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Starstruck

Starstruck
Creative Writing for health, well-being and fun!

Friday 4 September 2009

Book Proposals - what can they do for you?

Writing a successful book proposal is the real trick. Publishers have no reason to publish your book. But this is how you persuade them that they have. You’re also providing him or her with a crib sheet for when he has to talk to the accountants and the sales department that run his firm and the booksellers whose shelves he’s competing for. A publisher’s life is not an easy one and your task when you send in your proposal is to smooth his way. It is after all on your behalf.

But you – in your role as writer – will also benefit hugely from sitting down and seriously working out what to include. Let’s face it. From the mountains of material you have inside your head for this book, your readers – and therefore by definition, your publisher - will only want to take away what relates to them.

So firstly the book proposal will help you to clarify your own goals and objectives. You’ll have to reduce the whole concept to a few sentences – but oh, how carefully chosen. These sentences will encapsulate the ‘book’’s most important ideas and elements and persuade the publisher that these are new and interesting enough for him to spend time on.

Another advantage of writing a proposal is that you’ll become aware of the weak spots in your material. These may be the areas where you need to do more research. Or it may be the areas you need to beef up which relate to marketing - because the proposal is a marketing document and you are both author and marketing manager.

If you are – at this point – throwing up your hands in horror that you, an artistic soul, must stoop to involving yourself in commerce, remember the electricity bill. Oft-quoted even by accountants, American poet Louis Untermeyer said: “Write out of love, write out of instinct, write out of reason. But always write for money.”

According to the Society of Authors, authors must now be prepared to sell their books. If this means book signings, public readings, appearances on radio and television, you have to be prepared to do it. And the publisher will expect to be told of your willingness to embrace marketing methods of this sort in your proposal.

You will also have to provide him with a clear idea of where your book will sit in the market and when the manuscript will be sitting on his desk.

To answer these questions, some authors rely on Amazon placings. But, I recommend my clients take themselves to a bookshop and browse among similar books getting a feel for the kind of book they may produce – its length, its style, the questions its audience will want to know the answers to. Two major advantages will follow from this research method. Firstly, you will find an anchor for your motivation (and this will sustain you throughout the writing period). And, secondly, you will find a publisher on the same wave-length as yourself. Which helps!

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