Getting Started On Your Book Proposal

It takes just as much time to write a book proposal as it does to write the book.

Is that what you’re saying? 

Yes. It is.

You may be a journalist, an academic, an essayist or a novelist. You may have published your memoir, published books in various literary genres, or written a cookbook.

You may have read books on how to write a book proposal. (The one I’m most partial to is Susan Rabiner’s THINKING LIKE YOUR EDITOR.)

You may have jotted down your overview, dug up your bio, pulled together a chapter outline, or even used a proposal template.

But if you’re like most of the accomplished writers who come to me, you don’t have a three-sentence description of your book. Nor do you have a title.  And this means you don’t really know what your book is about. You are master of your subject matter, but you haven’t yet figured out what the story is.

Writing a book proposal can be daunting. Here’s how to get started:

Look at the nonfiction books on your shelf. Read their introductions. That introduction started its life as a long e-mail addressed to the literary agent. These intros read like a speech to a bunch of college students, don’t they? They open with a wry, personable, chatty story.

So write that e-mail. Go on and on, explain why you came up with this idea. Tell stories, give examples, describe how you gathered your story, describe the structure of your book, set down your credentials. Don’t censor yourself. If you over-edit yourself now, your voice will be strained and awkward. Your work will sound dry and tortuous. Have fun writing it, but don’t send it out.

Then, focus on the title and the subtitle. Look at the titles of books in your area.  See how they often have two or three words. Good hearty nouns. When I look at the title and subtitle of Jane Mayer’s DARK MONEY: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, I am consumed with envy.

You’re probably scared of the chapter outline aren’t you?  Imagine that you’re teaching a thirteen-week course in your subject. Each chapter is an hour long …. . Look at LORDS OF THE SEA: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy by John R. Hale if you’re an historian.

Once you’ve completed these three steps, congratulations! You thought writing the sample chapters was going to be the difficult part, but it’s not nearly as difficult as book proposal you’ve just done.

Writing a Second Novel (or Third or Fourth) is Notoriously Difficult

Second novel, third novel, fourth novel, the process is the same.

A client calls and says, “I have an idea, let me share it with you.”

Tell me first about the main character in your novel, I prompt.

“He’s a very ordinary man.” “She has no family, her parents are dead and she never married.” “He doesn’t have any interests, that’s the idea; by the end of the book, he’ll know what he’s interested in.” “She doesn’t have a career, that’s the point; she’s going to figure out what it is.” “I’m a serious writer, there is no plot structure.”

Tell me about the minor characters in this second novel, I suggest. It turns out there are a dozen of them. Each boasts a lengthy list of attributes of age and appearance and profession and the author tells me she can hear their accents and they’re funny.

“But they’re not really important,” the writer says. “It’s just that I can see them so clearly.”

Take a walk, I propose. Spend four days as your character. Really immerse yourself in the character profile. Pay your bills as that character. Eat lunch as that character. Exercise as that character. Write me a letter from that character. Tell me why and how that character knows all those minor characters.

It’s a miracle. Always. It turns out that those minor characters are very important to the story structure. It may turn out that one of them is actually the story’s chief character. We find that this protagonist has a rich and complex life and that the writer somehow has always known that. None of the material has been wasted. It’s just that this is how some writers work: that the main character has to remain in the shadows until the world around him solidifies.

Why Do Agents Go to Writers’ Conferences?

A few weekends ago I attended New England Crime Bake, a jolly mystery conference filled with talented published writers, attentive newbies and convivial agents and editors.

If it turns out I found a new talent there, I’ll be thrilled. But that’s not why I went. Every year it makes sense to attend a gathering of writers and fans and colleagues; I always walk away with tidbits of new knowledge. I had breakfast with my old pal Brendan DuBois, for instance, who is having such a good experience with James Patterson’s Book Shorts line. His happy success in this fresh category of publishing was interesting intelligence to me.

And I refined my editorial skills as I listened to pitches and was read first-page manuscripts by six aspiring writers. Each writer had talent, but I found myself saying often, “Cut those adjectives. Every one of them. Eliminate them from your first three pages of text.”

Adjectives are not your friends. They’re like crabgrass. They’re like weeds. They’re like too much salt. I know this is advice you’ve heard before, but before submitting a manuscript to a publisher, please go through it one more time and clean it up. You probably don’t even notice them anymore, but to a professional editor they’ll jangle like an off-key voice in an otherwise competent choir.

Thinking of submitting a manuscript? Feel free to send it our way.

Take a Field Trip and Get To Know Your Types of Reader

Here’s something else that you should do: Take a field trip and get to know your types of reader.

One of the things of which I’m mindful is the process by which Barnes & Noble orders the books they then stock onto their shelves. Each book category is assigned to a “buyer.” So there’s a buyer for nonfiction, health, travel, mythology, literature, fantasy, mid-grade, YAs. You get the idea. B&N buyers fill the shelf space, and books need to fit into the bookseller’s already-established categories. If there is no place to shelf the books, the titles won’t be purchased.

Take a trip to Barnes & Noble or to any large independent bookstore. Which titles would your book be snuggled up against? What kind of cover would your publisher put on your book? Which authors give quotes for these titles? I find that walking through rows of books is always illuminating. But much the same impact can be had by pawing through Amazon’s “customers who bought this title also bought” carousel.

Don’t ignore this step! When you write your query, you need to tell the agent which types of reader your book is for. Your editor will want to know. So will the publicist. And the sub-rights department. Please note: The correct answer to the question of who your book targets is never, “Everyone!”

Query Letters that Worked

Before you get started on the first of fifty drafts of your cover letter, I urge you to look at publishers’ catalogues (which are issued about four months before a book is published and are used by sales reps to pitch their company’s titles to booksellers). Hachette makes those and all their various imprints available online.

I’ve seen a lot of query letters that worked by adopting this method. Generally, each book gets a page in the publisher’s catalogue, and all houses use the same general formula/template: The first sentence is the hook or the handle or the one-minute elevator pitch. The next paragraph highlights the story itself. The third paragraph describes the book’s competition, its comparable books. The fourth paragraph tells you about the author and her credentials. Off to the sides of the main text, you’ll generally see quotes or reviews.

Draft your query letter as if it’s catalogue copy.  Of course the letter will sound clunky and artificial at first, but you’ll be able to smooth it out.

If you’re not getting agent responses to your current query letter, try this approach. I’ve seen a lot of query letters that worked this way.

Should I Fly to NY to Meet My Publisher?

Meeting your new publishing team after your first deal is a “must” visit. But time it correctly. Don’t just hop on a plane right after the deal for your new publication is made. It’s too early. Your editor will be focused on getting the contract done. She’ll be thinking about getting you an editorial letter. Your agent doesn’t have much to tell you that isn’t better said over the phone. And you don’t need to go over revisions in person with the editor. (The telephone acts like the perfect therapist when you’re talking about revisions with agents and editors. It serves the same happy function that a car drive often does in prompting conversation with your children: Both you and the editor will be far more open and creative when you’re not looking into each other’s eyes.)

But after your manuscript has been accepted (which should be approximately 12 to 18 months before your book is published), start planning a trip. Ideally that visit will happen 9 to 12 months before your book is published.

All publishers work on the same internal schedule. About a year before a new publication, publishers have what they call launch or marketing meetings. They circulate your manuscript in-house to all the staff that will be working on it. That would include marketing, publicity, subrights and the sales department. At this point, you’ll be on the publisher’s radar. They’ll want to meet you and won’t just be saying a polite hello.

Give your editor a few weeks’ notice so you’re firmly on her calendar. It’s not necessary that your editor take you out to lunch, but what you both want to do is meet and get to know each other. You want to meet the publicity team and you want to walk around the office. I think it’s especially useful to meet the sales force. They love books and, since they’re all extroverts, they will loudly share their enthusiasm.

If you wait to visit until only four or five months before your new publication, your impact will be lessened. By then, most of the publisher’s plans for your book will already have been set into motion. The publisher’s attention has shifted to the list after yours. Four or five months before publication, plans for your book are already securely settled, and there’s just not a lot you can do to impact your new publication.

The Snowflake Method

A few years ago, a friend used “the snowflake method” to plot out her first novel. Her book was admirably tight and her characters had a depth and complexity that is rare in a first novel.

Since then I’ve sent many writers to this site:
http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/

And many have been inspired by it. I don’t know if they’re systematically following the program, but they’re getting something useful out of it.

I take on a lot of debut fiction. By the time it lands on my desktop, every chapter and page of these books has been long worked on to build a compelling tale with full-featured characters. If all goes right, the book gets sold and the publisher and readers want more…soon. So then comes the contract for the second novel. Or for the fifth. And the author must start anew. Maybe the writer has an idea, has settled on a few characters and so he starts to work. I can see trouble ahead. And that would be the vast middle of the story, the Sahara Desert called plot.

Eventually the writer will figure out how to make it all work — even without my help. But there will be so many drafts, so many restarts…and inevitably it turns out that a new character needs to be introduced. Or that the stakes aren’t high enough. And this is where the snowflake method shows its stuff.

It’s kind of the opposite of the Marie Kondo plan. In other words, the author isn’t confronting a messy house that needs to be cleaned out. The problem instead is the inherent scantiness of beginnings. And the author’s fear that her idea spigot has been turned off elicits panic, not inspiration. It’s always scary: Is there any guarantee that the urgent twists and turns and engaging characters will return?

The snowflake method is methodical; it ploddingly explains that building a potent story is not about inspiration. It’s about asking one question, listening to the answer and then offering up another idea. It alleviates many authors’ anxiety to think of plotting as a skill like any other. The craft has rules, it can be learned, and it’s not about brilliance. It’s about thinking characters and a story through and giving yourself enough time that an unexpected twist or turn can emerge.