Blog to Book - Part 2: Writing a book proposal

March 2nd, 2008

Read the other parts of this series:

Watching the in-box

At the beginning of October I sent my editor some writing samples. Weeks went by. My inbox was full of emails, but I could only see the reply that wasn’t there. After a while I figured I’d been blown off. I was too scared to follow up because I didn’t want to be rejected out right. I was too scared to hope that a book deal might actually happen. It was safer just to let it go. This way I hadn’t actually failed to get a contract because I’d never actually submitted a proposal. I’d just chatted a bit with an editor and now I had a funny story about the time I talked to a book publisher – a story I would never tell ANYONE. Besides, I hadn’t even lost half my weight yet. Surely it would be better to wait until I was at my goal weight to start writing a book. I went back to my life and decided to forget about the whole thing.

In late November she wrote me back.

She hadn’t blown me off. She just hadn’t read the email. It got sorted incorrectly in her email program. Let this be a lesson to you all. FOLLOW UP! If my editor hadn’t been so diligent, I might still have that funny story that I would have never told ANYONE. I sent her my samples again. This time I got a reply. She loved them. She said I was talented. She wanted to pursue the idea. I felt like someone had injected sunshine into my veins with a syringe. This book thing might just happen after all.

Writing a proposal

Now I had to write a book proposal. As I understand it, if you are writing a work of fiction, it’s common to write the whole book before submitting it to publishing houses. However, when you are writing non-fiction, you just submit a proposal. A book proposal is to a book like a business plan is to a company. In it you:

Summarize what your book is about
Write a chapter by chapter summary of the book
List competing books and describe how yours will be different or similar
Pitch the reasons your book will sell and make your publisher lots of money
Include writing samples
Include an author bio

Jenna Glatzer wrote a great series of posts about how to write a book proposal on the Absolute Write forums that is more thorough than anything I can share. I found it very helpful when writing my proposal and I’d highly recommend that anyone writing a proposal check it out. My editor also sent me a copy of a proposal for a book they had published. She included guiding notes in certain sections about what I should include, sometimes pasting information I’d emailed her. I referred to this often as I wrote my own book proposal.

Writing a proposal requires you to do all the deep thinking about your book before you write it. I play the part of a web developer in my day job, so this reminded me of how you scope out every detail of a program before you write a single line of code. Because I’d been blogging regularly for almost two years, I’d done most of my deep thinking already, I just had to organize it in a cohesive matter.

Sorting through two years of my life

So I did something I hadn’t done since I started blogging: I read my entire blog from start to finish. This took several evenings, even though I was skimming. I kept flipping back and forth between a Word document and my web browser, jotting down bullet points of essential ideas or funny stories that I wanted to include in my book. It ended up being 10 pages long, single spaced. I did not suffer from lack of material.

I then started sorting all my bullet points into different topics. Some themes were obvious, like food, exercise, clothing. Some themes were harder to sort out, but I eventually organized everything into chapters. I then wrote a short summary for each chapter, including all the elements in my bullet points but giving the book as a whole a narrative arc. Luckily my story had a natural arc – fat to thin, but it was still a major pain in the ass organizing everything.

Checking out the competition (on my library card)

Next, I had to figure out how my book would be different than other weight-loss memoirs. This was hard to do since I hadn’t actually read any other weight-loss memoirs. Oops! I wanted to get this proposal done as fast as possible before the opportunity slipped away, so I didn’t have time to read half a dozen books. My editor had already listed competing works in the notes on the example proposal, so I checked out what was available from the library and skimmed them. I read the summaries on the back and the reviews on Amazon.com and fudged this part of the proposal as best as I could.

Selling it

I took care to write my proposal in the same wry and humorous tone of my blog, the same tone I would write the book in. It wouldn’t make much sense to pitch a funny book in a dull tone of voice. I expressed as much confidence as I could and I tried to write punchy text that broke down the main selling points of my book in a concise, yet fun manner. I used my traffic stats to pitch my blog as my main selling platform. I also included several readers’ comments that addressed all the different reasons people liked my blog and would buy my book: humor, inspiration, and honesty. I picked writing samples that exhibited those qualities and varied in tone and style. I presented myself as best as I could in my bio even though I didn’t have any big, impressive accomplishments and I’ve never been on Oprah. I mentioning the time I guestblogged at another popular site, the time I won best of prose in the college literary magazine and I even threw in a quote from a reader who worked at a newspaper in Texas. I pimped myself up, shook my moneymaker and sold myself as best as I could. I even threw in a before-and-after photo.

All in all it took one and a half weeks to write. At the time, this seemed like an eternity. After losing almost two months to a lost email, I wanted to precede as quickly as possible. However, I now know that writing a book proposal in a week and a half is insanely fast. Most people would have to be hopped up on amphetamines and give up sleep to write a book proposal that fast. Usually proposals take months to write. But in reality, I’d already been working on my proposal for two years. Every time I wrote a blog entry I was thinking through issues that I included in my book. All I had to do for the proposal was organize my ideas, write a bio, and think of the reasons why people would want to buy my book. Then I sold those qualities as best as I could. Ultimately your book proposal is your sales pitch to the publisher. If you don’t know why anyone would want to buy your book, why should they want to publish it?

Sending it to the publisher

After careful spell-checking, I sent the proposal to my editor asking for her input. I was expecting her to send me constructive criticism, but instead she said it was awesome and exactly what she wanted. First, she would take the proposal to an editorial meeting. If it got past that round it would then go to another level. I sent the proposal in on Monday, the meeting was on Thursday.

It was a long week.

By Friday I hadn’t heard anything from my editor. Writing a proposal had been fascinating and educational, but I’d figured this wasn’t really going to happen. It had been a better ride than any roller coaster thinking that I might, possibly, maybe get a book published. I distinctly recall sitting on my couch in the living room, feeling happy that I’d pursued the idea and given 100%, but also being somewhat relieved that reality seemed to be kicking in. I’d still have that funny story, but I might just tell it to someone now if they got me really drunk.

I still hadn’t heard anything from her over the weekend, however I’d learned from my earlier email shenanigans that I MUST FOLLOW UP. I emailed her on Monday asking how it went, ready to let the whole thing go and thank her for all the time and effort she’d put into helping me with my proposal. She replied and told me that they dug it. It was on to the bigger editorial meeting and then we’d know for sure.

I started looking into lawyers. I started emailing published authors that I didn’t know for advice about book contracts. I started to think this might, possibly, maybe happen. On December 19th, 2006, I checked my email. A boilerplate book contract was attached as a PDF. My editor welcomed me to the Seal Press family.

I got up from my computer chair and walked around my apartment in a euphoric daze. I laid down in my walk-in closet, staring at the faint water stains on the ceiling in the dark and felt the purest buzz of “happy” that I’ve ever experienced. This was actually going to happen. I was going to be a published author. I was going to write a book.

Holy crap. I had to write a book.

Continued in Blog to Book - Part 3: Negotiating a contract

Summary

Don’t be afraid to follow-up with a publisher, but try not to nag either.
Research the elements of a book proposal and read example proposals.
Your blog can be a good source of material because it’s where you’ve already done a lot of thinking.
Figure out what the main selling points of your book are and what your selling platform is. Then pitch them as best as you can.
Use the same tone and style in your proposal as you intend to use in your book.
If your blog readers have said nice things about you, include those in your pitch.
Accept that, hey, just maybe, this might possibly happen.