“How to Write a Book Proposal” by Michael Larsen

Published by Writer's Digest Books; Fourth edition (April 18, 2011)
Pages: 336
ISBN-10 : 0971862834
Date Finished: Aug 25, 2020
How strongly I recommend it: 9/10
Find it at Amazon

Book proposals are interesting creatures. I read as much as I could about how they are put together while I was working on my “Win at All Costs” proposal. This book might be slightly out dated, but I found it invaluable.

My Notes:

Only 1 percent of actors succeed; Writer’s Digest reports that 6 percent of writers make a living writing.

If you’re an agent or writer who would like to post a proposal or part of one, please e-mail it to me at Larsenpoma@aol.com 

Try to find one or two successful books you can use as a model for your book and can mention in your book hook. A publisher of competing or complementary books may buy yours.

Most proposals range from thirty-five to fifty pages. A proposal has three parts in a logical sequence:

  • Overview

  • Outline

  • Sample Chapter 

The Overview: Your overview must prove that you have a marketable, practical idea and that you are the right person to write about it and promote it. The overview gives you the chance to provide as much ammunition about you and your book as you can muster.

The Outline: Your outline should have one paragraph of description about every chapter. From an informational book, you could also use a bulleted list of the information you will provide.

Sample Chapter: You must write one or more chapters that will most excite editors by proving you will fulfill the promise to readers and make your book enjoyable to read. Include about 10 percent of the book, or twenty-five pages—enough to give editors a solid slice of the content.

As Henry Ford said, “Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.”

"The best proposals are those that elicit the fewest questions. Why? Because you’ve anticipated and answered them all.” 

Your proposal will convince an editor of the following:

  • You have a salable idea.

  • You can write it.

  • You can promote it. 

One New York editor said to us, “If the title is good enough, it doesn’t matter what’s in the book.” Everything Men Know About Women proves her right.

Susan Sontag says that writing is like “making bouillon cubes out of soup.” If your book will be the essence of what you want to say, your title will be the essence of that essence.

Writers are less concerned about titles than they need to be. They assume their publisher will change the title, so they don’t spend enough time on it or enlist other writers to help. They are also too close to their work to create the best titles for their books.

You want to establish your book’s “marketing position.” 

If yours can’t be the first book to do something, make it “the only book to…”

So after your selling handle, add a paragraph that begins, The book will reveal for the first time that… and then have a list of one-liners, with the new information in descending order of its ability to sell books, generate reviews, or get you on 60 Minutes.

You can help the lucky editor who’s going to buy your book by showing how your book will make money. How? By describing the markets for your book. Your book will have four kinds of markets.

Finding Competing Books: BookFinder.com lists more than 150 million new and used books.  

Write two sentence fragments, starting each with a verb, explaining what competing books do and what they fail to do. Writing too much about competing books is a common problem. Keep your descriptions as short as possible.  

Hot Tip: Be factual, not negative, about the weaknesses of competing books. Assume that editors have edited one or more of them.

NAILING DOWN Your Platform: To translate your platform into prose, use the header “The Author’s Platform,” and list (in descending order of importance) what you have done and are doing to promote your work and yourself.

Partnerships: As suggested in the chapter on building communities, create a community of people who reach a similar audience and look for ways to them up and promote each other. You can publish articles on each other’s websites or newsletters, host an event or contest together, or even share a blog. Be creative and pool your resources.

"Writing is 10 percent, marketing is 90 percent.” Jack Canfield  

Under the subhead “Promotion,” begin your plant by writing To promote the book, the author will… Then begin a bulleted list, starting each new item with a verb.

Editors are always looking for a combination of three things: an author with an established platform, a book with a solid media hook that virtually guarantees lots of publicity opportunities, and solid writing. ~ Greg Daniel, Daniel Literary Group

Five Keys to Effective Plans: 

Here are five ways to meet publisher’s expectations in your plan. 

  1. Exaggerate nothing. Assume your publisher will insert into their contract your budget and the number of copies you will sell per year. 

  2. Publishers respond well only to the word will. They want to know what you will do, not what you are eager, willing, or available to do. 

  3. Avoid saying at least or a minimum of. Use round but accurate numbers. If you write Give talks, publishers won’t know whether yo will do two or two hundred. Provide a number, not a range of numbers. Wrong: Give forty to sixty talks per year. Right: Give fifty talks per year. Pick a number that’s based on what you’re already doing. By building your platform before you sell your book, you will know how many compelling talks you can give every year. Including numbers makes you commitment definite. 

  4. Use the active voice. Passive: Bloggers in the field will be e-mailed. Active: The author will e-mail bloggers. Tell publishers what you will do rather than what will happen to others. 

  5. If it’s not obvious, tell publishers how you will do what you promise. To further improve upon the sentence in number four, explain how you will promote the book to bloggers. E-mail the fifty most important bloggers in the field about the book and offer them:...

The Golden Rules for Committing to a Promotional Budget:  Assume that what you spend on publicity won’t be justified by the media exposure you get or the sales it generates. Regard it as an investment in your career that will pay off as your career develops.

Your proposal is a business plan in which you want a publisher to invest. The given is that you have a salable idea and you can write about it.

  1. Six Payoffs for Having a Promotion Budget: Your combined budget will affect: How the publishers position your book on its list. How many copies bookstores order and the quantity of the first publishing. How the media, book buyers, and subsidiary-rights buyers view and evaluate your book.

The lowest budget that will be meaningful to a large house is $25,000. The lowest budget worth mentioning is $15,000. Offer a budget only to large and midsize houses, although there is no certainty they will match it. It may become leverage for you if there are competing bidders for your book.

Golden rule for test-marketing your book: To get the best editor, publisher, and deal for your book, maximize its value by test-marketing it.

“The best time to start promoting your book is three years before it comes out.” Seth Godin

The HOTTEST Tip in this Book: Agent and editors don’t want literary one-night stands. They want to discover writers, not just books. Writers who turn out a book deal a year. Each book better and more profitable than the last, are the foundation of successful agents and publishers. If your books ascend to publishing nirvana and become bestsellers, you will be one of your publisher’s most prized authors, a repeater who produces one bestseller a year.

Your mission statement helps lay the groundwork for your promotional plan and will help ensure your proposal excites editors. It’s optional because if, for example, you’re writing an A-toZ reference book, editors won’t expect a mission statement;

Your promotional plan is an expression of your commitment to your book. The kicker: The more passionate you are, the more your plan must reflect your passion. Money doesn’t rule publishing; passion does.

Most manuscripts run between 50,000 and 100,000 words. That’s 200 to 400 double-spaced, 250-word manuscript pages with 25 lines on a page. The word count you and your editor agree on will be in the contract with your publisher.

Avoid the words about, tentatively, estimated, or approximately. Unless you have a finished manuscript, editors know you are guesstimating.

To be consider an updated and revised edition, at least 10 percent of a book must be new. For a new edition, 30 percent of the book must be new.

When you write your outline, you’re doing yourself a favor. If you deliver your manuscript on time, and it lives up to what your proposal promises, your editor will have no reason to reject it.

Golden Rule: Create the structure that will serve your readers best.

If a memoir’s narrator is incredibly angry or passionate on the page, then there’s no room for me, as the reader, to experience those emotions. It sounds backwards, but the less emotional you are on the page, the deeper the emotions your reader will experience.

Be willing to write about what went wrong. Sorry, but no one cares about the things that have gone right in your life.

A memoir is just like a novel when it comes to tension—the more, the better.

Look for threads running through your story. Find two or three themes, and then make sure your material connects to one of these threads.

Put your story in context. What’s happening in the world around you? Step outside yourself and consider family, community, state, nation. Yes, you’re writing a memoir, but that doesn’t mean it’s all about you.

Speaking of which, break your material down into stories. Don’t treat your slice of life as on big story. It’s really many little ones, and approaching your memoir this way will make it more enjoyable for others to read.

Exposes: a controversial book can sell if it: 

  • Is the right subject.

  • has shocking revelations. 

  • Is published at the right time.

  • Is write by an author who can publicize the book in a way that catches the attention of the media and the public.

People don’t want to buy problems, they want to buy solutions.

Your chapter must achieve the goals you set for it both in content and in its impact on readers. If it does, it will increase the value of your proposal by allaying the editors’ concerns about your ability to write the book.

Can I get away with not sending a chapter? If you’ve already written an article or a book on the subject, your track record is strong enough, or, if your credentials are impeccable, you may not need a chapter.

If you must sell your book quickly because it’s about a subject in the news, editors won’t expect you to take the time to write a chapter.

The golden rules for writing your outline:

  • Write editors about the chapter.

  • Write in the present tense.

  • Use outline verbs such as discuss, describe, explain, and examine, varying them and how you use them.

How can I tell which is the best chapter to submit? The only chapter to send is the one that best blends freshness and excitement. Let it come from the heart of the book and be a shining, representative sample of what is innovative and stimulating about your subject. Balance your passion for the subject and the time and effort you’re willing to expend against what it will take to get editors so revved up about the book that you’ll be outbidding each other to buy it. 

If the surprise ending is what will most entice editors, use it. But if you’re not sure which chapter to use as a sample, preparing the outline will help you decided. Certain chapters usually stand out as being easier for you to write and more impressive for editors to read. Getting feedback on your proposal will convince you that you have chosen well.

The Golden Rule for Formatting Your Proposal

Double-space everything except your contact information. 

Don’t mention front matter such as a dedication, epigraph, or acknowledgments. If you’re submitting hard copy, add the following under the table of contents: 

Enclose separately in the folder: 

  • The author’s brochure

  • The author’s articles, or articles about the author or subject

  • Supporting documents 

  • Publicity material

Don’t use different typefaces. Stick to standard fonts and sizes like Times New Roman, 12-point

Once you finish your proposal and query letter, it’s time to bring in your own community of readers.

..them to: Give you feedback on  your grammar, word use, punctuation, numbers, or repetition.

Most American industries are controlled by fewer than ten corporations. The Six Sisters—multimedia, multinational conglomerates, most of whom are foreign-owned—dominate trade publishing. If you want to be published by a big house, here they are with a partial list of imprints. 

  1. Hatchette Book Group, USA

  2. HarperCollins Publishers

  3. Mcmillan USA

  4. Penguin Group (USA)

  5. Random House

  6. Simon & Schuster

It’s better to be published by a small or midsize house and succeed than to be published by a big house and fail.

Complex challenges of publishing: 

  • Having books edited, copyedited, designed, and produced

  • Warehousing and shipping them

  • Getting them into stores and keeping stores stocked

  • Obtaining reviews

  • Publicizing a book to trade or consumer print, broadcast, and electronic media

  • Promoting a book to trade and consumer print, broadcast, and electronic media

  • Promoting books to schools, libraries, and consumers through catalogs, conventions, special offers, the Web, signings, and trade, consumer, and co-op advertising

  • Selling subsidiary rights

Query Letter: Limit your letter to one single-spaced page with indented paragraphs and a space between paragraphs.

Agent Katharine Sands believes that the writing you do about your writing is as important as the writing itself. A query is a one-page , single-spaced letter with a space between three or four indented paragraphs, and without sounding self-serving—it describes the why, what, and who: the hook, the book, and the cook.

Someone once defined a manuscript as “something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.”

In How to Write Short Stories, Ring Lardner observes, “A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.” 

... authors who have published their own work, including Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, and Mark Twain.

Your agent haggles about rights and money with your editor, so you can work harmoniously with your editor to make your books successful. An agent enables you to keep more subsidiary-rights income and receive the income sooner than if your publisher handles the rights. Your agent may appoint co-agents for film and foreign rights.

An agent can't write your book as well as you can, but you can't sell it as well as an agent can. Even if you could do what an agent does, wouldn't you rather spend your time writing your books and helping them succeed?

A Recipe for a Successful Book

A Recipe for the Best Publishing Experience

The Golden Rule for Creating Partnerships

Forge win-win strategic alliances by convincing your potential partners that your book will add to their visibility, their image, their prestige, or all four.

Editor's Note: Start the overview 4" from the top of the page.

Obtaining a Foreword

The author will approach Monty Roberts to write the foreword. Money is the best-known living horsemen in the world, et. 

NONFICTION PROPOSAL FORMAT (notes from Allison)

Please double space the proposal. Times 12 typeface tends to be standard and most legible.

1. Introduction/Overview

Your thesis.  What you plan on writing and why you think this book deserves to be on the shelf (very broadly).

2. Contents

A brief outline to the sections of your book proposal itself (not a table of contents for the book).

3. Biography

Your background and why you are the one who should write this book. Include all things relevant to your skills as a writer/ expert (past publications, any awards, praise for writing, pertinent career history etc).  While I'd put the proposal in the first person throughout the other sections, I'd suggest writing the author biography in the third person, so you can feel more comfortable in shamelessly tooting your own horn!

4. Audience/Market

What sort of reader will be most drawn in by this book, and why you think (know!) people will buy this book. The more you can convince a publisher that there is a natural (and we hope, BIG) audience for the book, the better.

5. Format

Give a sense of length (a word count range) and the length of time you think you will need to complete the book. One year is a typical length of time for most contracts.

6. Competitive and Comparative Titles

Similar titles (either in subject or in tone/style) that are available to the book-buying public (include the publisher and the year published for each title after each), along with brief descriptions and the market that these titles capture. For each, explain how your book sets itself apart, but will capture a similar readership or even bigger market.

7. Publicity/Promotion

Specifically lay out how you see this book being marketed, any relevant contacts in/access to the media/ book/ policy/ academic/ business world; unique publicity ideas you may have; institutions, experts, writers, platformed bloggers etc. you might know that you can go to for promotion and blurbs; any spin-off ideas, ways you can sell the book outside traditional channels etc...This is where you have another opportunity to convince the publisher that there are ways to push your book to sell (and therefore why it makes good business sense for them to buy and publish your book, even in this challenging book marketplace).  Publishers’ marketing budgets are slim. The more you can provide the publisher a sense that your book comes with built-in promotional 0pportunities and/or that you are a ‘platformed’ author, the better.

8. Chapter Summaries

Break the book into chapter headings with a synopsis of content for each chapter. The key here is to mix broad strokes summary with a few well-chosen, colorful details that surprise and delight, to show the editor how fascinating this book will be – demonstrating how much variety and interest this book will have for its readers.  (I often say that if you are able to give the reader of the summaries a few interesting new facts, some surprising information, or compelling stories that he or she wants to tell a partner or friend after reading the proposal, you’ve succeeded.)

9. Sample Chapter

Needn't be cut in stone, but gives a sense of tone/style of the book you are proposing to write.

For more… find it at Amazon