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The Best Business Plan for a Blogged Book (or Any Book)

May 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

http://www.freedigitalphotos.comTo conclude this series on building a business around your book, I’d like to write about business plans. Now, I’m not a great one to spout off about business plans, since my business hasn’t had one until recently–and it’s not really quite done yet, if I’m going to be totally honest. (But I’m working on it.) I do, however, know a lot about business plans for books. Yes, I do.

In fact, the best business plan for a book has been around for ages and ages. I help aspiring authors create them all the time. Usually, those aspiring authors are wanting to approach traditional publishers to ask them to invest in their books. So, they need a business plan. Aspiring independent publishers–writers planning to self-publish–in most cases don’t bother to create a business plan for their books. Big mistake. They need one even more than their traditional-hold-out friends, so I work with many to do just that.

When you come up with an ideas for a book–blogged or other wise–rather than sit down and  begin writing, create a business plan. And use the publishing industry standard: a book proposal. Yep. That’s it. A book proposal.

Here’s the deal: Not every blogged book idea (or traditionally written book) deserves to become a book. Some ideas make better articles or essays because you don’t have enough subject matter to produce a full-length blogged book. Others might be appropriate for a book but only your friends and family  might be interested in reading that book because it doesn’t have a market beyond your immediate circle of influence. Or maybe your idea simply isn’t unique—the market is flooded with other books just like it, so it isn’t going to garner a big enough readership. You may not have a large enough author’s platform (or fan base) or be well-known enough expert to attract readers to another book on the same ol’ subject.

That’s why its a worthwhile venture to evaluate your book idea’s success potential–its marketability– prior to writing a word.  If you do this using the sections of a book proposal as your guide, you will accumulate all the information necessary to put together a top-notch business plan for your blogged book. Why? Because you will be looking at your book through the eyes of an acquisitions editor and producing the type of document a publisher requires before moving forward with a new book venture. You need that document as well. That document–the book proposal–serves as a publishers business plan, and it can–and should–serve as yours. So use the publishing industry standard—the book proposal—as your guide to creating a business plan for your book. Take your idea and look at it through the lens of a book proposal, and you’ll know soon enough if your idea has the ability to make it as a print or ebook. Evaluate your idea as any agent or acquisitions editor might if they were to read your book proposal. And you’ll end up with very specific information about who you will market your book to, how you will promote your book and how to position your book in the market so it is unique and relevant to your readers.

If you don’t plan on ever approaching a publisher, your business plan can be less formally written. Just go through what I call the “proposal process” and accumulate the information necessary for a proposal and place it informally in a document.  (To learn more about this process and all the parts of a proposal, read the appropriate blogged chapter on this topic.)If you do want to do approach a traditional publisher, go through the process and then place the information in a document that you have professionally edited. You will later submit this to an agent and publishers after you have sent a query letter.

Book proposals contain a variety of sections. Some of them are:

  • Markets: This section asks you to describe your book’s markets—large groups/numbers of people who might be interested in and purchase your book. These are the people who will find your book relevant for some reason.
  • Competing Titles:  In this section you look at the previously published books and compare your book idea to them.
  • About the Author: In this section you write a bio of yourself and discuss why you are the best person to write this book. This is a chance to compare yourself to the authors of the competing books and ask yourself if you can compete with them. Are you unique? Do you have the credentials necessary?
  • Mission Statement:  Do you have a reason to write this book? Is it your purpose or mission? Will your book serve a purpose, too? Will it add benefit and offer value.
  • List of Chapters: Create a table of contents for the potential book. Does it look like you have the makings for a book? Can you see an actual structure and imagine content for a full book?
  • Chapter Summaries: Describe each chapter’s content.
  • Promotion Plan: This is the real business section (or sales plan). How will you promote your book prior to publication and after? This plan ensures your book will sell over time. It’s how you build a fan base of readers and how you create a continuous flow of buyers (readers) for you book.
  • Author’s Platform: This section describes everything you have done to create a base of potential readers for your book. If you have nothing to place in this section, normally you would wait to write your book. However, by blogging a book you build platform (pre-promote your book)–create a platform. This is about getting known before the book deal or before the release of your self-published book to ensure that it sells.

A book proposal has more sections, and all of them help you create a sound business plan for your book. Going through this process helps you see the Big Picture of your book. If you want to explore more about the book proposal process, check out my workbook, How to Evaluate Your Book for Success. If you want more information on how to write a book proposal, check out the two books below.

 

 

Don’t forget to join me and the guest bloggers who joined me this month at
Expert Platform Building 101 + Entrepreneurial Fundamentals 102
on May 19-20 in San Jose, CA. Get the details here. Please register prior to coming (if possible). I have 2  Speaker’s Special discounted tickets left… Contact me directly at nina(at)ninaamir.com, if you are interested.

Filed Under: Book Proposal, Build a Business Around Your Book, The Proposal Tagged With: , , ,

Promotion: Getting A Foreword for Your Blogged Book

February 14, 2012 By 2 Comments

There are lots of ways to promote your book. Some of them happen long before you book is published as a print or ebook. Since my book is two or three months away from release, I’m currently gearing up for full-force promotion, which will begin in May.

Typically, promotion begins about three months before release, gets a big push for three months after release and continues for another three-to-six months after that. Of course, promotion never stops. It continues for the life of the book.

For the next two posts I’m going to discuss two important tasks you might consider undertaking prior to finishing your book: asking someone to write a foreword and getting testimonials, or cover blurbs, about your book. Today, I will discuss forewords. (Check back on Thursday to read about blurbs.)

Not every book has a foreword, but obtaining one offers your book a little extra prestige or clout, especially if it’s written by someone with a recognizable name or title in a field connected with the subject of your book. It’s a vote of confidence from a person respected by potential readers. Your foreword writer basically will tell people via his or her contribution to your book why it is an important contribution to the field and why someone should read it. You can then tell everyone this person wrote a foreword for your book! By telling the world you book has this type of endorsement, you create a buzz and build credibility for the book. Hopefully, this person also will help promote the book as well.

So, how do you get someone to agree to write you foreword? You can contact anyone you feel holds the kind of position I describe above. Call them or email them and tell them about your book. If you are still writing your book, provide them with the overview of your book and include your pitch and any additional information you feel necessary in your email. (See the category on the left called “Proposal” for more information.)

You may also offer to help the person by writing a draft of the foreword yourself; this demonstrates the type of content you desire. They might totally rewrite it or scrap it, or they may just say, “Fine! Print it.” I know that sounds weird, but experts are busy. Sometimes it’s easier for them to simply edit a piece of writing than to create one from scratch. You can also offer bullet points with points you’d like them to make or benefits of the book you’d like them to feature. Not ever authority will read your whole book (or any of it) prior to writing the foreword. In fact, sometimes they will write the foreword without the book actually being complete. Having a foreword in hand when you approach a publisher can be quite helpful actually.

So, how did I get my forewords and why does How to Blog a Book: Write, Publish, and Promote Your Work One Post at a Time, have two, which is a nontraditional approach? I actually received an offer from a particular author for the foreword who had good sales numbers for his book, which was going into its third printing. He was well-known in the publishing industry. He had a book with Writer’s Digest Books as well. My agent and I thought this would help get the book sold, so we said, “Okay,” and preceded.

The publisher, however, later suggested I pursue a second foreword, this time from someone much more notable: Julie Powell of Julie & Julia fame. (That book began as a blog.)  Why? Her name on the cover would help sell books. Well…after several months of pursuing that option, she said “no.”

I, however, decided that the idea of a second foreword from someone in the blogging world appealed to me. After all, my book straddled the world of blogging and writing/publishing. Thus, I began to look for a really great authority on blogging for a second foreword. I did a lot of waiting…and wondering if this foreword would come through. But in the end, in December Chris Garrett agreed. He is the co-author of ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income, the book, and founder of AuthorityBlogger.com, and he works with many authors and bloggers. I was thrilled to team up with him, because he understands the concep of my book, why the book will benefit bloggers, and the work he is doing aligns well with what I teach. Plus, he has way, way more expertise in blogging than I do. In fact, I have purchased his blogging products and am one of his newsletter subscribers and blog subscribers.

Along the way, as sometimes happens, things did not work out with my first foreword writer. So, I began looking for another. My agent, my editor, my publisher, and I put our heads together and came up with a list of possibilities. This time I had the opportunity to carefully choose who I thought would be the best person for the book—someone aligned with its concept and with me and my work as well as someone whom I thought would be a good promotional partner. I choose Christina Katz, author of Get Known Before The Book Deal: Use Your Personal Strengths To Grow An Author Platform and The Writer’s Workout: 366 Tips, Tasks, & Techniques From Your Writing Career Coach. And she agreed quickly on Christmas Day. I was thrilled! Christina and I do very similar work in the world, and I love her books.

You know what else? I really like both Chris and Christina. I had the opportunity to meet both of them in person, and I really like them as people. Overall, it makes me truly happy to have them affiliated with my book.

By the time these experts agreed to write the forewords, my book was in its final editing stages. I was able to give both experts a copy of the manuscript in PDF form to read. I also provided them with an overview. Chris asked me for a little bit of direction as to the points I might want him to make. Christina just went ahead and wrote her foreword with no input from me at all.

Why would these people agree to help me? When made my request, I had met Chris just once and I had never met Christina. Why would an expert take time out of his or her busy day to write a foreword for your book? Simple: First, it’s an honor to be asked. Second, it’s good promotion for them, too. They hope that by having their name on your book their their expert status will increase even more, their business will grow and they will sell more of their own books. Therefore, you have to promote them in the process as well. That’s why I always link to their books when I mention them. You can even do something like this (below) in your posts. (But put it at the end of your post.)

There you have it! That’s how How to Blog a Book ended up with two great forewords! Now, go out and get yourself at least one superb expert foreword for your blogged book.

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Filed Under: Landing an Angent or Traditional Publisher, Overview, Promoting Your Book, Promotion, Selling Books and Information Products Tagged With: , , ,

Darren Rowse on Book Deals and Discovery in the Blogosphere

January 12, 2012 By 4 Comments

Like most recipients of blog-to-book deals, Darren Rowse landed his while simply blogging. However, he already had started thinking about writing a book—or, more specifically, turning his blog, ProBlogger, into a book. Then, he and his blog were discovered. That’s what many of us want—that email or phone call from an agent or publisher saying, “Have you thought of writing a book or turning your blog into a book?”

While I was at BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Los Angeles this past November, I sat down with Darren Rowse, the author of the extremely popular ProBlogger blog and the co-author of ProBlogger the book, which was published in 2010 by Wiley. Darren also writes other blogs Digital Photography School, FeelGooder and TwiTip) and makes his living as a professional blogger.

In this, part two of my interview with Darren, he talks about his book deal, writing his book, how to create a better blog, and getting noticed in the blogosphere. (To read part one, click here.)

How did your blog-to-book deal come about?

ProBlogger, the book, was always something I thought I possibly could do.  By the time [Chris Garrett and I] wrote the book there must have been 4,000 or so posts on ProBlogger. Readers would say, “I can’t find things on your blog. Have you written about so and so?” The problem with a blog is that it’s usually the last post that’s on the front page, and readers don’t have an easy way to find things unless you think carefully about your navigation and how to drive people into your archives.  A lot of the archives sit their unread. I’d already started to write something that was kind of a how-to-blog book for beginners because I was getting a lot of questions about that topic. I was trying to put it together more as an ebook at the time. I didn’t really know how to publish it.

Then Wiley came to me and said, “Have you ever thought of writing a book?”

I thought, “I’ve already started.” So, I sent the guy a copy of what I’d written.

He said, “This is a good basis for a book.” I did need to rewrite it, and I worked with Chris Garrett as a co-author on it and really about taking those bones and adding examples and making it flow a bit more.

How much of ProBlogger, the book, is based on actual blog posts or what was already on the blog?

That original manuscript I was writing was straight from the blog, but most of it was rewritten and updated as a combination of posts brought together. I was writing about how to monetize a blog and had written 300-400 articles on that. I was trying to work out which were the best posts and which were relevant and meshing them together. It was more of a rewrite than a copy and paste, that’s for sure. I took ideas from comments as well; that was probably one of the best parts about it. I’d written things, and then readers had added comments and their different experiences. I was able to take those ideas and incorporate them. Some turned into examples and screen shots used in the book.

The concept of blogging a book revolves around the fact that writing one in short bits—blog posts—makes it less overwhelming.  How did you write your book?

That’s how I ended up doing it. Breaking it down into short sections or tasks.

Although, having said that, I locked myself in a hotel for five days at the end as the deadline loomed and knocked it out. There were times I broke it down and others when I had to vomit out a lot at once. It’s more about your personality and how you work best.

I think working with someone else was good, too. Co-authoring with Chris worked well. His skill set is quite different than mine, and the way he works is quiet different from the way I work. So it was useful to be able to tag team.

What’s the most important thing a blogger can do to get noticed in the blogosphere?

One of the biggest things is just to be useful and create content that’s worth being noticed. You can get noticed by being controversial, being stupid, or attacking someone, or all those things, but unless you’ve got something useful to contribute—something that is actually productive, I think getting noticed is a waste of time. It can be counterproductive to do those other things. So, as a foundational thing, be useful.

Then, try to work at how to serve other bloggers and develop other win-win relationships with them. A lot of the bloggers I’ve worked with, those relationships have started with me offering my services to them or them offering their services to me in some way and us serving each other. This then ends in all sorts of wonderful collaborations and them linking up to me or me linking up to them. A lot of bloggers see each other as competition, but I think we should be trying to grow each others blogs mutually. That’s probably been the best thing for me.

What advice would you give to bloggers and writers or aspiring authors wanting to produce ebooks?

I always wanted to create my own products to sell. Writing a [traditionally published] book is great, but obviously you are earning a very small percentage of the sale price, which is fine. There are other benefits to writing and publishing a book.  I always wanted to do it but felt it was overwhelming. As someone who writes posts, which could be 100 words or maybe 1,000 words, to write something so big felt overwhelming.

My first ebooks where purely taking blogs posts I’d written, putting them into a collection, adding a few more bits to each of them, and then selling them almost as short cuts to the topic. I was very skeptical as to whether this would work; I didn’t think my readers would want repurposed content, but in the end they actually demanded it. My first ebook was purely a collection of posts that I added a little bit to, and readers had been asking for me to do that. So, my first piece of advice is: The things you’ve already written could be the basis for your ebook.

We’ve done about 14 ebooks now, and the ones that have done the best have been a combination of teaching and homework, or tasks to do, rather than purely information. They’ve driven people to action. So 31 Days to Build a Better Blog gives you something to read every day and something to do every day. It’s more of a workbook. We’ve tried to incorporate things to go away and do even in our photography books, and the feedback from that has been really good. In fact, people often take our ebooks now and run a course on them on their own blogs, which we are quite happy for them to do because they point people back to the ebook; they all work through the ebook together. 31 Days to Build a Better Blog is a great example. Heaps of groups have gone through that together. They’re using our ebook, and that’s driven a lot of the sales.

In terms of topics for your ebook, you want to think really carefully about the outcome of ebook. On Digital Photography School, we released two ebooks by the same author, both very similar in terms of the voice, both beautifully designed, really great information. One was about travel photography, so it had a really specific outcome; when you read this it will improve your travel photos. The other one was about color, which is a really important topic, but there is no tangible outcome. People weren’t going to read it and take travel photos. They just weren’t worrying about color. We found it harder to market that second book because it didn’t have a tangible outcome. I think choosing topics and thinking about how you are going to market them even before you start writing the ebook is really important. That’s something we learned. Now we bring our marketing people in to talk to the author in before we start. We want the author to write with some tangible outcomes in mind. That’s helped a lot.

What advice would you give to writers wanting to blog a book—or blog—and build readership/platform while doing so?

Certainly, when I talked to Wiley, they sparked up even more when I told them we had a readership and we had a community and were on Twitter and all of that.

I get a lot of emails from authors saying, “My book is coming out next week, how do start a blog to support it?” It’s just way too late at that point. At the very least you should be sharing some of the topics you are writing about, getting feedback and getting engagement around those topics as you are writing, if not posting some of your content as you are writing it. That not only improves your writing, but you are building a readership for your book as you do so, building anticipation for the book.

What one or two things that you did would you attribute to your blogging success and to the book deal you landed?

I think a lot of it comes down to longevity. Most bloggers give up after or by three months. Blogging for a year, two years, three years, nine years—I think I’m up to now, that builds your brand, builds your credibility, shows your readers you’re not just here one day and gone the next, which builds trust with readers. While at BlogWorld Expo I’ve met people who have been reading my blog since 2003. Even though I don’t know them, they feel like they know me. I think that is a big part of it—that personal connection people feel over time. So, longevity and being useful.

Every post I write I ask myself, “Does this matter?  Is this a post that is actually going to matter to someone, or is it about my ego? Is it actually going to serve someone?” If it isn’t going to serve someone, there really isn’t much point in publishing it.

If you’ve been blogging your book as discussed on this blog, you don’t need to weed through thousands of posts to book your blog. If you have simply been blogging, however, like Darren, you can begin repurposing your posts for a traditionally published book or a variety of ebooks—and you can continue to build your blog readership so you get discovered by a traditional publisher or become attractive to one when you shop your book idea to agents and publishers. Remember, generating traffic to your blog ensures book sales for any book—traditionally published or self-published.

Let me know how you’re blogging and book blogging efforts are going. Feel free to leave your questions and comments here for Darren or for me.

Look me up at the Writer’s Digest Conference in New York City (January 20-22). I’ll be teaching a session on “How to Blog a Book.” As a new attendee, you can save $115 on full registration with this code: WDCSPEAKER12. Go to http://bit.ly/WDC2012 to register.

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Filed Under: Blogging Short Books, Blogs Turned Into Books, Booking a Blog (Repurposing Content into a Book), Building a Better Blog, Landing an Angent or Traditional Publisher Tagged With: , , ,

How to Write a Book Proposal for Your Blogged Book

August 28, 2011 By 1 Comment

When a literary agent or an acquisition editor from a publishing company contacts you about making your blog into a book or publishing your blogged book, you want to be ready. Ready equates to having a book proposal written.

Many aspiring authors and bloggers have no idea what goes into a traditional nonfiction book proposal. For this reason, I’d like to direct your attention to a series of blog posts I’ve been writing on my other blog, Write Nonfiction Now. This series is called “Demystifying the Nonfiction Book Proposal,” and it takes you through all the sections of a proposal and tells you want to include and how to prepare it. You can read the first post in the series here. All the posts are listed here.

I’ve described each of the sections of a book proposal in this blog as well. You can find these posts in the category called “The Proposal.”

Don’t make an agent or an editor wait for you to prepare a proposal. Be ready when you and your blog get noticed.

I actually got my blog noticed by writing a book proposal and then having my agent peddle it to publishers. You can do that, too.

By the way, the new delivery date for How to Blog a book is March 23. (This could change…) If you want to be sure you know when the How to Blog a Book printed book is released–and are aware of any pre-release or post release hoohah, be sure to subscribe to this blog using the form below (Plus, doing so ensures you don’t miss any blog posts.):

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Filed Under: Book Proposal, Landing an Angent or Traditional Publisher, The Proposal Tagged With: , ,

How a Blog Might Help You Land a Book Deal

February 15, 2011 By 1 Comment

So many writers don’t want to blog. I don’t understand why, since I love blogging. I have five blogs.

And some writers may not want to blog a book. Maybe you are reading this blog even though you don’t plan on blogging a book–but maybe you’d like to know how blogging will help you land a book deal. Maybe you want to know if you should try blogging (even though you aren’t sure you’ll like it) because you want to get published. Indeed, blogging is a great way to get the attention of agents and acquisition editors–if you can get some traffic (readers) to your blog.

I read a column in the Huffington Post today by Alan Paul, who explains not only how blogging gave new life to his writing but also helped him land a column at WSJ.com and a book deal. Maybe reading the column will help you understand the value of blogging.

Here’s my two-cents worth on the topic: I enjoy how blogging has allowed me to develop a voice. I also love the fact that it has given me a forum for my ideas, knowledge and thoughts…but not as a journal. I write as way to offer something of value to others. And when I get comments on my blogs telling me I have helped someone or that the information is useful, that offers me a huge amount of fulfillment.

Plus, I receive satisfaction in the fact that my blogs get read. Yeah, sometimes its just by 20 or 30 people a day, but that’s 600-900 a month–the average book only sells 250 copies per year. Some of my blogs get several thousand readers per month. Like any writer, I like knowing I’m being read.

Someone once asked me how much I write each day. They wanted to know if I sit down each day and churn out a certain number of pages. I had to stop and really think about it. Well…four or five different blogs at 250-500 words–each one at least once a week if not a few times a week (this one five times a week)–and then there are the miscellaneous guest blogs…oh yeah…those few pages of the book I’m working on I squeezed in each morning. I guess I actually write a lot each day just by blogging. In fact, someone told me I am quite prolific after seeing my continuous flow of posts showing up on Facebook.

Some bloggers make money from their blogs–usually from advertising. You need a lot of people coming to your blogs for that–and lots of page views.

If you are like Paul–and lots of other bloggers, a blog might lead to a column and then to a book deal. It’s a great way to build your platform. If nothing else, as the old cereal commercial said, “Try it. You might like it.” If it gets you writing every day, that’s as good a reason as any to blog.

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Filed Under: Landing an Angent or Traditional Publisher Tagged With: , , ,

Learn First-Hand How to Go from Blog to Book

February 1, 2011 By 1 Comment

I discovered two superb posts about how one blogger’s blog became a book. Now, Gina Trapani, author of Lifehacker, didn’t set out to blog a book, but she offers some great information–not unlike the information I’ve offered–on how to blog a book. She also describes the process she went through to take make her blog into a book.

Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker.com, has a semi-weekly feature called Geek to Live that appears on Lifehacker.

Notice that in the first post, she says she posted 12 times a day every day for 9 months. Wow. That goes along with what my friend pro-blogger Bill Belew says: post 3 times a day until you reach 1,000 posts. Then you’ll see traffic show up at your blog. Traffic didn’t just show up at her blog; an agent did.

In her second post, Trapani tells you how to organize your blog posts into a book if you didn’t do so earlier. She organized over 5,000 blog posts into book format.

I tell you to create a manuscript as you blog your book. However, if you didn’t set out to blog a book–which Trapani did not–her great advice!

In this second post, she also explains the process she went through writing the book and working with her editor at the publishing house. She explains the methods she used to write her book in five months–turn turn those blog posts into a usable manuscript.

Here are Trapani’s posts:

Part1
Part 2

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Filed Under: Blogs Turned Into Books, Landing an Angent or Traditional Publisher, Writing Posts/Chapters Tagged With: , , ,

One Good Blog Post May Be All You Need to Get Published

August 14, 2010 By 3 Comments

Sometimes one blog posts is all it takes to get you noticed by readers, other bloggers, radio show hosts, agents and, ultimately, a publisher. That’s how it worked for award-winning author Patricia V. Davis anyway—and it can work the same way for you.

She wrote one blog post that went viral, grabbing the attention of agents and publishers and now she has a brand new book deal.

Davis, the author of Harlot’s Sauce: A Memoir of Food, Family, Love, Loss and Greece, wrote a blog post called “From an Older Woman to a Younger One” to support and encourage a 21-year-old reader of hers. That post (also titled on some sites, “Ten Things I’d Tell My Younger Self”) struck a chord with many people. Within weeks, hundreds of other blogs picked it up, and eventually the producers of the nationally syndicated radio program Your Time with Kim Iverson asked Davis to appear on the show to read her post. The day after the program aired, dozens of listeners befriended Davis on Facebook and retweeted the post.

Not surprisingly, this attracted the attention of a literary agent, who asked Davis if she’d be interested in expanding the post into a book. That book, The Diva Doctrine, was picked up by Cedar Fort, and will be published in 2011.

So, while I encourage writers to blog a whole book in the hope of getting discovered, here’s an example of how one really great post can accomplish that feat. So, at least blog if you don’t blog a book!

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Filed Under: Blogs Turned Into Books, Landing an Angent or Traditional Publisher Tagged With: , , ,

Market Your Blogged Book to an Agent or Publisher

June 22, 2010 By 1 Comment

 

Okay, so you’re a traditional publishing holdout, and this blogged book exercise managed to get you to write your whole manuscript but didn’t get you discovered. Now it’s time to get that proposal written and approach an agent or a small to mid-sized publisher.

In this case, you must do two things: write a fabulous query and write a phenomenal proposal. A query letter contains three things: a lead paragraph that entices an agent or publisher to want to read your manuscript, your pitch plus information about the length of your book and any special features, and why you are the perfect person to write the book.  The proposal contains the nine essential elements a publisher will use to determine if your book fits their list, if they feel a market exists for the book and if they feel you are both the right person to write the book and the best person to become their business partner. To learn about these elements, go back and read the earlier posts about the sections of a nonfiction book proposal. You can find the first one here; subsequent ones follow.

Put your book proposal together and have it professionally edited. The nonfiction book proposal represents the most important selling document you will ever create. They say you only have one chance to make a first impressions; that holds true when pitching a book. Let a professional help you make the best first impression possible. Make every word count and present an error-free document. Also, be sure that the editor you choose knows what goes into a nonfiction book proposal. Don’t just use any editor.

Also have your query letter professionally edited and proofread.

Then send out the query letter to agents and publishers. Large publishing houses typically only want agented submissions. You can submit to small and some mid-sized publishers without an agent.

Once you get a positive response from an agent or publisher, you can send in your proposal with a cover letter.

Check publisher’s and agent’s submission guidelines. For submission guidelines or to find agents and publishers, check Writer’s Market or Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, and Literary Agents.

Don’t give up if you are rejected many times. Even the best authors have been rejected hundreds of times. I’ve heard this advice: When you get a rejection letter, just say, “Next.” Or say, “I must have sent that query to the wrong address. Next time I’ll send it to the right address.”

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Filed Under: Landing an Angent or Traditional Publisher, Query Letter, The Proposal Tagged With: , , , ,