proposal portal—coming soon!

A book proposal is a document that describes your nonfiction book idea and details how you will sell it upon publication. It aims to convince a publisher to invest in your project and take on the financial cost of producing, distributing, and promoting the book (promoting in collaboration with the author of course). All proposals are as much sales documents as blueprints for a book, and they are usually done before the manuscripts are written, though you’ll want to include at least two whole sample chapters that wow publishers with your writing and ideas. Traditional book proposals typically contain seven sections: Overview, Author Bio, Comparative Analysis, Promotional Plan, Table of Contents, Chapter Summaries, and Sample Chapters.

Here are the 7 main sections:

o   Overview: Describe what your goals are for writing the book, who exactly your audience is (not “everyone”), and how your book will have a positive impact on readers, organizations, communities, and society at large. What do you have to contribute to this topic that readers want to—need to—hear?

o   Author Bio: Who are you and how does your experience, expertise, and accomplishments put you in position to be the author of this book? What achievements do you bring to the table that support your platform and will help you sell books? Your biographical information should inherently show that you’re the person to author this book and include details about previously published works, if any.

o   Comparative/Competitive Analysis: Pick 4-5 books that have performed strongly in your genre and subject matter and explain how your book will add to this library of wisdom—and how your book can shine among them. What does your book do different—and better—than the competition? Ideally, choose books published within the past ten years, especially within the past two years.

o   Promotional Plan: Detail your platform that will propel book sales. You can break up this section into headers like Speaking Engagements, Public Relations and Media Tour; Internet (including social media); Testimonials. The goal of this section is to display your marketing platform—how you can support the publisher’s marketing campaign for the book both before and after pub date.

o   Table of Contents: What is the “TOC” to your book? Present the structure of your book (e.g., parts, chapter titles, subtitles). The best way to figure out your perfect TOC is to study other books’ TOCs in your genre.

o   Chapter Summaries: Take editors on an engaging ride through your book’s main points, stories, and takeaways chapter by chapter. Each summary should be 1-2 pages long. Keep summaries concise, compelling, and moving along.

o   Sample material: Feature two compelling chapters from the manuscript that showcase your beautiful writing and powerful messaging. You can choose the Introduction or Chapter 1 plus one other deeper into the book that reveals provocative, can’t-stop-reading material. Get editors excited to read more—some will skip right to the samples and base the decision to read other parts of the proposal on the execution of the sample work. 

You’re ahead of the game if your manuscript is completed, but you will still need to put together a proposal and highlight your marketing/promotional strengths to sell your book. If you’re approaching a literary agent or publisher, follow their submission guidelines and note that the full, completed manuscript is available upon request. Take your two best chapters and use them as your sample. 

Aim to be as succinct and cogent as possible in fifty pages or less. Your chapter summaries and sample material will take up the majority of the proposal. No need to get fancy with formatting or graphics—a plain, black-and-white Word document is fine.

You can learn all you need to craft a Comparative Analysis section by going to Amazon and searching for kindred spirits in your book’s genre. (You can use any online retailer of books, but Amazon seems to win every time for its volume of information and reviews.) If you know of at least one book similar to yours, start there and see what other books are mentioned under the “frequently bought together” section. Pick books that have performed strongly, which you can tell by checking not only the Amazon ranking (top 100 vs. a book that’s tens or hundreds of thousands down the list) but also see how many reviews the book has earned (more reviews reflect more sales). You don’t have to read all your comparative titles cover to cover—you can easily gain a sense of their content by digesting the descriptive copy, sample pages, and the reviews. In those reviews, you’ll be able to decipher a book’s strengths, weaknesses, and capture clues you can use to make the case for your book.

Include at least two sample chapters, both of which show off your writing skills, expertise, and ability to communicate your message. It’s fine if one of your samples is an introduction or first chapter of the book. And it’s also okay to feature a chapter from deep in the book that presents truly compelling, engaging, and insightful material. If your book contains a program of some sort (e.g., a dietary protocol), you’ll want to make sure the proposal is clear about the specifics of the program, and how it differs from others in the field.

Short answer: By having an exquisite, can’t-put-down read! Longer answer: In addition to your amazing ideas and takeaways, a well-executed proposal offers a strong case for why this book needs to be written and how you’ll reach your audience. It helps to be counterintuitive with your ideas and solutions to problems your book’s lessons solve, and you must prove that your platform can propel book sales. This doesn’t mean you need to be a YouTube star or social media influencer with millions of followers, but you do need to show that you’ve got the marketing power to help promote and sell your book with whatever assets you have to leverage in favor of your book’s success.  

No, you do not want to make up a title whose words are not in the dictionary. Stick with real words that clearly convey your book’s subject matter and benefit for readers (more on that shortly).

The story behind the Freakonomics title is famous in publishing circles but not one readily repeated. The authors, Steve Levitt and Stephen Dubner, had been given a big advance for their seminal work and felt pressure to come up with a great title. Levitt gave the manuscript to his sister and asked her to create an “imaginative name.” Apparently, the minute she was done reading the pages, “Freakonomics” came to mind. Levitt thought it was brilliant, but his publisher—and, importantly, the sales team—did not agree. They hated it. Other title ideas were tossed around but nothing stood out. Levitt and Dubner rallied for “Freakonomics” and eventually the publisher caved, took the risk, and the rest is history. But leave that one for the history books and avoid making words up for a title.

And here’s the secret to catchy titles and subtitles: Create titles and subtitles that tell readers what the book is about. If you get overly creative with your title to the point it’s not totally obvious what exactly the book is about (e.g., Good Energy), then you must clarify the book’s central theme and chief takeaway in the subtitle, bringing in the solution to the problem you’re solving (e.g., Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health).

Titles offer a promise and draw readers in by igniting intrigue and can hint vaguely at what the book is about, and subtitles complete the package to articulate more descriptively why they need to read the book and precisely what they will get out of it. Aim to make your title-subtitle package original (with real words that are not vague or overly complex), memorable (short, direct), and metadata-friendly (i.e., choose words that will help connect your content with people searching for it online; if you’re writing a book about the secrets to successful startups, for instance, the key word “startup” or “entrepreneur” should probably be somewhere in your title or sub). Alliteration and wordplays are fine so long as they don’t become confusing, unclear, or irrelevant to the book’s content. AI-powered writing assistants can now help you with crafting titles and subtitles, but no matter how you come up with your package, test them out on potential readers. And be willing to change if your grand package is voted out.

While many books appeal to a broad readership, be as specific as possible about who will likely gravitate to your book automatically. Think about age groups, gender (e.g., mostly women?), shared common interests, and other books your readers will pick up (e.g., “Anyone who read x, y and z, or who buys the latest offering by [insert serial author’s name] will devour this book too.”). As you research the comps for your Competitive Analysis, check out who is reading those books in the reviews—that’s your readership as well.

Book proposals are classically done for works of nonfiction that have yet to be fully written, whereas memoirs and works of fiction sell to publishers as completed manuscripts—publishers want to see the full execution of the book before making the investment. Household names and people with celebrity or some high-profile status can indeed sell memoirs before they are written, but that’s because a publisher has more confidence in the ability to sell books.

Books are trending on the shorter side. Ideally, keep it between 50,000 and 70,000 words.

Top agents can be hard to access without some connection or introduction from another author. But most agents—even the high-profile ones—will have their submission guidelines online whether it’s their agency’s website or within another publishing-centric site such as the Association of American Literary Agents (formerly the Association of Authors’ Representatives or AAR). You can do a search at https://aalitagents.org/ for agents and be linked to ones who could represent your book. Tailor your pitch to each agent you approach. A compelling query letter and small sample of your material might get you in the door. Industry conventions such as book fairs and literary events can also be excellent places to meet prospective agents in person. Writer’s Digest keeps a list of events by state here.