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Meet Gail Kearns. MediaQuire's featured blogger.  Whether you have an idea for a book or if you have just finished writing your book, Gail's knowledge and experience will be invaluable.  

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Essential Ingredients of a Dynamite Book Proposal

If you’re an author who wants to travel the traditional route to publishing, you’ll need to write a book proposal to send to agents. There are virtually no big publishers who will accept unsolicited manuscripts … unless perhaps you have a personal contact with a senior editor at one of the big houses, preferably a close relative or best friend!

It’s a tough market, especially in today’s publishing environment, and editors look for reasons to put queries in the round file rather than accept them. Therefore, a dynamite book proposal is your chance to prove that you’ve got what it takes to spin your book idea into literary gold.

There are no rigid rules about what shape a book proposal needs to take, but there are some tried and true elements that agents and editors will look for.

• A great title page. A terrific title will go a long way toward selling your book.
• An original idea (but not too original). What niche will your title fill? If you’re writing a how-to or self-help book, are you providing a unique solution to a problem? If you’re writing fiction, do you have a unique voice and have you created compelling characters that are notable?
• Why is your book so important? Is it timely? How is it different/better than other similar books on the market?
• Who will read your book? Here’s where you need to prove to an agent or editor that there are enough people who will buy your book to make it a worthwhile publishing venture.
• Why are you so qualified to write the book you’re proposing or have in mind? Do you have an established platform? What connections do you have that will help get your book to its intended audience?

In addition to the above, you’ll need to present an overview of your project, spell out your marketing and publicity plan, do a comparative analysis, and provide a chapter outline as well as sample chapters. All of this has to be in a super correct format to send to potential agents and/or editors.

Good luck if you’re going this route! If you can pitch agents/editors with a well-crafted book proposal, you’ll hopefully get fewer rejections than most. Speaking of rejections, we’ve all heard the stories of how many rejections an author gets. They’re true, by the way, but I believe if you’ve got a superb project you’ll find the right home for it.

As always, here’s to your success!

To Press & Beyond are experts in book publishing consulting and support services who will take your book project and shepherd it through writing, editing, design & layout, printing, distribution, sales and promotion, both in trade and niche markets and on the Internet. They have worked with over 300 authors and independent publishers as far away as London, Switzerland, Egypt and Thailand.

To learn more about Gail and her company To Press and Beyond, visit ToPressandBeyond.com.

Write a comment

Shelly
Posts: 3

Re:
Reply #3 on : Sun March 07, 2010, 09:16:30

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This is such an interesting blog - have been following all the posts and really enjoy all this information. Thank you Gail and Thank you Victoria for bringing us such good stuff!!

Mark Johnson
Posts: 3

hmmm
Reply #2 on : Fri March 05, 2010, 10:23:50

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After reading this blog post- I am inspired, only to rewrite my proposal. Mark

Jamie lee
Posts: 3

good info
Reply #1 on : Thu March 04, 2010, 12:29:30

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I enjoyed this very much - thank you for sharing.

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