Every book needs a game plan to play its way into a publisher's lineup. Things like comparable books and the heartbeat promise of a story are the same for fiction and nonfiction. Unlike what you might have heard, every publisher makes an investment and wants to earn it back when they buy a book from an author — whether that book is a true story or not.
The difference is that a nonfiction book doesn't have to be finished before it sells. Some key parts of the book need to be finished and look very good, though. Otherwise, you'll just hear crickets. What follows is a two-page summary of making the proposal, the first look at any book telling a true story. Think memoirs or yoga books, or that passionate story about living every day because you might die tomorrow.
Process
In short, a proposal is finding books that are like yours but missing a key element. Plus, finding a gap in the market where nobody's writing a book like yours and being able to name that gap. You also find a specific way to describe your readers and where you will find them. You will need ideas and promises about how you will help market and sell the book. Finally, you write: a table of contents, plus a summary into the inside flap or back cover copy. You create and polish a few sample chapters, and buff up an inspiring bio that shows you're the best-qualified person to write your book.
Comparables and competition
We might as well start here, because it's the point where the publisher's sales and marketing team will decide to buy your book. You're either filling a wide and well-identified gap — holy cow, no books about being a minister and working for gun safety — or you can add something captivating and essential to what's already on the shelves of bookstores.
If you don't know it already, you need to think in terms of bookstores while you create a proposal. A publisher will think of them first, since more books are bought in paper than any other medium. If you get the deal done, the audiobook opportunity for you to narrate will follow.
Where to look? I like the daily reports of Publisher's Marketplace, the thorough reporting from Publisher's Weekly, the grassroots bookselling stories in Shelf Awareness, and the fun of Edelweiss+ catalogs, and even Amazon's Also Purchased books. Shelf Awareness has a nice element called Shelf Talker, which suggests what a bookseller might say to a customer about a book.
Dig in. Ask your author friends if they know of anything like your book. Come to this part of the proposal prepared and you will look more professional. Being perceived as professional is much more important for a nonfiction author.
Knowing your audience
Saying that a book is for mothers or dads just won't do. Those are chunks of the world too big to target. If you say it's for divorced dads with tough custody agreements, you're much closer. (My memoir Stealing Home targets those readers among its audience. It also appeals to baseball fans who are fathers of Little Leaguers. "This book is for readers who enjoyed Dan Shaughnessy's Senior Year.")
If your book is "For everybody," it's really for nobody. That's because it's too difficult to discover a book to read while it campaigns alongside the bestsellers published by Bigger Companies Than Your Publisher. Who use Bigger Discovery Budgets: marketing.
Nothing helps you find readers for your book — and convince a publisher you can lead those readers to a purchase — better than specific descriptions tied to resources. For one memoirist I've coached, we tracked down associations covering counseling for suicide, another for legislative staffers working to get bills passed, plus associations of law enforcement. Putting membership numbers onto these helps a publisher visualize sales.
Everybody knows somebody. If you have a friend or an author acquaintance who is a police officer, or who works on a senator's staff, or helps on a hotline, you find out where they gather and trade messages. Believe it or not, Facebook can be a great resource here, if you don't know people like your prospective readers. And if you don't know your prospective readers, well, that's something to look at while you're choosing a book to write.
The overview writing: table of contents and summary
This doesn't work quite as well for memoirs, but a table of contents is an essential element in any nonfiction book proposal. (A memoir has episodes that it uses as its backbone.) As an author, you probably already have one of these lists which you call an outline. If you don't have one, it's time to go back and create it — as much for the book's chances at being a good book as for your chances to get a publishing contract to finish it. Good books just sell better at every step, including the step where you sell your book to the publisher.
This is the spot where you look over your contents and then write that summary -- the one that seems way too short and turns out to be the very thing you use to decide to buy a book yourself.
The sample writing: your best chapters
The beauty of proposing nonfiction is that your best foot forward does not have to be your first one. You can include a sample chapter from the middle of the book, or a rousing conclusion, and get just as far as submitting an introduction. The writing has to be stellar, which will usually involve an editor or a key reader who also is an author. You can't see everything that your writing should be, as well as everything it can be.
If you have a couple of chapters, or three, that demonstrate varying styles of voice from the same book, that's a good reason to include a smorgasbord of writing. For example, you might have case histories as well as an inspiring overview. The point of submitting a sample is to show you're a good enough writer to invest in; be ready to be edited once your deal is closed. Your book will be different than your samples. Nobody can say for sure how different. Publishers prefer authors with experienced voices.
Bio, or why it's gotta be you
Authors arrive at the bio with some trepidation, secretly knowing all of the things they haven't done as well as someone else. This is something to cast aside when you tell a publisher who you are. There's something personal about your life that made you want to write the book. There's also something professional or accomplished about you that makes you an expert. Not the expert — that's too much to ask. As just one expert, you will still know more than most readers. If you're an expert at testifying before legislators' staffs because you've done it for years, that counts. If you created a style of yoga that puts thousands of people onto mats, people who never thought they could do yoga, that's expertise, too.
Don't think this bio is going to be its best on your first draft. It can be a good strategy to have outside eyes help you with the bio. An interview conducted by somebody with journalism skills, just like the one you'd hope for at a resume service, is a grand tool to build a bio.
If you have recommendations or references you use to practice your life's work, or your superior volunteering career, you can call on this to show who you are, too. LinkedIn offers a way to solicit recommendations. You can use this to fill up your testimonial cup.
Marketing and Selling: It's kinda on you
Despite how it might seem, a publishing deal to create a book still falls back on you every day. Yes, your publisher has details and experience to guide you, as well as people who do the marketing and sales for a living. However, you are the only person who cares about your book every single day. Publishers recognize this and sign up the authors who know they are the starters in the publishing lineup.
Not only do you create the content, but you also find the readers and sometimes close the deal. Nobody will track down book clubs and blog communities and even TV-social media-Web like you will. If all of that is beyond your experience, you can fix that. Hire a publicist or a social media expert. Lots of big-time authors do this, because publishers have a finite bandwidth to help authors in the publishing stable.
You will need specifics to get a proposal accepted: I'll approach these communities. I'll write and submit for these blogs. I will stock a YouTube channel and connect with these existing contacts. I will approach these library systems. If you've been covered in the media, this is where you bring it up.
Get yourself out there
Be brave and have swagger. As Brenda Ueland said in If You Want to Write, "Be bold, free, and truthful." She also says you should "Be careless, reckless — a lion and a pirate when you write."
Get Brenda's book. It will feed you like a lion tamer and fill your treasure chests with courage. Writing a proposal is brave, good work.
If you'd like help with your proposal process, I like working with authors who want to make bold strides toward publication. Publisher's deals are a good thing to pursue, once you add up everything you must do to self-publish. Contact me so we can talk.