Your publisher doesn’t care

Your publisher doesn’t care

Face it. Your publisher doesn’t care about you. You have an incredible idea that will change the world. Your publisher doesn’t care. You can write with such deftness and skill that readers will be captivated. Your publisher doesn’t care. You’ve conducted three years of painstaking research. They don’t care. You have incredible ideas on how…

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

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…

Why you only get one chance to create a great proposal

Why you only get one chance to create a great proposal

An author contacted me recently regarding his book proposal. His agent had accepted it and shopped it to some publishers; there were some nibbles, but no bites. This guy was well positioned: good speaking career, solid book idea, well-written sample chapter. Now he wanted to know if I could help him to improve the proposal….

The three questions agents and editors ask about your book proposal

The three questions agents and editors ask about your book proposal

If you’re writing a nonfiction book, your proposal is crucial. It’s a complicated and diverse document. But for the acquisitions editor at a publishing house to make you an offer — or for an agent to represent you — you need only answer three questions: Is your idea a good idea? Can you write? Will…