Book Proposal Coaching Update
Just a quick update on the book proposal coaching opportunity. (If you have no idea what this about, click here.) I have received about 20 entries so far, and several come in each day. It is such a blast learning about you and what you want to write books on. This is already the coolest thing I’ve done on this blog by far—mainly because it’s giving me a window into who you are and what’s important to you. I will pick an entry early in the new year, and we’ll get to work. My hope is that others will work right alongside us on their own proposals. Thanks to all of you who have already submitted ideas and bios. This is going to be fun!
I Want to Be Your Book Proposal Coach
I have decided to switch things up for the remainder of this series on how to write a book proposal. A number of you have encouraged me to use specific examples of things to do or not do in a book proposal. I would like to do this, and I do think it would be useful to writers who are working on book proposals. The problem is that I don’t have permission from the writers who have sent me proposals to use excerpts of what they sent in. So, I’d like to be your coach. In other words, I want to help someone write, edit, and otherwise craft a book proposal. And I’d like to post about our progress on this blog so that others can learn from the work we do. To be honest I’m not sure what shape the blog posts will take, but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained. My hope is that blogging about the process of creating a book proposal while actually doing it will reveal things that would not be revealed otherwise. I also hope that some will choose to work on their own proposals right along with us. Let’s make a workshop out of this. I’m looking for someone who: Will give me permission to post here about our progress, including excerpts of the proposal, to help others develop their own proposals Already has a solid nonfiction Christian Living book concept (Sorry novelists!) Is committed to prompt communication with me Won’t expect anything from me except coaching advice Is committed to finishing the proposal in four weeks or less. Is fun to work with! If you’re interested, comment on this post or email me at chad@chadrallen.com with a one-sentence summary of your concept and your bio. See these two posts for help: How to Come Up with a Great Book Concept The Very First Thing I Look at in Your Book Proposal and Why I’ll keep this open for a few days to a week to see what kind of response comes in. My idea is to pick the series back up in the new year. As responses come in (assuming they do!), I’ll review them and pick someone to work with. Then we’ll get to work. If I don’t get much of a response or if for some other reason it just doesn’t seem like a good thing to do, no problem. But I thought I’d give it a whirl. And away we go.
Why the Right Motivation Matters for Your Book Proposal
Over the next several posts I want to provide a more or less step-by-step process for creating a compelling book proposal. I will do my best to make the process as practical and simple as I can. If you have a book proposal in process, or if you have been thinking about trying to get published, this series is for you. And if you know of someone who would benefit from this series, I hope you’ll let them know about it. The very first thing to look at in writing a book proposal is your motivation. Now you might say, “That’s easy. My motivation is to get published!” And that makes sense, of course, but I see two problems with this motivation. It is author oriented instead of reader oriented. Nothing is inherently wrong with wanting to get published, but do you see the difference between this motivation and one that is about serving readers? If you focus on getting a contract in the mail or seeing your name in print, you’ll write one kind of proposal. If you focus on serving readers, you’ll write a very different, and much better, book proposal. It is short-sighted. Let’s say you succeed and get published. If your vision doesn’t go beyond that, your book is likely to fail in the marketplace, and that will be the end of your writing career. Here we can learn something from the wikiHow on how to chop wood with your bare hands: “Don’t aim at the board itself; if you do that, your hand will tend to stop there. Aim your strike six inches beyond the board.” Breaking the board becomes a byproduct of striking beyond the board. Your goal as a writer is to concept and write and promote a book that performs well in the marketplace. If your proposal reflects this motivation, getting published will be a byproduct. In other words, the subtext of your proposal should not be, “Hey publisher, give me a chance!” It should be “Hey publisher, I’m on a mission to help readers, and here’s my freaking awesome plan to reach them.” Let’s start there. With this goal in mind, the next step is equally important: coming up with a great concept.
3 Ways to Keep the Doors to Publishing Swinging OPEN
My boss, the publisher for multiple divisions at Baker Publishing Group, says this often: “The door to publishing is either swinging open, or it’s swinging closed.” He’s right. If you are a published author or aspire to be one, your chances of publishing are either getting better or worse all the time. The trick is to keep the door the swinging open. Following are three ways to do that. Platform. Keep expanding your platform, your ability to find exposure for your work. This can sound daunting, but it needn’t be. Building a platform takes time. Resign yourself to that, decide it’s important (it is), and then block off time each week to work on it. Read books and blogs about it. Try something new on your blog or Facebook page. Set aside time to compose excellent tweets. Start saving for a good website design. Also, think about how to sustain your energy for this work. Do you have some friends whose help you can enlist? Is there somebody you should host to lunch? And what’s your mission in all this? There’s nothing like a clear sense of mission to keep you going for the long haul. Concept. I remember a conversation with an agent about the concept an author was pursuing. The last time this author and I had spoken, we had talked about one concept. “It’s not big enough,” this agent was telling me. “We’re going to save that one for later. Instead, we’re doing this,” and the agent proceeded to knock my socks off with the concept they had settled on. Concept is just hugely important. I recommend keeping a running list of book ideas. Brainstorm a list and then keep adding to or removing from it as you interact with other people about them. Concept is so important, in fact, that if you pick the right one and pair it with excellent writing, you can steal past the platform bugaboo, and use your book to build your platform! The wrong concept can hurt you in at least two ways. It can send publishers packing, or, if the concept is contracted, the resulting book can fail to sell, and that hurts you too, which brings me to my last point. Sales. Getting published can be the worst thing you can do for your writing career. How? If your book does not sell well, you will likely have a hard time getting a second contract. A really hard time. Here’s why. Book buyers have long memories. If we sell your book to an account, and it immediately starts sucking the retail exhaust pipe, that account will remember. If we bring your next book to that same account, the account is likely to say no thanks or reduce the purchase significantly. Publishing is a sacred trust between author and publisher, and it’s just true that publishers need authors to help move their books. When an author chooses to take a three-month European sabbatical as her book is releasing, that hurts sales. We can’t stop authors from doing this, of course, but we won’t be excited to publish your next one. Work hard to promote and sell your book because the converse of the above is also true. Books that perform well in the marketplace give you all kinds of leverage the next time around. Publishers will be clamoring for your next one. What are you doing to keep the door to publishing swinging open?
Why Traditional Publishing Should Kiss Self-ePublishing’s Feet!
Traditional publishers should welcome self-published ebooks for the same reason major league baseball clubs are grateful for good farm teams. Fact is, traditional publishers have large infrastructures that require the books we publish to perform at a certain level. If every book we publish sells 300 copies, we’ll be out of business in a year. But you won’t. If you sell 300 copies of a $10 book, you just made $3000. OK, take some off the top for editing, design, conversion, etc., but you get the point. Following are five reasons why I, a guy who makes his living from traditional publishing, am grateful for self-epublishing: Self-published ebooks allow anyone with a computer to publish a book. It is nothing less than historic that I can write that sentence. It’s FREAKING AMAZING!!!! Because of self-publishing, I don’t have to feel so bad when I decline a proposal. I can point to a great alternative! Self-epublishing adds an indicator of whether an author’s proposed book will be viable for us. Essentially we can crowd-source manuscripts before taking one on. If an author’s self-published work sold thousands of copies, chances are, her book with us will do even better. It gives you and me both a way to generate income! All we have to do is write a book and self-publish it. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a few ideas rolling around. Self-publishing is a great way to help someone, including authors we publish, build a platform. Does self-epublishing spell the end for traditional publishing? I doubt it. We provide a host of services in addition to bookstore placement that add value to the publishing process. And I suspect bookstore placement will continue to play a role, albeit diminished. But frankly, if technology is such that traditional publishers are no longer necessary, so be it. It was never about us anyway. It’s about the content. In Baker’s case, it’s about “high-quality writings that represent historic Christianity and serve the diverse interests and concerns of evangelical readers.” If we can help provide such, awesome, we’d love to keep doing so. If we’re no longer necessary, that’s okay too. The important thing is that content is available and readers can get to it. I’m fairly agnostic about how that happens. Want to know more about the ins and outs of self-epublishing? Erin Ulrich wrote a great book on the topic, and she’s currently blogging a series titled 31 Days of Self Publishing. If you were going to self-epublish a book, what would it be?
The Very First Thing I Look at in Your Book Proposal and Why
Your bio. I want to know who you are. I want to know what your networks and affiliations are, where you’re from, how broad your platform is, what you’ve accomplished, what you’re passionate about. I want to know where you’re from and hear something about your family. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this business, it’s the importance of entering partnerships with reliable people—people who tell the truth, who follow through on their commitments, who see writing as an integral part of life and ministry. You may be surprised how rare reliable people are, and you may be surprised how damaging it is when a business enters a partnership with someone who is unreliable. It’s all about people! I love watching the questions Mark Cuban asks on Shark Tank. His questions are all about how hard the entrepreneur is going to work. Of course the business ideas themselves are important, but equally important is the hustle factor. Are you going to work hard to make this venture succeed? Your bio is my first glimpse into whether you’re someone I can trust, but it’s also a glimpse into whether we would have fun working together. It’s no accident that we acquisitions types end up contracting authors with whom we enjoy sharing a meal. What goes into a good bio? A good bio is no more than 250 words (shorter is okay!) tells me what your main professional/vocational roles are tells me any previous work of note you’ve accomplished references your affiliations and networks tells me how much you speak in a given year and how many people you reach says where you’re from and a bit about your family tells me what you’re passionate about is written in a straightforward manner with perhaps a dash (a dash, I tell you!) of humor A bad bio: goes on forever and ever doesn’t tell me what your main professional/vocational role is includes more than one sentence about what you’re passionate about does not include any info about what you’ve accomplished does not tell me who you are, what your networks are does not evidence any hustle is arrogant or otherwise off-putting Authors understand how important a description of the book and synopsis are. They recognize how crucial it is to provide a killer writing sample. But don’t forget about your bio! Make it sing. If you would like to paste your bio into a comment, I will read it and give you some input. Bonus Content: The best way to start a nonfiction book project is by writing a book proposal. I’d love to give you a free copy of my Book Proposal Guidelines, used by countless authors to write their book proposals.