How to write a book proposal 6

What type of book are you writing?

I spent about an hour in a bookshop recently with a client who has started to write a book.  We were looking for…

some inspiration on how her book would look when it was finished and where in the book shop it would sit.  It’s always time well spent looking at the market segment your book fits into.

And as I’ve said before publishers will begin with that.  It’s almost like Tesco taking on a new product and deciding what part of the shop it goes into.  If you’re selling a new type of yogurt then it wouldn’t be much use putting it with the wines.  It might be found there but it wouldn’t sit well in that section.

And taking the yogurt example further, whenever you look at that section it’s crammed with everything from plain(several varieties and styles of plain) to yogurt with extra elements attached to it.

So is your book of the plain yogurt variety, a black and white book with basic layout with down to earth text, maybe a how to guide.  Or is it a yogurt to attract the young, sassy market who pick out things as much for the design on the pot as for the contents?

For sure it can’t be both.  Trying to please all segments of the market can generally be doomed to failure.  There’s always an exception.  But it’s best not to count on yours being that exception.

To go along with that is the treatment of your topic.  Is it that down to earth book aimed at beginners.  Or a more advanced approach catching in some of those with experience.

All the blog entries I’m writing for this thread are pushing you towards the same thing.  Clarity and focus about what you’re writing.  The more you can present a coherent approach to a publisher in your proposal, the more likely they are to accept it.

Next week.  How to work out your contents list when you haven’t written your book.

How to write a Book Proposal list item 3

How to write a book different from your competitors

If you’ve done any of the research I suggested in the past three weeks, then you should now have a fair idea of your market and what’s already in it.

If it seems to you that the ground has been covered well already, then this is the point at which you have to apply some native cunning.

One of my clients this year wrote a book which combined two areas that have been written about extensively, but not previously in the same book.

Think about your topic.  What is your experience in the field?

Are you an expert?

Are you writing for other experts or to people outside your field who might want an easy introduction?

Are you just interested in the topic but wanting to interest other people at your own level?

Do you have experience that contradicts the expert theories?

Somewhere in what you’ve done, or how you’ve become interested in the subject, there’s an approach that might not have been tried before.

You may have been contributing articles from which you can make a book.  You may have a diary about an event – such as preparing for a marathon – that would interest both other runners or non-runners.

The wider you think about this the more easily you’ll find your approach.

Again – ask around – not just your family and friends, but spread your net wider.

And as ever – keep your focus and you’ll get there.

For the next 4 weeks my How to write a book thread will be about creating a book proposal.  That’s because I think it’s the most vital thing you can do before you start to write.  Why?  Well I learned how to think about…

researching a market twenty years ago when I worked for a medical equipment company.  My boss was a product development specialist.  Unlike many development people, his approach was rooted in the real world.  So many innovators come up with an idea, become convinced that it’s going to revolutionise the world and pursue that idea through thick and thin.

My boss was quite different.  I’ve seen him design a product, do all the process calculations on the back of an envelope and then set about getting it into the marketplace as fast as possible,  But he was only able to do this because his product was rooted in what people were asking for.  He’d talk to anyone who was involved in using similar equipment and ask them what their problems were. Then he’d design something that fixed the problem.

In 5 years we introduced 8 products into the market and had them selling successfully.  Rough and ready it might have seemed as a process but it worked.

That’s why it surprises me that more people who write books don’t do the same thing.  Whilst I believe that books are the key to so many things, can introduce people to ideas and ways of improving their lives, they still have to be considered as products.  Because that’s the way publishers treat them.

And it isn’t like the publishers don’t help you to find out what they want.  A few months ago I met a woman who wanted to write a romantic novel.  So I directed her to the site for the company that publish most of the Mills and Boon books and the Silhouette imprints.  They have an enormous amount of information on the site helping you plot characters, work out your themes.  Has she been there yet?  I’ve no idea but I doubt it.

I investigated the site because I wanted to do the same.  In fact I’ve written three, all unpublished, but what great experience in actually doing all of that and getting to the end of a book.  Tried the last one out on a few people who liked it but not acceptable to the publisher… yet!

But any publishing site will have a book proposal outline and they don’t differ much.

Key points in creating a book proposal are:

• Who are you writing for?
• The structure of the book’s content.
• How you can offer something different from competitive titles.

There’s a lot more to the proposal but if you can crack those three you”ll be ahead of most would be writers.

More next week.