Publishers lack imagination. Here’s how to write a proposal to win them over.

I work with a lot of aspiring authors. Many of them have exciting and promising ideas. “Can’t the acquisitions editors at these publishers see the promise of my idea?”, they ask?

No, they can’t.

Editors who invested in the promise of books have been burned. A lot. Authors routinely fail to live up to that promise. That leaves the editor with a lot of wasted effort, a lot of wasted money on book advances, and a lot of regrets. Having been burned so often, they’re risk-averse. That’s why they seem to lack imagination. From a business perspective, dreamers don’t make good editors.

Your proposal must prove your book will succeed

Every book proposal has a gap. The gap is between what you’ve shown you can do and what the publisher needs for the book to be a success. Your job as an author is to narrow that gap. If there’s any daylight showing there, you’re unlikely to get a contract.

Here’s how to close that gap:

• Prove you can market the book. Publishers expect you do the work of selling the book. You need to show you can (and have) done this. That means you need to have as many of the following as possible: an active speaking career, a big social media following, a popular newsletter, a popular podcast, regular publications in mainstream or specialized media, bulk buyers at companies or other organizations, friends with large followings, and success with previous books. Saying you will create these things carries no weight. You need to already have them. Because while you may be a dreamer, the publisher does not share your faith.
• Write awesome prose. The opening of your book proposal should be captivating. (I recommend starting with a case study story.) The sample chapter should be a sparkling example of fascinating, well crafted, well argued, practical, and compelling writing. Unless you hire a ghostwriter, the only way to prove you can write is to write.
• Differentiate. If there are no other books out there on your topic, why not? Why is it going to sell now? If there are many other books out there on your topic, what will make yours stand out? Publishers want you to prove there is a market, but that the market isn’t already saturated. If you can’t do that, they won’t buy.

How your proof will sell the book

Acquisitions editors often say “I loved this.” Frankly, that’s worthless. It costs them nothing, and it has very little to do with whether they are ready to make an offer.

Your job is to get them beyond “I loved this” to “I will buy and publish this.” That isn’t about firing up their imagination. It’s about offering proof that you can write, you can market, and you can differentiate.

You can get help from me or somebody else to make that proposal do all that. But don’t fool yourself. If you can’t market, you can’t write amazing well, and you can’t differentiate, that’s just a big waste of effort.