How to write came up all the time at the book launch as you can imagine.

How to find inspiration to write

How to keep going with your writing

How to separate writing and editing

How to write when you find writing difficult

and of course How to promote your book when you’ve finished it.

Major topics all of them and of course in the book I can only touch on them very briefly.  That’s why we’re planning some training.  All directed to be practical, help writers do things more easily and achieve the result they want.

We’re pushing the training via the Writer’s Little Book Club – so signing up is the only method of finding out about it.  By the way joining costs you nothing and we’re in the planning stages of several more books, products and services.

Address as always is - www.writerslittlebook.co.uk

We’re planning some fun – not putting in the effort otherwise!  But all the time with our focus on providing practical, doable steps.

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.

Yippee ay aeeee and jumping jehosophat!

I know that Monday is normally my day to send you a useful link but I’ve been so excited by what happened at the weekend I hoped you won’t mind if I give you some follow up to the workshop.

I’m not sure what I expected to happen, since it was the first time I’d facilitated the workshop and I’m not sure what the attendees expected.

Whatever our combined expectations, they were exceeded.  We all left realising what a powerful process it had been in generating ideas, settling people’s fears and pointing them in the right direction for them.

We videoed some comments from the attendees who didn’t mind appearing on film and I’ll be putting those up on the site later in the week.

But to give you an idea – one of the attendees came in with two vague-ish ideas and during the first exercise, that’s less than half an hour into the workshop came up with an idea that had her almost jumping into the air.  She couldn’t understand why she hadn’t thought of it before!

And of course since the whole workshop was classed as confidential, as laid out in the guidelines the group put together, then she was happy and comfortable to share the idea with us knowing nobody would pinch it.

It’s given me the impetus to go on and offer what I really want to do – A TWELVE WEEK PROGRAMME with workshops, support and a group forum.  I’m going to go full steam ahead now to put this together so I can offer it starting September.  More details as it comes together.

What a revelation to all of us!

Yours in a state of extreme jubilation!