Book Proposals - My Top 10 Secrets

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Joel writes books about baseball. He’s a good writer, and his angle is the psychology of sports. The only problem is that Joel is such a fanatic about getting all the science right that he seldom stops to think about the way to sell his work.

When I coached Joel, I told him my first secret: Be commercial. This doesn’t mean you need to forget the science or be crass. But it does mean you need to look at the marketplace.

And speaking of marketplace, that’s the second secret. You want your book proposal to list the markets, that is, the people who will buy the book. Third secret: Don’t just do this in one or two sentences. Devote at least a paragraph, and better yet, a whole page to it.

SECRETS OF THE PROS

The fourth secret pros use to get their book proposals accepted is to include a promotion section that has some oomph to it. By this I mean you state exactly what you will do to help sell the book: speak at conferences, go on radio and TV, mention the book on your popular Web site, and so on.

Professionals have a fifth secret, and that is they always use a strong book hook. This is a one-sentence summary of the book that might appear on the back cover. Take the time to make this book hook sing. How? By reading the book hooks of your favorite books! You’ve got those books on your shelves already, don’t you? Take a look how those books were encapsulated into one sentence. Then try your hand at the same thing. It’s not that difficult, although it can often take hours, or days, of work to get it right.

The sixth, seventh, and eighth secrets are related to the overview section of the book proposal: It needs to start with a very intriguing opening paragraph, then it needs to describe the book briefly (usually in one paragraph), then it needs to tell the expected completion date and length of the book.

FINAL BOOK PROPOSAL SECRETS

The ninth secret is to include a great author bio. I’m not talking about a simple list of publications or a resume. I’m talking about one or more paragraphs describing you and your writing credentials. For examples of how to do this, look at the author bios on the backs of your favorite books. You can even copy some of the same phrases they use, where appropriate.

The final secret is perfection: You’ve got to make your proposal perfect. Read it carefully to make sure there are no typos.

Use my top ten tips and you’ll craft a winning book proposal that will likely land you a good literary agent to represent your work.

Copyright © 2007 William Cane

William Cane is the author of The Art of Kissing, translated into 19 languages. He taught English at Boston College for fourteen years and today is a widely sought-after speaker at colleges and universities nationwide. His Web site contains more insider writing advice for those wishing to get published: http://www.hiwrite.com/

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