and buy the book. Its goal is to answer the biggest three ques­tions in the editor’s mind, in prose for­mat.  NOT Q&A!

The three questions:

1. Who is going to buy this book and why?
2. How do you know?
3. Why are YOU the right per­son to write it?

That’s it. It should not exceed 2 pages in length.  The last chap­ter should be what I call the “save the whales” para­graph.  This is where you get all misty-eyed and talk about how your book is part of your mis­sion to save the whales/children/GNP/true love – what­ever you’re sav­ing.  We want the edi­tor to know you are emo­tion­ally and men­tally com­mit­ted to the book.

Author’s Bio:

Mod­esty will cost you a book deal.  This is no place for humil­ity.  Tell us what your cre­den­tials are related to the topic, but more impor­tantly, every shred of media you have done, media train­ing you have, newslet­ters or arti­cles you write, WHATEVER.  Please know this:  a book by a stu­pid celebrity who has tons of media expo­sure and barely any cred­i­bil­ity on their topic will ALWAYS get more money and sell faster than one by an obscure pro­fes­sor on an incred­i­bly use­ful, valu­able or impor­tant subject.

Edi­tors buy authors, not content!

They are look­ing for how you will help them pro­mote the book FIRST, and sec­on­dar­ily what the book is about.  I can sell a cook­book by George Clooney for a lot more money than a cook­book by the guy who owns the best restau­rant in Cleveland.

Chap­ter Summary:

First of all, things change.  We know that what you write here will only be loosely what shows up in the book itself, because you will gather new facts, reor­ga­nize, etc.  The point of the Chap­ter Sum­mary is then two-fold:  to give the edi­tor an idea of the breadth of your con­tent and your pro­posed treat­ment of that infor­ma­tion; and sec­ond, to make sure YOU know what you are promis­ing to write about.  (Believe it or not, it’s important!)

Most books are around 60,000 words, have twelve chap­ters and each chap­ter is about 5,000 words long. I have no idea how many pages that is, but it’s not too rel­e­vant. To orga­nize your book most eas­ily, I sug­gest you real­ize that Chap­ter 1 is almost always a gen­eral overview of what’s to fol­low and a descrip­tion of your view of the topic.

Chap­ter Two in most non-fiction books helps the reader iden­tify him or her­self as des­per­ately need­ing the con­tent of the book.  The best books have a self-test in this chap­ter, which may or may not help the reader, but usu­ally helps the author get the book men­tioned in mag­a­zines once it is printed.

Chap­ters Three-Eleven are where the author expounds her/his ideas of how to cre­ate a res­o­lu­tion of the prob­lem for which the reader bought the book. (IF your book doesn’t solve a prob­lem like “Not enough cus­tomers” or “Scared to par­ent” or “Weight Loss”, it’s prob­a­bly not some­thing I can sell).

Chap­ter Twelve is typ­i­cally the “go forth and con­quer” chap­ter.  It sums up the book, encour­ages and inspires the reader to go out and DO what­ever pre­scrip­tion you’ve just writ­ten about.  It’s got lots of pathos.

Please remem­ber we know this for­mat will change.  We also know that most read­ers never read a book past chap­ter 3.  But still, for the esti­mated 18% of read­ers who do, we want a good flow to the material.

 Com­pet­i­tive Analysis

**IF YOU ARE WRITING A PROPOSAL TO TEST AN IDEA’S SALABILITY, this is the sec­tion with which to start!!!!***

The com­pet­i­tive analy­sis proves you are not work­ing in a vac­uum, unre­al­is­tic, unaware and or plain stu­pid.  I once got a query dur­ing John Gray’s hey­day and the author wrote to say he was writ­ing a rela­tion­ship book called “Men are from Uranus, Women are from Pluto.”  He swore to me he’d never read any other rela­tion­ship book (includ­ing the most famous one by a sim­i­lar title) and that this idea had been given to him in a per­sonal visit with an archangel.  (I get a lot of archangel books…)

PLEASE show the edi­tor you are savvy!  Go to Ama­zon and select the 5–6 books with the most sim­i­lar con­tent and which are sell­ing well.  Scroll down the AMAZON page to where it says “Prod­uct Details” like cut size, page count, weight, etc.  Look at the Sales Rank­ing listed there. Only select books whose sales rank­ing is above 150,000 (for most top­ics – ask me for the num­ber when we dis­cuss this and before you do it.  Dif­fer­ent top­ics have dif­fer­ent num­bers.)  Read the whole page — descrip­tion, sam­ple pages and com­ments by read­ers.  BUY and actu­ally skim-read those that are quite sim­i­lar to your own intended work.

When you skim these books you are look­ing for these things:

1. Pace – is it bor­ing or interesting?
2. Tone — is the author clear or obscure?
3. Truth – is it real sound­ing or fake?
4. Con­tent – is it com­pelling or dull?
5. Orga­ni­za­tion
6. Writ­ing style – aca­d­e­mic, stu­pid, silly, other?
7. Any­thing else you like/dislike about the book.

TAKE NOTES!  Note these things in the for­mat I’m show­ing below:

Title: Sub­ti­tle Author’s Name, Pub­lisher, Pub­li­ca­tion Date

Then while you are read­ing, note what the book has to offer and how your mate­r­ial will be NEW, DIFFERENT, BETTER or offer some­thing MORE to the reader.  Find out what you and the other read­ers (see the reviews on Ama­zon) liked or did not like about these books.  YOU may find a book so close to your idea it is depress­ing.  GOOD!  Yours isn’t writ­ten yet!  What can you add to it to make it more interesting/valuable?  It’s a fight for Barnes and Noble shelf space with 167,000 new books pub­lished annu­ally.  What makes you more worthy?

The for­mat in which you need to write up your notes (after the header above, and for each of the 5–6 books) is Pos­i­tive, Neg­a­tive, Pos­i­tive.  This is basi­cally as follows:

Secrets of Suc­cess­ful Nego­ti­a­tion for Women is a great book for women who want to learn basic nego­ti­at­ing skills in life, busi­ness and per­sonal rela­tion­ships. Using true exam­ples, Ms. Keller does a great job of show­ing as well as telling us what tech­niques work in many nego­ti­a­tion sit­u­a­tions. Because she is a lit­er­ary agent by trade, she is well qual­i­fied to write on this impor­tant topic.

(That was the POSITIVE.  You com­pli­mented a book that is sell­ing well already, and thus you did not insult the edi­tor – who not only will know the book since it is on a sim­i­lar topic and thus a com­peti­tor to that editor’s own list, or who was even more likely involved in, knows who was, or worked for the com­pany that pub­lished it. Now here’s the neg­a­tive paragraph.)

Unfor­tu­nately, Keller’s book is specif­i­cally designed for women.  It is for women who are new to the idea of nego­ti­a­tion, and who may be slightly unskilled in “fend­ing for them­selves.”  Keller’s moth­erly tone at times is offen­sive to some read­ers, as is the inclu­sion of some allegedly sex­ist remarks on things like using appear­ance and dress to a woman’s advan­tage when nego­ti­at­ing with a male.

(Note I did not say any­thing “rude” about the pre­vi­ous book.  Because the edi­tor knows the other book, the pub­lisher and/or the edi­tor or writer, we want to always be polite but clear.  Here’s the final pos­i­tive, all about your book.)

My book, The Most Impor­tant Nego­ti­a­tion Book You’ll Ever Own, is for both gen­ders.  Because of the wider scope of my work, and the fact that I draw on the expe­ri­ence of nearly 100 top busi­ness nego­ti­a­tion pro­fes­sion­als from many dif­fer­ent indus­tries, my work reaches a much broader audi­ence.  While Keller’s book is writ­ten for a more entry-level audi­ence, mine is focused on per­sons who are ready for “grad­u­ate stud­ies” in this impor­tant skill. My new book will bring read­ers of all other nego­ti­a­tion books to a higher level of under­stand­ing of this crit­i­cal skill set.

Repeat this for­mat for all 5–6 books.  This shows the edi­tors that you have knowl­edge of what’s been pub­lished and a plan for over­com­ing the com­pe­ti­tion, as well as giv­ing YOU the knowl­edge of what else your read­ers have access to, so you can cre­ate a strong book that really is supe­rior to all the oth­ers on the topic.

Mar­ket­ing Plan

This is a list of every­thing you have done in media in the past and every­thing you will do to pro­mote this book.  For me, this is the sin­gle most impor­tant fac­tor in deter­min­ing the size of your advance.  Together with the overview, this is where my atten­tion will be focused.  I sell mar­ket­ing plans, not con­tent. Pub­lish­ers buy authors – who can help sell many, many copies of their own books – regard­less of con­tent.  It’s a cruel, cruel world, but it works because while you are out there sell­ing, your con­tent reaches its audience.

Your mar­ket­ing plan needs to be divided into six sec­tions.  They are:

Radio

Print

Tele­vi­sion

Inter­net

Speak­ing

Spe­cial Sales

Just do the best you can on this.  If you’ve been on lots of shows, just list the national ones and for radio, just list by call let­ter or in the case of major host syn­di­ca­tion (e.g., Dr. Laura) then by host name.  Also, aster­isk the ones who have expressed or whom you think would wel­come you back for this new project.

I’ll read and edit this care­fully, so I can use it as a pri­mary sales tool.

 Sum­mary:

Do the best you can on the pro­posal and if we believe in your project’s poten­tial to sell, we will help you from there.

The best thing about writ­ing the pro­posal is that once you are done, very lit­tle of it will change for future pro­pos­als.  The bio will only have a line or two added every time you achieve some­thing new, and the same with the mar­ket­ing plan.  The sam­ple chap­ters, well, that’s the fun part and you wanted to write those any­way, right?  The overview is a piece of cake for every book you want to write.  For my own books, I always start with the overview, which helps me clar­ify to myself what it is I want to write.  And as for the com­pet­i­tive analy­sis, which I admit is a pain, it’s such a cru­cial part in cre­at­ing works of excel­lence, and in deter­min­ing IF your new idea is sal­able and pre­cisely HOW to make your idea supe­rior that it is diluted into a nec­es­sary evil.  Fur­ther, if you are going to write in a topic area you should read in that topic area any­way, thus know­ing the “com­pe­ti­tion” ahead of time.  Once you get smooth at pro­posal writ­ing, which is really just a lot of logic, you can crank one out in at most 2 days.  Hon­est.  Plus sam­ple chap­ters, but the core doc­u­ment becomes a breeze.

I’m look­ing for­ward to your unprece­dented suc­cess with this new book. If there’s any way I can help you fur­ther, or clar­ify what I’ve explained above, please email us at Help@KellerMedia.com  Thank you.