How to write a book proposal 2

I want to look today at the first item on the How to write a book proposal list from last week.

How to find a market for your book

Let’s take the instance of the romantic novel that I talked about last week.

If you’ve never investigated the sector, which by the way is one of the most successful fiction sectors turning over billions of pounds/dollars each year, then you may not realise the depth and breadth of what’s available.

You can have:

• historical
• medical
• erotic
• mildly erotic
• occult
• stories with business women
• stories about women achievers
• stories about women who stay at home
• romantic thrillers

It’s a long list and you can aim for different age ranges by reflecting your readers’ interests in the characters and plots.

If you look at most romantic novels, they’re written to a formula, in terms of their length and chapter structure.

Knowing this information doesn’t stifle your creativity, it should spur you on. One way I found to challenge myself was to take a topic or a story title and see how many different ways I could treat the topic, and in how few words. Or take a common phrase like “too many cooks spoil the broth.” I tried that one and came up with a story that my friend said was quite gruesome. A touch of the Sweeney Todd about it.

If researching your novel market is important then it’s vital if you’re writing non-fiction.

So how do you research the market for your book?

These days it’s easier than ever with the tools at our disposal on line. But even if you don’t have access to the net it’s easy. The work is done for you by other authors and publishers.

Whatever your subject there will be the following on or offline:

• sections in libraries of bookshops
• magazines
• websites
• forums
• groups

Before you even start planning your book, and way ahead of writing it, you need to look at what’s out there.

It’s human nature not to want to sully our beautiful writing idea with reality because maybe we’ll find that someone has done it before us. That’s a challenge but not a reason to give up.

It will hurt more if you take the time and trouble to write your book then find out it’s unsellable.

Take heart. All things are possible… with focus.