Thursday, 9 August 2012

Writing the Book Proposal Overview


The book proposal's overview should, quite obviously, be an overview of the book you propose to write.

Typically it is one or two paragraphs long and is broken into three sections: an introduction, a one-sentence summary and a description of the book (this should be a brief precis, the book description in a nutshell, you will write a longer version later in the proposal).

The style should be something like a leader article in a newspaper. The introduction should give a brief outline of the book and what it's about.

The summary should say something about the uniqueness of the book (unique books have less competition and are more likely to sell). This sentence usually goes something like 'This is the first book to .... [fill in the blank]...' In publishing parlance this is the 'book hook' that tells the publisher why your book will be worth commissioning.

Next follows a section on the description of the book. Here, give a brief description. The book will be divided into three main sections. The first sections will be the complete text of the 1380s recipe book rendered as close to the hand-written original as possible. The second section will be a translation of all the recipes into modern English. The third section will be modern redactions of all the recipes so that a modern cook could prepare them at home.

This section on the book description should close with an sentence that covers the likely length of the book (you may not know exactly as you have not written it yet), along with the expected completion date. Something along the lines of

'The book will be 80 000 words long and will contain a bibliography, images, a glossary and an index. The manuscript will be completed six months after receipt of the advance.'

It should only take you a few hours to write the outline. Just make certain you do your research. After all, if you are going to say that the book is unique, you must be certain that this is the case (searching Amazon is your friend here; after all, if you can search Amazon, so will your prospective publisher).

On to the next section: Writing the Marketing Section.

Back to the Introduction on Writing a Book Proposal.

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