6 Steps to An Effective Book Proposal

Once your book is complete - round two of the heavy lifting begins. If you’re beginning to feel like the work is never done - you’re not too far off. At least not yet.

The next steps you take with your book will require you to have assets ready to go, that represent your book in an appealing and valuable way. One of those assets is a book proposal, a near requirement for agents nowadays. Yes - that’s right. No agent is going to pick you up if you have no proposal.

Joan Michelson, a Journalist, Coach, and host of the acclaimed Electric Ladies Podcast, has an amazing system that breaks a bestselling proposal into 6-steps, start to finish. From overview, author’s bio, marketing plan, competitive analysis, to chapter summaries, and sample chapters- this strategy will save you time and money.

Author Breakthrough: Show you’re a credible investment by knowing what you’re talking about. Any publisher makes a decision whether or not to buy a book off a proposal.

Get the Right Attention

As Joan put it, “Your proposal has to be well-written because it has got to pass through various gates of people.” You have to get it through the sponsoring editor at the publisher, and then they take it to a table. If you’ve ever sold or tried to sell consulting or a product to a big company, you’re not just making a pitch to the person that you talk to, that person has to pitch it internally, and you’re not in the room for those conversations. So your proposal has to be solid and get the right kind of attention.

Put Your Audience on Display

Your book proposal also validates your audience to anyone considering investing in you. When you can say, “My reader is X, Y, Z,” without a doubt, you’re already leaps and bounds ahead of plenty of authors. And this is one of the elements an agent is looking for. How in tune are you with your audience? And how much have you invested in connecting with them?

The Book or the Proposal?

The age old question of the chicken or the egg comes to mind, as we have plenty of authors ask if they should write their book first or their proposal. We have some writing coaches who say, “You have to write the whole book first,” and then authors run into relevancy problems because by the time the book is written, the market is saturated.

We have others who say, “Write the proposal. Start writing the book, but understand you may have to self-publish.” What is the right answer?

A book proposal requires you to have sample chapters in it and an outline with a paragraph about each chapter. This means you have to have this well thought out. You can’t just say, “I’m going to do a book proposal. If it sells, I’ll write the book.”

To answer your question, what I do with clients is have them start writing the book first, building it brick by brick. I ask them why they want to write a book, who will buy it and what their unique proposition is. From there, they write a few chapters and then we put that content to the test to see if we’ve got something viable or not.

Author Breakthrough: ?Your entire proposal is one giant description of your book and lends to your credibility.

Let’s Talk Book Proposal Sections

1. The Overview is like the executive summary of a business proposal. It’s 1-2 pages and succinctly states what your book is going to be about. You want to grab them at the beginning with a sense of why it’s unique. You can’t say, “It’s the only book on X,” because it’s not. There are a million books published a year. Whatever you’re writing about, other people have written about. Accept it. The overview is in essence a small version of the rest of your proposal or an abbreviated version of the rest of your proposal. It’s an overview of what the book is about, why it’s going to sell, who you are, and who the reader is.
2. The Author’s Bio tells the agent and publisher why you are a good investment for them. It highlights your platform, followers, and most importantly, how you intend to sell books.
3. Onto the Marketing section, which is important even if you’re not going to use a traditional agent or publisher. This section is all about your marketing plan and how you intend to help your agent and publisher sell your book.

For the rest of our expert tips on how to build a bestselling book proposal, listen in to my conversation with Joan Michelson, on the Promote, Profit, Publish podcast.