What is a Book Proposal?
These posts are only a week apart, but as I wrote last week, building good metaphorical tilth can take just as long as building literal tilth. In the real world, you’ll likely be tackling tilth AND the development of your book idea, in parallel, for months. But here in the world of make-believe, let’s pretend your tilth efforts are humming along and your book idea is a polished gem. It’s time to get serious about your book. In nonfiction book publishing, that means it’s time to put together your book proposal.
What is a book proposal?
Put simply, a book proposal is a document that makes your book feel as real as possible, without actually writing the whole thing. In nonfiction publishing, the vast majority of book projects are pitched, evaluated, and signed up by publishers from a book proposal rather than a full manuscript.
A brief note on approaching agents
As an agent, I put together book proposals for editors, so I recognize that my advice for an effective proposal is coming from that perspective. You (quite rightly) might be more concerned at the moment with approaching agents. You might also (again, quite rightly) point out that most agents have different submission guidelines: some just want an initial pitch, some want sample writing, some want a synopsis and author biography and sample writing.
Here's why I suggest you keep reading: first, unless you are only pitching one or two agents, I think it’s best to put the work in to create a full proposal. Not only will you be able to easily adapt it to different agents’ guidelines, but you’ll have a terrific document to start from when you do sign with an agent—and if you don’t sign with an agent, you’ll be ready to approach publishers directly if you prefer. Second, agents and editors aren’t that different. We’re all bookish humans, we read a ton, and we’re hungrily looking for fresh material that gets us excited. In fact, a proposal that is editor-ready is even more exciting to agents, since they always have to weigh how much work they’ll need to put in to get a project editor-ready.
So, what does this book proposal look like? The unhelpful answer is that “it depends.” Literary agents all have their own formats for book proposals, and even for the same agent their book proposal format will vary to suit each project. That said, there is a rough consensus on the necessary sections of a book proposal: most will include an introductory overview of the book project, a proposed chapter structure with chapter summaries, an author biography with promotion and publicity avenues, a full sample chapter, and a section on the market and competition for the book. All told, these sections can add up to a full proposal that runs anywhere from 30 to 50 pages, and sometimes even longer depending on how much the author wants or needs to write to persuasively communicate the project’s potential.
For the next half-dozen posts or so, we will jump into each proposal section in detail, using real book proposals to share techniques that have proven successful. Before we get into all that, though, let’s take a big-picture view of the proposal journey that’s ahead.
How to climb Book Proposal Mountain
How do we tackle all those sections of a book proposal? I like to think of it like climbing a mountain: first, you can’t do it all at once; and second, there’s almost always a route that is easier than others. The first lesson is straightforward: when I work with authors who don’t already have a book proposal in hand, I never ask them to write a whole proposal draft for me to review—we go one section at a time, moving to the next when we’ve got the current section well in hand.
The second lesson is a bit more subjective for book proposals than it probably is for mountains. Here’s my preferred route for scaling Book Proposal Mountain:
Market and competition
Chapter structure and summaries
Overview
Sample chapter
Author biography
The market section is the least fun, but trust me, it only gets less fun the longer you avoid it. Plus, if you did my fit-fandom-freshness book-idea exercise three weeks ago, your brain is already thinking about the market. There’s no better time to rip off that band-aid than right now. From there, I find the chapter structure is the next step that results in the biggest payoff—it’s odd to say, but there’s something about a table of contents with chapter summaries that always gives me a thrill. It’s like reaching the top of a hill and seeing the whole path laid out in front of you for the first time.
With a completed chapter structure and market section, you have the main tools you need to craft the overview that kicks off the proposal. Ideally, the overview will communicate not only what the book will actually be, but why it will be a rousing success—it’s so much easier to make that case when you have a crystal clear vision of both the book itself and its commercial prospects.
From there, it’s time to take the plunge and write the sample chapter. Strategically choosing which chapter to write is so much easier when you have all the other major pieces of the proposal in place. You don’t want it to overlap too much with the narrative material in the overview, for example, nor do you want to choose a chapter that might be an “odd duck” in the finished book. (Also, don’t write one of the hard chapters! I’m only half-joking here—there will likely be chapters that require research that you haven’t done yet, and unless there is a strong reason to write that chapter now, I highly recommend kicking that can down the road.)
The author biography rounds everything out, and I like to save it for the end because a) it’s the easiest section, and at this point the author is probably exhausted; and b) the author’s platform has likely been growing this whole time! No reason to add social-media demographics to the proposal and then have to go back and update all those numbers again at the end of the proposal process.
The climb is always stressful
Even though building a book proposal is much easier than writing an entire book, the process will still be difficult or unpleasant at times. This difficulty is a constructive gut check: keep in mind that the book-writing process will be ten times harder. If you are getting zero joy or fulfillment out of building the book proposal, I highly recommend taking a step back to consider whether it’s worth it to write the book. If you decide it’s not worth it, keep in mind that this is NOT a failure (though it might feel like it at the time). You’ve just preserved a sh*tload of your time to pursue something more rewarding. (Remember that 2,000 hours from Week 2?) Maybe this idea should be a podcast, a newsletter, an op-ed, or an online course instead.
Before you make that final decision, however, do make sure you’re not suffering from a more run-of-the-mill sense of burnout. In the same way that climbing Mount Everest involves breaks at five camps to acclimatize and rest, working on a book proposal is best done with breaks between the major sections to rest and gain a bit of perspective on what you’ve written. Otherwise, you risk burnout and the inability to clearly judge what you have on the page.
Speaking from experience, I can say agents are just as susceptible to this as authors: I remember once, while working on a revision of a sample chapter with an author, I had lost any sense of excitement and optimism about the project. In despair, I shared the existing draft with my colleagues, wondering if they had any suggestions on how to improve it . . . and they came back saying it looked terrific. We went out with it and got a wonderful deal at auction. Make sure you take those breaks! There will be highs and lows as you build your book proposal, and when you’re exhausted the lows can seem permanent and insurmountable.
That said, all those highs and lows are in the future—we’re all basically at base camp at the moment, checking our gear and reviewing our route.
Next week I will not write a full post, since it’s a holiday weekend, but let’s try an experiment: If you have any questions on this proposal overview, or on anything else I’ve been discussing so far, post it in the comments and I’ll try to answer it next Friday! If it goes well I’ll set up a consistent Q&A schedule—and if there aren’t any questions we’ll keep moving ahead as we have been.
Either way, in December we’ll shoulder our packs and start the proposal climb!