How to Make Easy Money - Get Paid To Write A Book
You can get paid to write a book. It's
easily possible to make a fast $10,000, or even a six figure amount. You could
even make seven figures --- over a
million dollars for twenty pages of text.
It sounds incredible, but a fast seven figures is certainly possible if
you have a HOT, hot idea or have had an experience that hundreds of thousands
of people want to read about. In his 2001 book about writing non-fiction, Damn!
Why Didn't I Write That?, author Marc McCutcheon says that it's not hard to
make a good income: "you can learn the trade and begin making a
respectable income much faster than most people think possible".
The good part is
that you don't need to write your book before you get some money. You write a
proposal, and a publisher will give you an advance, which you can live on while
you write the book.
Writing a proposal
is the smart way to write a book. It's the way professional writers sell non-fiction.
Selling a book on a proposal is much easier than selling a book that you've
already written. A book proposal is a complete description of your book. It
contains the title, an explanation of what the book's about, an outline of
chapters, a market and competition survey, and a sample chapter.
A book proposal
functions in the same way as any business proposal does: you're making an offer
to someone you hope to do business with. It will be treated by publishers in
the same way that any business treats a proposal. A publisher will read your
proposal, assess its feasibility, cost it, and if it looks as if the publisher
will make money, the publisher will pay you to write the book. When you've sold
your proposed book to a publisher, your role doesn’t end with writing your
book. You’re in partnership with your publisher to ensure the book's success.
If you do your part, both you and your publisher will make money.
You and your publisher: a partnership
The publisher's business is selling books.
The company acquires books which it hopes will sell, and sell well. Your
publisher is putting up the money to publish your book, so you need to approach
the project from his point of view as well as your own.
We
haven’t got the space to go into great detail about the publishing business
here, but you need to know about "returns", because the challenge of
returns makes publishing different from other businesses. Publishers sell books
on consignment. Publishers ship books to bookshops, and if a book isn’t sold
within a certain time period, it's destroyed. The bookseller strips the cover
from the book and sends the cover to the publisher for a full credit. This is
the "return". If a title doesn’t sell, the publisher takes a beating.
As you can imagine, publishers are no more keen to lose money than you or I.
What does this
mean to you as you write your book proposal? It means that your proposal needs
to emphasize the ways in which you, as the writer, will take responsibility for
the book's success.
You will try to
ensure the success of your book by gauging the marketplace. You will work out
who the likely buyers of your book might be, and the reasons they will have for
paying good money for your book. You'll assess the competition for your book.
You'll work out ways in which you can promote your book, so that people hear
about it. You're in partnership with your publisher, and if you're prepared to
take responsibility for that role, the publisher will be much more likely to
buy your proposal.
Why write a proposal first?
All non-fiction books are sold on proposal.
A book proposal is much easier to sell than a complete book.
Here
are some of the reasons:
- It's easier to read a 20 or 30 page proposal than a 400 page book;
- It's easier to make changes in the book's concept at the proposal stage;
- With a proposal, the publisher, in the person of your editor, can take ownership of the book. It's like bespoke tailoring: the editor feels that the book has been specifically written for the publishing house.
Even if you decide to write your book
first, you'll need to create a proposal once you've written it. No agent or
publisher is interested in reading an entire book to assess its viability.
That's the proposal's job: to ensure that your book has a niche in the
marketplace. As you do your research for the proposal, you'll work out whether
or not your book is likely to sell. You can shape the book at the proposal
stage, much more easily than you can when it’s a huge stack of print or a giant
computer file.
Sometimes
you may get an idea for a book, but the idea is amorphous, it doesn’t have a
real shape. You may want to write several thousand words to see whether the
book becomes clearer in your mind. But
write the proposal before you write more than ten thousand words,
because your book must target a specific group of buyers.
How do you write a book proposal?
You write a proposal step by step. In this
ebook, we'll work on your book proposal together. Each chapter has tasks for
you to complete. Once you've completed all the tasks, you'll have a book
proposal which has an excellent chance of selling.
Here's
what we'll cover:
- (Day One) Getting an idea for your book.
- (Day Two) Developing the idea and expanding on it. Assessing the market. Who needs this book? What's the competition for the book?
- (Day Three) Writing the blurb. Outlining your book.
- (Day Four) Researching your book proposal, and fleshing out your outline.
- (Day Five) Writing a proposal query letter. Sending your query letters to agents and publishers. (You send the queries while you're working on the proposal. This helps you to gauge reaction to your work.)
- (Day Six) Writing the proposal.
- (Day Seven) Writing the sample chapter. Revising your proposal.
I'll be including a sample of a book
proposal for you to look at, so you can see what material the proposal
contains. This proposal garnered an agent contract the first time I sent it
out. I'll also include other samples, so that you have plenty of templates from
which to construct your own proposal.
How to use this ebook
First, read through the book, to see what
information it contains.
Next,
work through the book, chapter by chapter. As you read each chapter, do the
tasks and the exercises in the order in which they appear. Doing them will help
you to write not just one, but many book proposals. Remember, the primary aim
of this book is to help you write your first book proposal and be well on the
way to selling it by the time you've worked your way through all the chapters.
Work FAST
It's vital that you concentrate on getting
the words down on paper. As long as you have something on paper you can fix it.
As we work through the material, I'll be encouraging you to work FAST and not
think to much about what you're writing. Thinking has no business in your first
draft. Thinking comes later as you rewrite.
Can't devote a week to writing your proposal?
If you're on vacation you can set aside a
couple of weeks to work on your proposal. But what if you don't have a vacation
due? Easy! You can fit writing into your busy life. You'll still follow all the
steps, but it will take you longer. Try to stick to a set schedule. You may
decide that you'll complete a chapter a week, for example.
Work fast. Work on your book proposal EVERY
DAY, even if you only have five minutes to spare. This is because at the
beginning, ideas are fragile. Time spent
with your proposal each day helps you to build and maintain your energy
and your enthusiasm.
Day One: What’s a book proposal? Get an idea for your book
Day One Tasks
Task One: Look over four non-fiction books
Take your notebook and visit a bookstore.
Skim four non-fiction books of the kind which you hope to write. Check the
number of pages, the table of contents, and chapter length. How are these books
written? Are they written in a casual, tongue-in-cheek style like the For Dummies series? Do they include lots
of anecdotes and personal information about the author?
In
your notebook, write down each book's title, author, publisher and year of
publication. Also write down anything you find interesting about the book. Scan
the acknowledgements page to see whether the author thanks her editor and her
agent. Make a note of their names if she does. (These people may be interested
in your proposal if it covers a similar subject area.)
Task Two: Work through the Idea Generator exercises in this chapter
Read the Idea Generators, and do at least
three of them, even if you've already got an idea for your book. Working through
this material is important because it will give you confidence that you it's
easy for you to find as many ideas as you need.
Task Three: Create a computer folder to hold your working files
Create a folder on your computer to hold
all the files for your book. As you work, you'll generate many files. Create
sub-folders as you need them.
Task Three: Create a Work Log
Create a file on your computer as a diary
for this project. Paste all the information you gather while searching the
Internet and while communicating with others in this log. Date each entry. If
you need to leave your project for a few days, you can read your log to get
back into the groove of your project.
What’s a book proposal?
A book proposal is a business document
which convinces a publisher to buy your book before you've written it. Your
proposal says, in effect: "Hey, I've got a great idea for a book which
lots of people will want to buy. Do you want to publish it?"
Think
of it as a combination brochure and outline of your proposed book.
There's
a standard format of material that your book proposal will need to cover. This
doesn’t mean that you need to hew completely to this format. It's just a
guideline of topics your proposal must contain.
Your
book proposal must contain:
- A title page, with the title, subtitle, author, word count of the completed book, and estimated time frame for completion. You might state: "75,000 words, completion three months after agreement".
- An overview: a description of the book. This can be as short as a paragraph, or several pages long.
- The background of the author. Your biography, as it relates to your expertise for this book.
- The competition in the marketplace. This is where you mention the top four or five titles which are your book's competitors. (Note: if there are dozens of competitors for your book, this is a good thing, because it means that the subject area is popular. Your book will need to take a new slant.)
- Promotions. This is where you describe how you will promote your book, both before and after publication.
- A chapter outline.
- A sample chapter, or two chapters. This is always the first chapter, and if you're sending two chapters, it's the Introduction and Chapter One, or if there's no Introduction, it's Chapters One and Two.
- Attachments. Optional. You may want to attach articles you've written about the book's topic, or any relevant supporting material.
Got an idea for your book? Great!
If you already have an idea for your book,
that's great. Please work through the material in this chapter using your
current idea, or join us in developing new ideas. Open a new computer file so
that you can work through the exercises as we progress.
Start here to develop an idea for your next book
There's nothing mysterious about coming up
with ideas. Within a page or two, you'll have more ideas than you know what to
do with. Your ideas start with YOU. When you think about what you enjoy, about
your past experiences and your knowledge, you're guaranteed a regular fountain
of ideas. Let's turn on the fountain.
As
you do the following exercises, work through them quickly. Don't allow yourself
to bog down. Do them as quickly as you can, and then go and do something else
for a few hours, to let the ideas gestate and bubble in your subconscious mind.
When
you come back, read through the ideas you generated, and add to them as you
read through your lists. Please don’t discard any ideas at this
stage. This is because the way to a brilliant, fantastic idea is by
twisting an idea slightly, reversing it, or by combining several ideas into a
new one.
Searching
for ideas alerts your subconscious mind that ideas are important to you. Over
the next few days, you may get a nudge from an idea which says: "Write me
down". Do that right away, even if you're in the middle of a shower or
you're driving along the freeway. (If you’re driving, pull over.) Write that
idea down, because even if you're one hundred per cent certain that you will
never in this lifetime forget that amazing idea you just had, believe me, you
will forget it. Write it down, always.
When
you stay alert to the idea hovering at the corners of your consciousness you
will never be without a book bubbling away. This is how you turn your first
book into a long series of books.
First
thing in the morning is a great time to generate ideas. Set your alarm ten
minutes early, then sit up in bed and jot down 50 ideas.
Idea Generator One: What you're good at
Make a list of 20 things you're good at.
Don't think too hard about this. Maybe you're good at buying presents for
people—you've got a knack for choosing just the right gift. Maybe you're a good
cook, or a good parent, or a good swimmer or a good tennis player. Or maybe you
used to be good at one or more of these things. For example: I grew up with
horses, and owned horses for many years. I'm good with horses, and a good
rider. If I saw a gap in the market for a horse book, I'd feel comfortable
writing the book.
You
get the idea. List at least 20 things that you're good at, or have been good at
in the past. For example, if you know you're an excellent gardener, even though
you now live an apartment, list "gardening".
Idea Generator Two: Your past experiences
Experiences sell. If you've been abducted
by little green men from Mars, it's a book. If you're a bigamist, it’s a book.
People have written books about their illnesses (see from challenge to
opportunity below), their addictions, and their pets. Browse through the
bestseller lists to see what personal experiences people are writing about.
Here's where you
walk down memory lane. If you're in your twenties, it'll be a short stroll. If
you’re in your forties or older, it will be a hike. Don't get bogged down with
this, list 20 experiences you've had that spring to mind.
The
easiest way to come up with experiences is to work backwards through the stages
of your life, or through decades. Again, don’t take a long time over this. Set
yourself a time limit --- ten minutes is enough.
Idea Generator Three: Your knowledge
What do you know? Start by making a list of
all the subjects you were good at in school. Then list all the jobs you've had
– yes, part time work counts.
Also
list:
·
Your hobbies. Are you a keen Chihuahua breeder? Do
you quilt? Take photographs?
·
Your current job. What are you
learning in your job that other people would pay to learn?
·
The places you've lived. Your
hometown may be boring to you, but guide books sell well.
·
Your family tree. What special
knowledge do your nearest and dearest have that you could write about?
Spend around ten minutes writing down as
many subjects as you have knowledge about.
Idea Generator Four: What you enjoy most
Celebrity chef Nigella Lawson freely admits
that she cooks because she loves to eat. Nigella has turned her love of food
into a career. She regularly produces bestselling books. (Her chocolate recipes
are brilliant.) What do you love? People have written about garage sales,
cosmetics, cars, vacations. If you love something, chances are that thousands
or maybe millions of others will love it too.
Watch
the newspapers and take note of current trends. Or better yet, listen to what
your children are talking about, or asking you to buy for them. Children tend
to be well up on what’s happening.
Remember that it
will take around two years for your book to reach the bookstores. Therefore,
the currently hot topics on the
bestselling lists may be old news before your book is in the stores. This
doesn’t mean of course that you can’t write on perennial favourites like money,
sex and exercise. These topics never go out of popularity, and a new twist on
one of these is always a sure bet.
The idea of
writing about what you enjoy is that you will be bringing passion and
enthusiasm to your topic. Enthusiasm is a must.
Idea Generator Five: From challenge to opportunity
You face challenges every day. Most are
minor, some are major challenges. If you've ever faced a large challenge, or if
you're facing one right now, then consider that the things you learn could help
other people. Whatever your challenge is, whether it’s moving house or
confronting a life-threatening illness, other people face the same challenges,
and in those challenges lie the seeds of books.
Make
a list of 20 challenges you've faced in your life. Anything catastrophic
qualifies: losing your job, facing bankruptcy, the betrayal of a spouse. If
you've had a quiet life, then make a list of challenges that the people you
know have faced.
Additional
challenges you can consider include any habit you've broken, from congenital
lateness to overeating.
When you've finished brainstorming, you'll
have dozens of book ideas. Winnow out the non-starters. Don't delete them, move
them to another computer file. Call it "odds and ends" or
"snippets".
Checklist: Is this the right idea for you TODAY?
You've worked through the idea generators,
and you have one or more ideas which you feel would work as a book. The next
step is to scrutinize your primary idea carefully.
Consider
your idea and look at this list of questions. See if you can answer
"Yes" to all of them:
*Am I enthusiastic enough about this subject and my ideas about it to
sell this proposal to an agent and an editor – and to readers?
*Will I retain my enthusiasm through the months it will take me to
complete the book?
*Is there a market for my book? (I've checked Amazon.com and
bookshops for competing titles. I'm convinced there is a market for my book.)
*I can find people with expert knowledge to interview as I write my
book.
* Does my book provide solutions to problems?
If you can answer YES to most of these
questions, you're set. Great! We're going to start work on your proposal.
Day Two: Develop your idea and assess the market
Day Two Tasks
Task One: Keep studying non-fiction books
The more you know about how non-fiction
books are constructed the more easily you'll be able to work on your own book
with confidence. Look at the books on your shelves at home, and at your local
library. (Be sure to make a note of any editor or agent acknowledgements.)
Task Two: Develop your idea
Work through the various steps in developing
your idea. (See "Simple Steps In Developing Your Idea" in this
chapter.
Dispelling myths and a word about confidence
If you're feeling nervous now that you're
about to start this project, relax. Tell yourself that you will take it step by
step. All you need to do is work at it steadily, a word, sentence and paragraph
at a time, and you will complete your proposal, and then when you've sold the
proposal, you'll complete your book using the same easy-does-it method.
While
we're at it, let's dispel a few myths.
Myth One
It takes a
special talent to write books.
It takes persistence. There are as many
different kinds of writers as there are people. Some are young, some are
elderly, many are in-between. You don’t need any special writing talent to
write books, nor do you need to be highly educated. Many successful writers
have never completed high school. If you can write well enough to write a
letter, you can write a book.
Myth Two
Writers starve
in garrets.
Many professional writers make incomes that
would make doctors and lawyers envious. Most make reasonable incomes. If you
decide to make a career of writing non-fiction books, the major benefit is that
if you choose your book's topic with care, your book can stay in print for many
years. For each year that your book's in print, you get two royalty checks.
Let's say that you write two books a year for five years. At the end of the
five years, if your books all stay in print, you'll be getting ten royalty
checks a year. These ongoing royalties are your nest-egg, profitable
investments in your future.
Myth Three
It's hard to
sell a book.
As long as you research the market for each
book before you write as much as a single word, it's easy to sell a book.
Publishers need competent, reliable writers who can produce good books
regularly. This myth got started because --- let's be blunt here--- 99 per cent
of submissions to editors and publishers are not publishable.
Myth Four
You need to know
someone to get a book published.
You need to write a good book to get a book
published. That really is all you need to do. I started writing romance novels
and they were published by an English publisher. I certainly didn’t know anyone
in UK
publishing; I live in Australia.
If you have a contact in publishing, by all means use that contact. However,
it's not necessary. Publishing is big business, and publishers need good books.
Today we'll develop your idea and assess the market
Developing your idea and assessing the
market go together. We'll work on both tasks today. The idea of working on both
tasks together is that as you read through the outlines of books which cover a
similar area to yours, you'll see what's already been published, and you'll get
fresh ideas for material that you can cover in your own book.
Note: your personal experience is valuable
As you skim through other people's books,
jot down any thoughts and ideas you get. You should make a note of any
experiences you remember which you could include in your book. This is because
everyone loves a story, so no matter what subject area your book covers,
include your own anecdotes. If you're writing a diet book, include funny/
informative stories about your own experiences with diets, or the experiences
of your friends.
You
may want to use fictitious names to protect people's privacy. You will
definitely need to use fictitious names if you can't contact people to ask for
permission to use a story or if you think there's a chance that people will be
able to recognize themselves from a story you tell that puts them in a bad
light.
For
example, perhaps you belonged to a group of dieters, and you tell a story about
another person in the group. Even if this was 20 years ago, and you've given
this person a fictitious name, disguise the story: change the person's sex,
age, and occupation.
Simple steps in developing your idea
Work on developing your idea step by step.
Here's how:
1. Write down everything you know about this idea
Let's say you've decided to write a book on
natural healthcare for pets. You own several dogs and a cat, and are an
enthusiast for natural healthcare because it's worked for you and for your
friends. Today you're going to make copious notes. You're going to write down
everything you can think of which relates to your idea. It doesn’t matter
whether you use a computer file, or a pen and paper, sit down and get ready.
Ask
yourself: who, what, how, when, where and why. Make topic headings for
each question. Then answer each question. Don’t try to write in complete
sentences, just make notes. For example, if you took one of your dogs to a
doggie chiropractor for several years, note down the chiropractor's name, the
dog's name, problems the dog had, the number of sessions --- anything and
everything you can remember. Also write down what you don’t know, so you can
find out. (One of the benefits of research is that you get to answer all the
questions you have about a topic.)
Take
as much time as you need. You may want to work in forty-minute sessions, and
then go and do something else for a while. Taking breaks is important. It's
during the breaks that your subconscious mind will go to work for you can scan
your memory banks to come up with more ideas.
Don’t
discard any of your ideas. And write down every idea, no matter how tangential.
Your mind works via associations. Therefore, if you get a notion to
write down "Phips --- broken leg" write this down, even if it seems
that it has nothing to do with natural healthcare for pets. Phips was your
first dog, and was hit by a car. This was 30 years ago, and you don’t remember
much about the incident. However, after writing it down, you ask your mother
about Phips, and she tells you that the little Corgi was bred by a woman who
was into natural healthcare (you didn’t remember this --- you may not even have
known it, but somehow your subconscious got you to write it down). You contact
the woman, who's elderly, but who's a fountain of useful information, and she
provides almost a chapter of information for your book. You'll find that you
have many serendipitous incidents like this as you write your proposal and your
book.
2. Make a long list of possible book titles
At this stage, you don’t need the perfect
title, Healthcare for Pets will do as
your working title. Make a list of 20 title ideas as quickly as you can. (And
save the list.)
Don't
sweat a title. You'll often find that the perfect title doesn't occur to you
until you book is completely written. Or, your publisher may come up with a
title they want to use.
3. Create a list of contacts
Who could help you with information for
this book? Write down the name of everyone you can think of. Do this quickly,
you can look up their email address or postal address when the time comes to
contact them. At this stage, you just want a list of all those people who will
be able to help you.
Is
there an association of people who might help? In our Healthcare for Pets example, there will be numerous veterinary
associations and kennel club associations of people who could provide valuable
information.
Create
an Acknowledgements computer file. Whenever someone helps you with information
for the book, type their name into the Acknowledgements file. People get a kick
out of helping an author with a book, and the best way to thank them is to make
sure that their name appears on the Acknowledgements page in the book.
Assess the market for your book
1. Visit large bookstores
Start by visiting some large bookstores.
Take your notebook and a pen. Copy the Tables of Contents of books that treat
the same subject matter that your book does. You will want to make your book
significantly different from other
books which cover the same topic. If your book is exactly the same as other
books on the topic, no publisher will be interested in buying it. However, you
shouldn’t be discouraged if there are many books covering the area which you
intend to cover. Lots of books mean that this area is very popular. For
example, publishers bring out dozens of diet books each year. And there's room
for yours, too!
Aim for at least
three to five points of difference. This doesn’t mean that you have to come up
with all new information. In fact, presenting completely new information is
impossible. Sticking with our diet book example, there's only one way to lose
weight, and that's to take in fewer calories than you expend. Authors reveal
this ghastly news to their readers in many ways. Therefore, it's how you
present the material that counts. If you can show readers a new way to diet,
and you can prove that your method works, you're in, with a hot seller on your
hands.
2. Visit your library
Next, drive to the library. Ask the
librarian for Books In Print. This is a multi-volume set of reference books
which lists all the books currently available by author, subject and title.
Your library may have the books, or it may have the BIP CDs. If your library's
BIP is on CD, get a printout of all the books in your subject area.
Don't
faint if you see an ultra-lengthy list! Several years ago when I was assessing
the market for a book on time management, BIP spat out ten-plus pages. I got
all the books which sounded as though they might be similar via inter-library
loan, and none resembled my book at all. So the fact that there are lots and
lots of books means little other than that this subject is popular. This is a
good thing!
Next
check out Forthcoming Books. FC should be available at your library right
near BIP. FC lists all those books which will be released in the next six
months.
You'll
want to have the books which are the main competition for your book on hand if
possible. You don't have to buy them all. You can borrow them from the library,
or if they’re listed on Amazon.com, you can use Amazon.com's clever "Look
Inside" technology, so that you can scan the contents pages of competing
titles.
3. Amazon.com
Amazon.com is your next port of call. Type
the subject of your book into the search query box, and you'll get a list of
all those books which touch on your subject area. Print out this list. Having
the list handy helps you when the time comes to pick a title.
Read
the descriptions, and all the reviews of any books which sound as if they might
be similar to yours.
Write a report on your discoveries
Now you've finished surveying the
marketplace as it stands for your idea, take the time to write a brief report
on what you've discovered. This report is for your own use. Do this right away
when it's all still fresh in your mind. It's important to do this, because when
you talk to your editor or agent, you'll want to have all the information on the
market situation handy. Your report doesn’t have to be long. A page will do.
Day Three: Write the blurb and outline your book
Day Three Tasks
Task One: Write at least three blurbs
Write at least three blurbs for your book:
200 words, 50 words, and 25 words. (See the sample blurbs in this chapter.)
Task Two: Collect sample blurbs
Blurbs sell books. Everyone from the
publisher who initially buys the proposal, to the book store owner who stocks
your book will decide whether they’re interested in your book based on the
blurb alone.
Become
a connoisseur of blurbs. Start your own blurb collection. Each time you see a
blurb which you think is effective, copy it, and put it into your Blurb File.
Writing the blurb
The "blurb" is the back cover
material for your book --- the selling points which will get people to buy the
book. If you write the blurb before you write an outline, you're guaranteed not
to wander off the track as you write your book.
I
can’t emphasize the importance of your blurb enough. If you've been thinking of
skipping this section, please don't. Here are some reasons to write your blurb
first:
·
it keeps you focused on the
theme of your book;
·
it makes writing the outline
easier;
·
it makes selling your proposal
easier;
·
it will assure your agent and
editor that you know what you're doing, and they'll feel comfortable working
with you and handing over the advance;
·
when you've sold the book, and
the time comes to write it, you'll have an easier time because you can keep the
blurb at the forefront of your mind.
Your blurb helps your agent and editor to get a contract for you
Your blurb is the "sales story"
for your book. If your agent becomes enthusiastic about your book, she'll
become enthusiastic on the basis of your blurb. She'll use the blurb as her
sales pitch to other people. For example, when she talks to an editor at a
publishing house who may be interested in your book, she'll start with your
blurb. The conversation will stop there if the editor doesn’t see the book's
potential. Let's say that the editor likes the blurb enough to look at the
proposal. If she's still keen, it's her turn to sell your book, on the basis of the blurb, to the other
people in the publishing company. She'll need to convince Sales and Marketing
that they can sell your book. If they're not keen, you won’t get an offer.
When
you've written your book, your publisher will try to sell your book to book
distributors, and later to booksellers, all on the basis of the blurb that you
started out with. So the time that you spend working on the blurb is not
wasted, it's the most important part of your book. Without a good blurb, your
book will not come into existence.
Having
said all that, it's also important that you don't obsess over your blurb.
Everything you write can be fixed, so focus on getting your blurb written, in
various lengths, rather than striving to make your blurb perfect. Your blurb
may well go through many incarnations: you'll make changes, your agent may want
changes, and your editors will definitely want changes.
Sample blurbs
Here are two sample blurbs.
The first is from
my book LifeTime: Better Time Management
in 21 Days, published by Prentice Hall in 1997. I wrote this blurb while I
was working to gather material for the book. It took me around ten minutes to
write. You'll often find that as you're starting to work on book, your blurb
will come to you as a flash of inspiration. If it doesn’t, don’t worry about
it, just follow the process outlined below.
The second is from
my book Making The Internet Work For Your
Business which was published by Allen & Unwin in 1998. I didn't write
this blurb until the book was complete, and the publisher was sending a brief
to the cover designer. This blurb took me a long time to write. I also had a
lot of trouble writing the book, and I think that if I'd written the blurb
before I started, I would have had a much easier time with the book, and would
have enjoyed writing it more.
You're about to
meet a very powerful genie. This genie will give you all the time you need to
be everything you want to be, to do everything you want to do, and to have
everything you want to have --- you are this genie!
LifeTime: Better Time Management in 21 Days shows you how to
manage your time so that you can achieve any goals you set for yourself. You'll
learn to feel focused and relaxed as you achieve your goals.
Spend 21 days
with LifeTime: Better Time Management in
21 Days and in just 20 minutes a
day you'll learn to how to:
* Focus, so that you get more
done in less time;
*
Separate tasks into the urgent
and the important;
*
Effectively prioritise and
delegate tasks;
*
Practise relaxation daily until
it becomes a habit;
*
Determine your values, so that
you can set appropriate goals;
*
And become more creative.
Each day's
reading will give you ideas, inspiration and motivation, as well as simple
tasks to help you develop your time management skills.
(The above blurb is around 200 words.
Create several versions of your blurb at different lengths --- more on this
below.)
Sample blurb from: Making The Internet Work For Your Business
by Angela Booth
When you use the
Internet for your business you don’t need to wait for customers to come to you
because a Web site is a 24-hour sales force to the whole world. Making The Internet Work For Your Business
offers clear and practical advice on how to use the Internet to develop your
business; how to promote your products and services; how to find vital
information; and how to pursue new business opportunities.
This book
includes the following features:
v
Introduces online basics and
describes the equipment you will need to get your business online and build
your own Web site;
v
Offers practical advice on how
to expand your business online, including tips on your site's useability, how
to market your Web site, and how to boost Internet sales;
v
Provides case studies of how
people are using the Internet inexpensively and simply to develop their
businesses;
v
Includes a fast-finder
directory of useful resources available to businesses on the Internet: company
contacts and suppliers; trainers and educators; financial sites; government and
legal information; human resources; freebies on the Internet; and other
SOHO-related resources.
By using the
Internet you can run more business more efficiently with lowered costs, fewer
staff, and less space requirement, and have more time to develop your business
creatively. Explore the advantages to your business of e-commerce using your
Web site as a merchant commerce system that can handle orders, payment and
fulfilment via the site.
The above blurb runs to almost 250 words,
which is a little long. If I were writing the book now, I would make it shorter
and punchier.
The
one-sentence version of the blurb is: "Making
The Internet Work For Your Business offers clear and practical advice on
how to use the Internet to develop your business; how to promote your products
and services; how to find vital information; and how to pursue new business
opportunities."
Write your blurb in easy steps
Before you start writing your blurb, ask
yourself: who will be reading this book?
This question is important, because it helps you to picture the reader as you
write. Once you have an image of your ideal reader in your mind, you'll find
it's much easier to work on your book. Working out who your readers will be
also gives you a head start in writing the marketing section of your book
proposal.
Let's
stay with the book on natural healthcare for pets. Who would be interested in
this book? Make a list. Your list could start with: pet owners who use natural
healthcare, companies that manufacture natural petcare products, and veterinary
surgeons.
Then
go on and create your blurb in the following easy steps.
Your reader will buy the book because of
the benefits the book gives her. Features are different from benefits. For
example, you may be presenting recipes for making pet remedies. The pet
remedies is a feature. The benefit of the pet remedies could be that
they save the reader trips to the vet and money on expensive commercial
products. YOU MUST USE THE BENEFITS IN YOUR BLURB.
First
list all of the features your book will contain. Then make a list of all the
benefits.
Take
down three or four books from your shelves, and study their blurbs. Do they
list the benefits? How are the benefits presented?
(You'll
occasionally find that the author and publisher, not to mention the publisher's
sales and marketing departments, were all asleep when the book was in
production, and the blurb contains a long list of features. Work out how you’d
convert those features into benefits. This is excellent practise for you.)
Rank the benefits in their order of
importance. You may want to get some help here. Read your list of benefits to a
friend, and ask how she'd rank them.
In addition to your list of benefits, your
blurb can contain an intriguing fact, or a short anecdote. For example, if you
once saved the life of your pet with a natural healthcare remedy, you could
tell this story as part of your blurb.
When
you've completed your blurb, in around 200 to 300 words, create shorter
versions. Create one of 100 words, another of 50 words, and you can even try to
pare it down to 25 words.
Here's a one
sentence version of the sample blurb for LifeTime:
"LifeTime: Better Time Management in
21 Days shows you how to manage your time so that
you can achieve any goals you set for yourself." As you can see, the
sentence is taken from the longer blurb.
Essential blurb add-on: the testimonial
Publishers love cover testimonials, because
they know that they sell books. How many times have you bought a book because
someone you'd heard of and respected recommended the book to you? If you know
anyone famous, or can get in touch with them, now's the time to contact them to
ask them whether they'd be willing to read your book and provide a quote for
you to use on the cover.
Outlining your book
Start with a mind map
This is where your blurb comes into its
own. You can develop a basic outline from your blurb as a mind map, or cluster
diagram. For each book I've written, I've used mind maps. Because a book is
long, it's hard to keep the whole thing straight in your mind --- mind maps
help you to do this.
Diagramming
your initial ideas of what you'd like the book to contain gives you an
overview, from which you can develop a more detailed outline. Go through all
the material you've gathered so far, and insert headings into your mind map.
Remember
that at this stage, nothing is set in stone. Just work as quickly as you can,
don’t think too much about it. You just want to get an idea of how much
material you have.
Create your outline
Working from your mind map, create a
chapter outline of your book. The
easiest way to do this is just to write numbers from one to ten or one to 15
down the page, and type in chapter headings. Most books have around ten to 15
chapters. If yours has more than 15, that's fine.
Only got three or
four headings? No matter how little material you have, or how much, don’t
worry. This is the initial stages, remember. Just work quickly so that you get
something down on paper. Tomorrow we'll be researching your book, and as you
research, you're sure to find many more headings for your outline.
In
these very early stages of working on your proposal, your subconscious mind is
your greatest resource. Therefore, if you get an impulse to write down
something, write it down, even if it doesn’t make much sense to you. The reason
you got this idea will come to you.
Day Four: Research your book proposal, and flesh out your book's outline
Day Four Tasks
Task One: Create your research plan
It's a good idea to create a research plan
to guide you, both in writing your proposal, and later in writing your book.
Knowing that you can find all the information you need is a confidence-builder.
Task Two: Create a chapter outline for your book
Write a chapter
outline for your book proposal.
Research: How much do you need to know?
Remember that this is just a proposal,
you're not writing the complete book. Therefore, you may not need to do any
research at all. You may have all the material you need. If this is the case,
you can go right on to fleshing out your outline.
If
you need to gather material, then first you should develop a research plan.
This may take you an hour or two, but it's time well spent. You will use this
plan first to develop your proposal, and later when you’re writing your book.
For your proposal, you probably won’t need to go past # 6 in your plan to get
all the information you need.
Your research plan
1. Develop a frame of reference, and write
it down as a complete sentence, using no more than 25 words. The shortest blurb
you wrote should work well for this step.
2. Next, mind map or outline everything you
need to research. This is to give you a quick overview. It's a good idea to
print this mind map out so that you can glance at it as you work. You'll find
that if you're online, or at the library, it's tempting to explore other
avenues. These avenues may well be productive, and you can explore them at some
stage, but not while you're trying to write your proposal. Once you start
writing, your only goal should be: "get it done".
3. Do a general search on the Web using a
search engine like Google.com to locate additional areas you could explore.
4. If you find mention of any online groups
or mailing lists which seem appropriate for your subject, join them. The
members may be able to provide you with anecdotes or other information.
5. Make a note of companies which are
mentioned in your Web search. Can they help you? The benefit of asking
companies to help you in your research is free, current information. Most
companies will be only too pleased to help, for the PR boost you can give them.
Make a note to yourself to acknowledge them in your book. If any company has
given you a lot of help, it's a nice gesture to send them a copy when the
book's published.
6. Check periodical indices for articles
which might be useful. Once you needed to trudge along to the library for this
kind of help, but LexisNexis (http://www.lexis.com/ ) is faster.
7. Are there any books which could help
you? Try www.amazon.com to find recent
books on your topic. (You may already have notes on these books which you
collected while you were trying to come up with an idea for a book.)
8. Original sources. This is where your
list of contacts comes in useful. Make a note of people you will want to
interview, first for your proposal, and later, for your book.
9. Experts and organisations.
STOP! Don't collect more information than you need to write your
proposal
Creating your research plan shouldn’t
take you more than an hour, or two hours
maximum. Until you get into the writing process, whether it's your
proposal, or the book itself, you won’t know exactly what you need. As long as
you have sufficient material for that day's work, you've got enough
information.
Work on your book's outline and the first chapter, as you research
We'll do more work on the outline and first
chapter later this week. But, because they form such a big part of your
proposal, start working on them now, as you research.
The Brain-Dead Process
Here's a process I use to combine research
and writing, and just get the bones of the work done. This is a process you can
use when you're writing anything. Use
it for your proposal, the book itself, writing advertising material – I even
use it for writing copy for businesses and for novels. The best thing about
this process is that it stops you from getting stuck.
1) Idea/ topic/
subject
2) Ten minutes of
research
3) Word lists
4) Timed free-writing
for five minutes
5) Take a break
6) First draft
1. Idea/ topic/ subject
If you've got an idea
you want to develop, write it at the top of a sheet of paper.
In this instance, write the title you've chosen for your first chapter. I
use colored pencils and paper for this part of the process so that I can doodle
all around the page, but feel free to open a new document in your word
processor if you want to type.
If you don't have a topic or a title for your chapter, just get a blank
sheet of paper or open a new document, and keep following the steps of the
process.
2. Ten minutes of research
This research process
is really just an early-warning for your subconscious mind, to stimulate it and
to get it to start coming up with material.
I tend to browse the Web for research whatever I happen to be working
on, because I can always find something that starts me thinking. For example, one
week I was ready to work on five radio spots for a jewellery store. I browsed
online jewellery stores, and museum sites. Within five minutes I hit on an
information nugget that stimulated a train of thought. Whatever topic you're
writing on for your proposal, browse a few Web sites which are related.
3. Word lists
I love word lists.
They take no effort at all, and they're ideal for kick-starting any kind of
writing. I use them for fiction, for non-fiction and for copywriting. I also
write them just for practice, to get my brain ticking over. Here's part of a
word list I wrote this morning: "Glamor fear isolation energy deliver
storm glow wind moon rush generosity travel stream voice density". You can
see that on one level, it's just a laundry-list of words. On another level,
what if I asked you to write half a page of a story, using these three words:
"Fear Storm Generosity" somewhere in the first paragraph? You could
do it, and you'd find it easy.
I could use this list to develop a scene for a chapter in a novel, or to
develop a new character for the novel. But I'm currently working on an
advertorial for digital imaging products for a computer magazine, so the word
list gives me some ideas to play with for that. The list even gives me some
ideas I could develop for magazine articles and essays. Not bad for fifteen words
which took a few seconds to write.
For your book proposal, just start making lists of words. The idea is
not to direct your thoughts at all, just
list all the words which spring to mind. Don’t limit yourself with words
directly related to the subject of you proposal. You may never use your word
lists in your work at all. I think of them as ways of prodding my subconscious.
After I've filled half a page of words, I may or may not use them. I don't look
on writing the lists as a waste of time, however, because writing them gets me
into a creative mood.
4. Timed free-writing for five minutes
The topic for your
free-writing session will be the title of your first chapter.
I'm a fan of free-writing. If you haven't read Peter Elbow's amazing
books, particularly Writing With Power, get hold of the book as soon as you
can. After reading it, I guarantee you you'll never have problems with getting
words onto the page ever again.
Timed free-writing is just what it sounds like. You set a timer, and put
pen to paper, or get your fingers traveling across the keyboard. At the end of
the time you set, you stop writing. You don't have to write in complete
sentences. You can write fragments of thoughts, or even write a word list. Just
write whatever words appear in your mind. Don't put any pressure on yourself.
Even if you have a report that needs to be finished in an hour, don't make the subject of your report
the topic for your free-writing session. Let whatever words want to come out,
emerge. You can whine onto the page about how hard writing is for five minutes,
if you wish. If you do, you'll feel better for having released that limiting
thought.
5. Take a break
Close your notebook,
switch off your computer and leave your desk. Your break can be short, but take
at least ten minutes. Preferably half an hour or an hour. I mean it --- LEAVE YOUR
DESK.
6. First draft
When you return to
your desk, don't look at any of your word lists, or your free-writing session. Just
start to work on a first draft of your outline, and some material for your
first chapter. Write as quickly as you can.
I do first drafts on the computer, and I try to type fast, just following
whatever thoughts happen to strike me, and not paying any attention to typos or
to format. If I'm writing an article or advertising copy, or anything which is
under a thousand words, I write the first draft straight through. I aim to take
an hour or less to do this. At this stage, my aim is just to get the words written.
I can worry about whether they're the right words later. Right now, I just want
words.
You will find that the words come quickly, and that you not only outline
your first chapter, but several additional chapters.
What goes into your chapter outline?
You don't need to create the kind of
outline that your English teacher harassed you into creating when you were 12.
The kind of outline you need to create is one based on components. Non-fiction
is much easier to write than fiction because all non-fiction books similar
components. Let's have a look at some of them:
- A foreword. This is similar to an
introduction, but a foreword is usually written by someone other than the
author of the book. It helps if you can get someone famous to contribute
the foreword.
Note: They may expect payment for this. If this person would lend great credibility to your book, then consider paying them for the foreword. It could make the difference between whether your proposal is easy to sell, or more difficult. If you’re writing in an area in which you don’t have professional expertise --- for example, if you're writing about a medical topic and you're not a doctor --- then getting a foreword written by a professional is worthwhile.
- An introduction. This is optional.
If you can't think of anything to put in an introduction, leave it out.
Think of including an introduction if you want to tell your own
story: how you came to get the
information you're about to share.
- A "How To Use This book"
chapter or page. This can be short, or quite long. For example, if you're
writing a book on yoga, you could use this chapter to give four or five
exercise routines, compiled from the various poses that you discuss in the
rest of the book.
- Chapters with problems and
solutions. For example, if you were writing a book on dieting, you could
write seven chapters all posing a typical problem, and then provide
solutions for each problem.
- The last chapter is the wrap-up. In
this chapter you'll want to give readers instructions on where they go
from here, and you'll also want to include an inspirational message.
- A glossary is useful if it will be
necessary for readers new to the subject area. For example, if your book
contains a lot of industry jargon with which your reader is unfamiliar,
give explanations of terminology here.
- An index. I'm always disappointed when an otherwise excellent book, that I'll be referring to again, omits an index. I know creating an index is a hassle, but if you think your readers will use it, then go the extra mile and include it.
Will you need graphics or photographs?
If your book needs photos or other
graphics, start thinking about them now. For example, if you’re writing about
petcare, then by all means send along a couple of relevant photos or graphics with
your proposal. However, illustrative material is only useful if it adds value
for the reader. Do the other books which cover the same subject as your book
include graphics?
If
you decide that your book must have graphics, mention this in your proposal.
Send along an image or two, even if you've only taken them with your own
digital camera.
Day Five: Write your proposal query letter, and submit it to agents and publishers
Day Five Tasks
Task One: Start a contact list of agents and publishers
Finding an agent/ publisher is the first
step to selling your book proposal. However, even after you've sold your
proposal, you'll want to stay current with agent and publisher news in order to
sell your next proposal, and the one after that.
Start
a contact list of agents and publishers, and as you find snippets of
information online, or in your offline reading, enter notes into your database.
Information you might want to add includes: recent sales and the amount the
book was sold for, movements of editors from one publishing house to the next,
and publishing house changes.
Collecting
and maintaining all this information shouldn’t be viewed as a chore. It's vital
business intelligence. It could also help you to increase your income by many
thousands of dollars each year.
Task Two: Send out ten query letters to agents and publishers
Agents and publishers take time to respond.
So today you'll create a query letter for your proposal, and will send it out
to ten agents and publishers. You can choose to send only to agents, or only to
publishers, or you may want to send out five to each group.
Today you write your proposal query letter
Now you're written the blurb for your book,
and the chapter outline, the next step is to start asking agents and publishers
whether they’re interested in looking at the proposal for your book. This means
that you'll send out a query letter, asking agents and publishers to look at
your proposal.
Note:
some new authors want to omit this step. They figure --- hey, I'll just send the complete proposal, so I get a response faster.
Unfortunately, sending a complete unsolicited proposal will SLOW the process.
Agents and publishers receive so many packages of material that they stack them
in a spare office, and the office junior gets to read them once every couple of
months. Send a query letter, then send the proposals to those people who've
asked to see it.
Do you need an agent?
Yes. And no. It can sometimes be harder to
get an agent than it is to get a publisher, so it's a good idea to query both.
When you get an agent, you can tell the agent which publishers you've already
queried. If you get an agent before you get a publisher, you can approach
agents who are a good fit for your book to ask them whether they will handle
the contract negotiations for you.
You
definitely need an agent if you intend to write more than one book. As to
whether you should go agent-hunting, the answer is a definite yes. This isn't
only because an agent will take a lot of the submission and negotiation workload,
and because the agent has (one hopes) her fingers constantly on the pulse of
publishing and knows what’s going on, it's also because an agent forms a handy
cut-off switch between you and the publisher. When problems occur --- let's say
that your editor's demands annoy you, or that your advance payments are late,
you've got someone to gripe at other than your editor.
On
the other hand, if you'd rather keep all the profits your book makes, and feel
that you can handle your contract negotiations yourself, you may want to skip
agents, and focus on publishers.
Online resources to help you in your agent-hunt
Here's a list of online resources which
will help you to decide whether or not you want an agent, and agent contact
details.
WritersNet: http://www.writers.net/agents/browse/loc.php
This is an excellent site, with many useful
articles telling you what agents do, as well as agent lists you can browse.
Literaryagents.org:
http://www.literaryagents.org/
Another
excellent site with articles and agent listings.
Index of US Literary Agents: http://www.writersservices.com/WrHandbook/wh_us_index.htm
This page is on the Writer's Services site,
and you'll also find listings of UK agents.
Preditors and
Editors: http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/
You'll want to bookmark this site. It’s a
wonderful resource to help you to maintain your writing career.
Literary Agent
Warnings: http://www.sfwa.org/beware/agents.html
Unfortunately, as in all fields, in writing
there are scam artists. This page, maintained by the Science Fiction and
Fantasy Writers of America Inc, gives you the low-down (pun intended) on
literary scammers.
Note: things change fast online. Do your
own "literary agents" query on www.Google.com
and other search engines for additional agent information and listings.
Sending your query letter directly to publishers
Many large publishers will not look at
unagented material. However, this still leaves many who will. And most will
look at any letter that you care to send them. Because a publisher can buy your
book, and because you're likely to get a much faster response from a publisher
than you will from an agent, I recommend that in addition to sending out your
queries to agents, you also send them to publishers.
The
best resource for finding publisher information online is Writersmarket.com at http://www.writersmarket.com
From the Web site:
>>
WritersMarket.com is your wired key to
publishing success, providing the most comprehensive—and always
up-to-date—market contact info available, with electronic tools you won't find
anywhere else. And it's all risk-free. Sign up today and get:
- More markets than you'll find anywhere else. And with our constantly updated and verified contact listings, you'll find the market information you need to get your work into the hands of the right editor or agent today.
- Easy-to-use searches. Looking for a specific magazine or book publisher? Just type in the title. Or, widen your prospects with our new keyword search for broad category results.
- Expert advice from top editors, agents and writers. Want to know how to improve your cover and query letters? Have a question for an editor or agent? Find the answer you need here.
- Daily industry updates. Debbi Ridpath Ohi has her finger on the publishing pulse - and she shares her insider info with you.
- Plus, personalize your home page, keep track of your work with Submission Tracker, save your best prospects in Favorites' Folders, and more!
>>
Please note, I don’t have any connection to
Writersmarket.com, aside from subscribing to the service. I've been a
subscriber for several years, and have always been happy with the service. It
will save you a lot of time looking for publishers. Of course, the service
isn't restricted to publisher listings. You'll find agent listings as well,
plus magazine listings and a library of useful articles.
Yes, you can multiple-submit your query letter, and even your proposal
Once you start marketing your proposal,
you'll find that some agents and publishers include words like "no
multiple submissions" when they're telling authors how they want to
receive proposals. In other words, they want exclusivity. Unfortunately,
there's a big problem with this. The problem is time. Most agents and editors
will take a month or longer to evaluate your proposal. Some take as long as six
months. Considering that you may need to approach 20 to 30 editors and/ or
publishers, you could still be sending out your book three years from now.
Professional writers ignore these admonitions, because if they didn’t, they
wouldn’t eat.
Sample Query Letter
What goes into a query letter? I've
included a sample query letter that I've sent out, and which garnered an agent
contract immediately. You'll see that
this letter is:
- Short;
- To the point.
I could have spent a lot longer composing
this letter --- I could have included a better hook, and included the book's
blurb. At the time I sent it out however, I didn’t have the time to spend on
revisions. I'm including this plain-vanilla, so-so query letter here for a
reason. That is --- and I've found this to be true in 25 years of writing ---
it's important that you SHOW UP. In other words, while you might want each
piece of writing you send out to be perfect, or at least brilliant, sometimes
you don’t have the time. At those times, send it out anyway.
Get
into the habit of treating your work with a certain amount of aplomb. That is,
even thought it's not perfect, and you could make it better if you had the time
and energy, 90 per cent of the time what matters is that you send out your
work. If you're a closet perfectionist, as I am, this will be hard for you
at first
XXX
XXX
[DATE]
Dear XX
My name is
Angela Booth. I'm seeking representation for my book: 7 Days To
Easy-Money--- Copywriting Success.
The book is
aimed at writers who would like to make money by copywriting (writing for
business). As a copywriter, writers write the words that sell: everyday words.
The words on ads, leaflets, brochures, press releases, product instructions and
labels, newsletters, direct mail, and on Web sites.
I've been
selling the material as an ebook and as an e-course on my Web site (http://www.digital-e.biz/ ) for several
months. It has been well received, and
now I'd like to take the material and use it as the basis for a book.
Although there
are several popular books on copywriting, none approach the material in a
step-by-step fashion. My book's constructed so that at the end of seven days
and seven lessons, the reader has built a viable freelance copywriting
business.
My credentials
for writing the book: I've been both a successful copywriter and writer for over
25 years. I've included a brief bio below.
Please let me know if you'd like to see a proposal for the book.
Sincerely
Angela Booth
Bio:
Australian
author and journalist Angela Booth writes about business, technology, women's
issues, and creativity. Her books include: LifeTime: Better Time Management in
21 Days, Home Sweet Office: Your Home Office, Improve Your Memory in 21 Days,
and Making the Internet Work for Your Business. Her feature articles have
appeared in The Australian Women's Weekly, Woman's Day, New Idea, Vogue, and
numerous other print and online magazines.
~~Angela Booth
partial list of credits~~
A professional
writer for 25 years, her credits include:
* Feature
articles for mass market women's
magazines in Australia
and the US,
including The Australian Women's Weekly, Woman's Day, New Idea and Vogue;
* Feature
articles for computer magazines;
* Content work
for Web sites and Internet newsletters, including the Internet Business Forum
(http://ibizhome.com/)
* Business books
for major publishers, including many books in Prentice Hall's WorkWise series
(translated into several Asian and European languages);
* A series of
romance novels for Macdonald Futura UK.
At her Digital-e
--- Info to Go Web site (http://www.digital-e.biz/), Angela Booth publishers
three popular ezines: Creative Small Biz and Your EveryDay Write, which are
free to subscribers, and Freelance Copy Write, which has paying subscribers.
She also teaches online writing courses.
Another sample query letter
Here's another sample query letter. At the
time of writing, I haven't sent out this letter. Again however, you can see
that it's short, to the point, and contains nothing irrelevant. Over the years,
I've found that whether I'm pitching (selling) nonfiction or fiction, I've had
the best responses to letters which were less than one page in length.
Remember
that nothing is set in stone. It's all an experiment. Write your letter at
whatever length seems best to you. Your motto should be: "whatever
works".
XXXX
XXXX
[DATE]
Dear XX
My name is
Angela Booth. I'm seeking representation for my book: Writing To Sell In the
Internet Age. The target audience is writers, and aspiring writers, who
want to be paid for their skill with words.
Writing To
Sell In the Internet Age discusses the new earning power that Internet technology gives
writers. Many writers are comfortable using the
Internet for email and research, but most are unaware that they now have many
new opportunities, including:
- Clever new ways to market their work and services with tools like autoresponders, email mini-courses, ebooks, and promotional ezines;
- The opportunity to develop a loyal following of readers. They can write and publish instantly, to a worldwide audience millions strong, with tools like Web logs (blogs);
- The ability to target specific niches, and to garner an income much faster than they can via traditional publishing routes. A writer can write an ebook or report this month, and sell it forever.
I've been
selling this material as an ebook and as an e-course on my Web site (http://www.digital-e.biz/ ) for several
months. It has been well received, and
now I'd like to take the material and use it as the basis for a book.
My credentials
for writing the book: I've been an author, writer and copywriter over 25 years.
I've been online since 1993, and know the online world well. (I've included a
brief bio below.)
As far as I'm
aware, there's no other book currently on the market which presents this
material. The few Internet-related books for writers currently available came
out around 2000, during the height of the dot com boom, and focus on online
markets for writers.
Please let me
know if you'd like to see a proposal for the book.
Sincerely
Angela Booth
Write your query letter!
The next step is to write your own query
letter. Don’t take too long over this. Make a couple of notes of points you
want to include, and write it. You can include your blurb --- your blurb could
in fact make up the bulk of your letter.
A. Introduce yourself in 20 words or less,
and state your business --- "I'm seeking representation for my book:
[title]…"
B. Blurb.
C. Your credentials.
D. Identify the market for the book.
"Don'ts" for your query letter
Please don't say that you're successful or
that you've written a bestseller. Only beginning writers make claims like this.
The agent or editor will immediately classify you as a novice, and an
irritating one at that.
(On
the other hand, if a well-known much-published writer has praised you or your
book, say so, and give his/ her contact details so that the editor can call
him/ her.)
The agent will figure it out when you don’t
mention writing credits. Please note: THIS IS NOT A BAD THING. Everyone has to
start somewhere. Editors and agents know this, and they won’t hold it against
you. They will judge your book proposal query on its merits. If an agent feels
that your material is something that she can sell, she will contact you. As
will an editor, if she feels that the writing in your query letter is to the
point and professional, and she thinks that your book idea is a good one.
Unless these people have publishing
credits, no one cares. Mentioning them marks you not only as an amateur, but
also as someone who may be difficult to work with.
What
do I mean by "difficult to work with"? Before you sign a contract,
your agent and editor will judge your behaviour, looking for tell-tale signs
that you might be a problem writer.
Problem writers:
o Argue when asked to rewrite. Almost everything you write will need
to be rewritten. Your agent will ask you to add, delete or revise material in
your proposal. Your editor will ask for rewrites on your book, and perhaps more
than one rewrite. Therefore, if you show any sign that you may drag your feet
over these chores, or do them without a song on your lips, they will dump you.
Life's too short, and publishing is too competitive to indulge anyone's
temperament;
o Procrastinate. Publishing is always on a tight deadline. From the
day of your first contact, you must show that you can work to deadline.
o Can't follow instructions. Never be afraid to ask if there is
something you don’t understand. For example, if you're asked for a
"bio" and you don’t know how to write one, ask. No one will think
less of you for asking, but they will take several steps backward if you don’t
follow instructions, or if you decide that you will do things your way.
o Turn in a messy or less-than-pristine typescript. Or fail to send an
electronic file when asked.
Many writers are never asked for a proposal
because they don’t nail the query letter. If you tell an agent your book is
about "growing up in the fifties", the agent will simply ignore you.
This is not specific enough. You must be totally specific, so that the person
you're writing to can visualise the book, and can also visualise where it will
fit into the marketplace.
Writers
do this sort of thing because they're insecure. They imagine that if they're
vague, the agent will ask to see their book because they want to know exactly
what it's about. This is a HUGE mistake. Agents and editors receive hundreds of
letters and proposals each week. If you're not specific, you give the
impression that you haven’t thought out your proposal.
Day Six: Write the proposal
Day Six Task
Task One: Write the initial draft of your book proposal
Write the draft quickly. Don’t think too
much about it. In your initial draft, you aim for quantity, rather than
quality.
Relax! You'll write your draft in stages
Today's the big day. You're going to write
your book proposal. If you're starting to freeze up at the thought, relax.
You've already done a lot of preparation work, and you're not going to write it
all at once. You'll write it by taking the proposal through several clearly
defined stages:
A.
First draft. This is your "thinking"
draft, in which you think on paper. In this draft, you write whatever you like.
You're aiming for quantity here, rather than quality. Write this draft full-steam
ahead, without stopping to look things up. Consider "writing" this
draft by talking into a tape recorder.
If
you need to do some spot research, just leave a note to yourself, and keep
working on the draft. You can look up individual items later. The benefit of
doing specific research later is that you may find it's unnecessary. It's quite
possible that you'll eliminate this material from a later draft.
B.
Your second draft. Your first draft has shown you
what you want to say. In this draft, you have a crack at saying it. In your
second draft, you organize. You decide what material you want to include, and
perhaps expand on, and what material you'll delete. Think of this draft as
shaping your material.
Occasionally
you'll want to take this shaping draft through several documents. You may have
a B1, B2, B3 and B4 version, for example.
Keep your drafts.
Use the "File, Save As" menu
option of your word processor to keep versions of your book proposal. When you
change the name of the file as you work through different versions, it means
that you can always go back and reinsert something that you deleted, because
it's in a previous version.
C.
Your clean-up draft. Your final draft. You've said
what you want to say, now you get a chance to say it better. You clean up the
redundancies and spice it up.
Paradoxically, the easiest way to write
well is to allow yourself to write badly. Every day. This is because writing is
hard when you try to think and write at the same time. Allow yourself to think
on paper for as many drafts as you need. Then write the final draft with
confidence.
Woody Allen once said that 90 per
cent of success at anything was just showing up. I've found that that's very
true. So no matter how bad you feel your writing is at any given time, go ahead
anyway. Your writing is not as bad as you think, it's simply a crisis of
confidence, and even if it is rough when you first get it on the computer
screen, it can be fixed. However, if you hesitate, and don’t get it on the
computer screen, you have nothing to fix. Get it done!
At the end of this
book, in the Appendix, you'll find the complete proposal for my book 7 Days
To Easy Money: Copywriting Success. This is a real proposal, and it won an agent contract on first reading.
Read it through so that you can see exactly what goes into creating a proposal.
We've already covered what your proposal must contain, here it is
again, for reference. Please print this page out:
- A title page, with the title, subtitle, author, word count of the completed book, and estimated time frame for completion. You might state: "75,000 words, completion three months after agreement".
- An overview: a description of the book. This can be as short as a paragraph, or several pages long.
- The background of the author. Your biography, as it relates to your expertise for this book.
- The competition in the marketplace. This is where you mention the top four or five titles which are your book's competitors. (Note: if there are dozens of competitors for your book, this is a good thing, because it means that the subject area is popular. Your book will need to take a new slant.)
- Promotions. This is where you describe how you will promote your book, both before and after publication.
- A chapter outline.
- A sample chapter, or two chapters. This is always the first chapter, and if you're sending two chapters, it's the Introduction and Chapter One, or if there's no Introduction, it's Chapters One and Two.
- Attachments. Optional. You may want to attach articles you've written about the book's topic, or any relevant supporting material.
Let's write the proposal
Your chapter outline
You've
already been working on a major part of the proposal --- the chapter outline.
If you like, you can begin today's work by spending an hour or two with that.
If your chapter outline still has major holes in it, don't worry too much about
it. Today we'll complete an initial draft of the complete proposal, and you can
fill in the gaps later.
Your background—why you're the person to write this book
Next, we'll work on the background section.
The first piece of
info you'll need to include in the background section is a brief bio. Every
book you own has a bio of the author, so take a few books off your shelves and study the author bios. Most
are short. Novelists' bios mention the writer's interests, partner, children
and pets. The bios of nonfiction writers (that's you) emphasize the writer's
academic credentials if it's important to the writer's credibility, or the
writer's experience in the field the book covers, or anything else which might
be relevant.
Here's an example
of a bio, which I wrote as part of the book proposal for: 7 Days To Easy
Money: Copywriting Success--
Quick Bio
Australian
author and journalist Angela Booth has been writing successfully for 25 years.
She writes about business, technology, women's issues, and creativity. Her
books include: LifeTime: Better Time
Management in 21 Days, Home Sweet
Office: Your Home Office, Improve
Your Memory in 21 Days, and Making
the Internet Work for Your Business. Her feature articles have appeared in
magazines like Energy for Women, The Australian Women's Weekly, Woman's Day,
New Idea, Vogue, and numerous other print and online magazines.
She's also a working copywriter,
writing copy for businesses ranging from international corporations to small
businesses with less than five employees.
Your bio must be slanted so that it relates
to those experiences which make you the perfect person to write the book you're
proposing. For example, let's say that in your daily life you're a doctor. The
book you're proposing is a gardening book: how to grow your own organic
vegetables. In your bio, might call yourself "Dr. Jane Smith", but
for this bio, you’d mention that you grew up on a farm, have grown organic vegetables
for ten years, and write a monthly column for Eat Your Organic Veggies Magazine. Your experiences as a doctor wouldn’t be appropriate for this
book. On the other hand (just to confuse you), if you intended to cover the
health and nutritional benefits of organic vegetables at great length, then
your credentials as a doctor would be important, and you'd include them.
Please remember that there is no way you
can do any of this wrong --- something either works, or it doesn't. You can
always make changes later, when you get feedback .
Many of my writing students focus so much on the "correct"
way of doing something, that they never get anything done. Join any writing
group, and discussions of correct formatting abound. If you start to get
nervous about anything you're doing, wondering whether you're doing it
"right", simply tell yourself: "this is the way I choose to do
it. I may choose another way at some other time, but right now, I do it this
way, and it's the right way for me."
In addition to your bio, if you have
publishing credits you'll want to mention them here. Your publishing credits
should be paid credits, rather than work you've done for promotional purposes,
or material for which you weren't paid.
What
if you don’t have any publishing credits? Everyone has to start somewhere. If
you don’t have any credits, don’t worry about them. If your proposal is
excellent, and a publisher wants to commission the book, then your lack of
credits won’t count against you.
Write the Overview
Now you'll know why you spent time writing
your blurb. The Overview, the description of your book, is the first part of
your proposal that agents and publishers will read. It's your book in a
nutshell. It's also merely an expanded version of your blurb.
I've
included a sample Overview below. It's from the proposal for my book Writing To Sell In The Internet Age.
Sample Overview Writing To Sell In The Internet Age
Writing To Sell In The Internet Age empowers writers by revealing the immense new earning power that Internet technology gives them. While
many writers are comfortable using the Internet for email and research, most
are unaware that they now have many new opportunities, including:
- Clever new ways to market their work and services with tools like autoresponders, email mini-courses, ebooks, auctions, and promotional ezines;
- The opportunity to develop a loyal following of readers. They can write and publish instantly, to a worldwide audience millions strong, with tools like Web logs (blogs). This loyal following makes a writer more appealing to traditional publishers;
- The ability to target specific niches, and to garner an income much more quickly than they can via traditional publishing routes. A writer can write an ebook or report this month, and sell it forever.
The Internet
gives writers the power to be their own publisher and distributor by selling
their work directly to readers. Many writers are already taking advantage of
the possibilities. Judy Cullins, who's building an online reputation as
"The Book Coach", says of selling her ebooks online directly to
readers: "The first months, I had no idea at the time how powerful
this method was. My income bolted to over $3000 a month in less than a year."
The new rule for writers in the Internet age is: "Create,
promote, sell". What's amazing is that writers can do all this in one day,
even in hours. When I write a report, I can format it in PDF (Portable Document
Format) at the click of a key. That's the publishing done. I can then add the
report to the online store at my Web site in minutes --- distribution done.
Then I can send an announcement out to my subscribers (promotion done) and watch the sales rolling
in. Best of all I don't have to be anywhere in particular to do this. I can do
it as easily on a sun-drenched beach on the Great Barrier
Reef off northern Australia
as I can in my home office in Sydney.
Are these capabilities within the reach of non-technically-inclined
writers? Yes! Although I've been writing about software, computers and the
Internet for many years, I'm by no means a geek. The writers who shared their
anecdotes and success stories for this book aren't geeks either. They're
writers who've seen opportunities and grabbed at them. Many of these writer/
publisher/ entrepreneurs didn’t come to writing via traditional publishing
routes. Many started out as marketers, or entrepreneurs. They looked at the
Internet, saw how relatively easy it is to make money selling information
online, and worked out ways to do it. The Internet is the answer to writers'
prayers. It puts writers in control of their own destinies.
We see what we expect to see, so writers have seen the Internet as a
magazine-style "content" market. But because of the unlimited free
content online, few sites buy content. (This may change, as more sites with
good content change to a reader-pays business model.) Writers haven't yet seen
that the Internet is a completely new environment, where they can write what
they want to write, and can, without too much effort, make a good living.
Writing To Sell In The Internet Age is a how-to for writers to access their new opportunities, but it's
also a how-they-did-it. I'll be describing the avenues that writer-entrepreneurs
are developing to use the Internet to make excellent money in many new ways.
These writers are exploring their new options with amazement and delight. It's
an exciting time. I'll be including their stories and tips in this book to
inspire other writers that they can do it too.
I won’t include
descriptions of technology and the online environment. Information on how to
build a Web site, how to sell online, how to create a mailing list and other
technical minutiae is readily available online. Also because technology is
advancing so quickly, technical information rapidly becomes outdated. What
won't change however are the basic concepts of writing to sell in the Internet
age.
Include in your Overview:
- A description of your book;
- Why your book is important;
- Something about what's included in your book;
- Why you're the person to write this book.
Please don’t try to hype your book in the
Overview. Just tell your story as quickly and as clearly as you can.
Also, don’t hold
anything back. I've read many proposals from beginning writers where the writer
has tried to be coy: "For the complete details, you'll need to read the
book!" This kind of thing will work against you. You're asking a publisher
to invest around $30,000 to publish your book. Anyone who's going to spend that
amount of money wants all the details. Please provide them.
Your Overview can be as long, or as short,
as you feel it needs to be. Some proposals have one-page Overviews, in others,
the writer needs five pages to describe the book. Use your own judgement here.
If you need five pages, then by all means, use them. However, if your Overview
is long, make sure that you haven’t repeated information.
Write the Promotions section
Next, you'll write the Promotions section.
In this section, you will show your publisher that you intend to go all-out to
promote your book. You can do this with an investment of money, or of time. If
you can do both, you should.
Company CEOs, sports figures, celebrities
and other well-heeled people often write books, or have books written for them
by ghost-writers. It's understood that any celebrity will hire a public
relations agency, and will spend a lot of money nudging the book up the
bestseller list. If you have money to spend on a public relations agency, mention this in your proposal. Your
publisher will be pleased that you intend to get behind the book.
If you don’t have swags of cash lying
around that you can use to promote your book, you'll need to invest time. There
are a million ways you can promote your book, from pasting magnetic letters
onto your car and building a Web site to calling bookstores all over the
country to talk them into stocking your book. You can even act as your own PR
agency, and without anything other than an Internet connection and some time,
can do a lot of work to help sell your book. Anything that you do will be
appreciated by the publisher.
Sample Promotions section Writing To Sell In The Internet Age
Here's the
Promotions section from Writing to Sell
in the Internet Age.
My primary focus will be on online promotions. For two reasons: I'm
located in Australia, which means I can’t go the usual book store/ speaking
venue route to promote the book. And I've been online since 1992, pre-World
Wide Web, and know how to promote online. (I wrote a book called Making the
Internet Work for Your Business, which is about setting up a small business
online (1998, Allen & Unwin)). Also, it's appropriate to promote a book
about selling in the age of the Internet on the Internet.
I have a popular Web site (http://www.digital-e.biz/)
and three email ezines, and I'll be promoting Writing To Sell In the
Internet Age heavily in all of them. I now spend ten hours a week working
on my site and my ezines, and on promotional activities for them, so I'll
increase that to 15 hours, so that I regularly spend considerable time on the
book's promotion.
My offline focus
will be on getting press coverage and radio interviews.
My plan outline
- I will create a mini-Web site for Writing To Sell In the Internet Age. This will be a three page sales site, the name of the site to be taken from the book. Such mini-sites are called "buy, bookmark or leave" sites. The entire site is similar to a direct mail letter: its only purpose is to encourage the reader to buy the book. The beauty of such sites is that if they're efficiently linked from other sites, such as my business site, Digital-e, and other sites in which I have an interest, they quickly rank #1 in the search top search engines, that is, in Yahoo! and Google.com.
- I'll write a long sales page on Digital-e for Writing To Sell In the Internet Age. (See an example: http://www.digital-e.biz/ecourses2.html)
- I'll develop an email newsletter for the book's buyers, and prospective buyers. This monthly newsletter will update the information in the book, and will include a link for readers to buy the book online.
- I'll subscribe to a press release Web site, so I can send out monthly online news releases for the book to thousands of media outlets in the U.S., and if the book gets a Commonwealth sale, in the UK and Australia. With the phone, email and fax, doing long-distance interviews for newspapers and radio will be easy. Several of my books have attracted radio and newspaper interviews, and I'm comfortable doing them.
- I'll interact in online chat rooms, conferences, and in mailing lists, subtly promoting the book.
- I'll create a private discussion group for the book's readers in the "Talk" forums section of my Digital-e Web site, so that readers can ask questions and interact with me directly. As this forum grows, I'll appoint reader-moderators for the various discussions.
Write the Competition section
On Day Two, you did a lot of work on
assessing the market for your book. Here's where you use all that information.
Choose anywhere from three to five books which you estimate will be your book's
main competitors. Describe how your book is different from these books, and how
your book fills a niche in the marketplace.
Include
the names of the books, the authors, and the year of publication. If these
books were published several years ago, this is all to the good.
Day Seven: Write the sample chapter and revise your proposal
Day Seven Tasks
Task One: Write the sample chapter
Write the first
chapter of your book.
Task Two: Revision
Revise the first
draft of your complete proposal.
Today you write your sample chapter
Write your sample chapter using the A,B,
and C method that we talked about. I've also described a fast method that I use
to write chapters of books below. If you prefer to use a tape recorder, then by
all means do that. I prefer to write first drafts by hand, on yellow legal
pads. I find that I can relax and enjoy myself when I write by hand. Whichever
method you use, just settle down and write the first chapter.
Note:
invariably, after you sell the proposal, and are writing the book, you will
make changes and it's likely that the final first chapter you write will be
very different from the version you're writing today. Since that's the case,
just write as quickly as you can.
A fast chapter-writing method
Writing a chapter of a book is like writing
a long article. Most chapters are somewhere between 2000 and 4000 words, but if
you want to write a short chapter of 1500 words, that's fine too. Remember that
you can’t do any of this wrong, and it's your choice.
Here's
a method that I use when I'm writing a chapter in a book. Adapt it to your own
needs.
Reread the notes that you've made during
this week.
Then take five minutes and write out
exactly what you want to include in this chapter. This isn't an outline; your
notes can be as brief, or as lengthy as you wish. I usually talk to myself on
paper, like this:
"What do I
want to cover in this chapter? I want the reader to understand (this process/
theory/ idea/ method). I also want to include these five anecdotes. What do the
anecdotes show? The first one shows that…"
By talking to
myself like this, I eliminate performance anxiety. Some writers do the same
thing by writing their chapters as letters: they can take it easy, as if
they're talking to a friend. The big benefit of using a method like this is
that it does away with formality and stiffness.
When you feel ready, start to write. As
you're writing, just get the words out as quickly as you can. It's useful to
set a goal for the number of pages in an hour. I usually aim for three pages an
hour. However, if you feel that having a number of pages that you
"must" write an hour stresses you, then don't set a goal like this.
When
you're writing:
- Turn on the answering machine, and turn off your email program;
- Close your office door;
- Set yourself goal of either pages written, or words written;
- Don’t reread your notes. If you need to look something up, just write "tk" which is an old printer's mark meaning "to come", and keep on writing. If you stop to look something up it may derail your train of thought. Plus you may think: oh, I need to cover this, and this, and this must go in. Assure yourself that you won’t be able to cover everything. Trust that your subconscious will deliver the material which needs to go into the first chapter ;
- Keep going even if you're sure that what you’re writing is less than your best work. You can tidy it all up later. Just get the words down.
If you find that your writing goes slowly
with this first chapter, that's normal. First chapters are always slow to
write, because you haven’t found the right tone and voice in which to write
your book. Once you find those, the writing will go much more easily. Because
first chapters are always slow, it's
important that you don’t leave your desk until you've written the number of
words you set out to write.
Revising your proposal
When you've completed the first chapter,
print out the entire proposal. Then go and do something else --- go and watch a
movie, or have lunch. Take a good break of at least a couple of hours before
you come back to read your proposal.
How to revise
Just like your writing, your revision will
go through several phases. Copyediting, or line revision, where you fiddle with
word choices and grammar, comes last.
Here
are the steps:
Read the proposal straight through. Keep
note-making to a minimum. This is so you can get a sense of how the material
reads. When you've finished this initial read-through, ask yourself whether
what you've written stays close to your blurb. If it doesn’t, you can either
change your blurb --- perhaps you've been inspired with some creative new ideas
--- or you can change your proposal.
While
this read-through is fresh in your mind, write out your impressions. Have you
covered most of what you want to include? What else do you think the proposal
needs?
Before you start cutting, rename your
document (Version B or B1, or whatever naming process makes sense to you).
Now go through the
proposal and take out the material that you've decided you want to eliminate.
If it's too painful to simply hit the Delete key, cut the material and paste it
into another document.
In this pass through the proposal, add the
material the proposal needs. Perhaps you've done some additional research ---
write up all the material you want to include.
Print out your proposal, and read it through
to check for coherency. Make sure that you've included transitions in your
sample chapter.
In this pass through the material, you get
to jazz it up, if you wish.
In this final pass through your proposal,
check for grammar and word usage.
You're done!
You've done it,
congratulations!
You've completed your book proposal. Now
comes the fun part, selling your proposal. If you need any help with this, you
can contact me at any time. Don't forget to send me a copy of the ms for your
free appraisal.
Good luck. See
you on the bestseller lists. :-)
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