This is the second part of our two episode special with author and book coach, Jennie Nash. If you haven’t listened to part one yet, go back and check out episode 51. In today’s episode, Jennie picks up where we left off and dives deeper into the topic of book proposals, sharing her insight into what makes a proposal truly standout.

1:10 - So let’s circle back to comp titles. This is an area I see a lot of authors get stuck in because the big challenge is that authors know they need to quantify the success of these books they’re comparing their own to. And yet on Amazon it’s only a ranking system but you don’t know how many they actually sold. How do you help authors deal with that?

• It’s tricky, because publishers have access to sales data that we don’t. So, it’s hard to get actual numbers or statistics but I don’t think that’s as important as getting the right titles.
• One thing you can do on Amazon is start with a book you know has sold well in your realm. So make sure to look at those fabulous resources on Amazon like the sections where you can see “people who bought x book also bought y book.”
• You also want to make sure you don’t look at the paid ads, but focus on the organic ones from Amazon. You can drill down and start poking around and what you’re looking for is setting a context for where your book is going to be.
• You might find yourself going down a rabbit hole of comp titles but you want to reign yourself in and stick to around 6 comp titles.
• My favorite thing to do is look at different genres when I’m looking at comp titles. You can use different books from different genres to skew the conversation or argument going on around your book. You want to pull in books from genres that make up a really interesting argument in the conversation around the book.
• You’re trying to show people you’re pitching your book to, where this book is going to live. What type of person is going to go for it? Think about your ideal readers’ nightstand and what books they might have on there.
• It’s really about circling around that ideal reader, what they need, and how your book is going to be a part of that conversation.

10:04 - Let's switch gears to the marketing section. Given the early stage at which you’re developing the proposal, you’re not going to have a lot of the marketing confirmed. How do you help them with that concern?

• What you want to think of in your marketing plan is your strategy. Your strategy is going to be based on what you bring to the table.
• In a perfect world, what you bring to the table is a clear idea of how to reach your ideal reader. You’re going to know where your reader is and what this reader is doing out in the world.
• The marketing plan in a book proposal should be less tactical and more strategic.
• For example, I had one client who was an instagram influencer with 80K followers. And her audience was very niche; it was mothers who had been divorced. So, she had a growing audience and a very small niche. Therefore, her job in her proposal was not to say what traditional media she had booked but to think about what the objection to the book might be and address it. For this book, that objection might be that the niche is too small. So her job is to show that even though the niche is small, she knows it inside and out.
• In the marketing plan, it would be easy for the author to say they have a lot of followers and end it there. Instead, we built a detailed strategy consisting of four pillars for the marketing plan.
• Pillar 1: How she’s going to capture the existing audience for this book. How she’ll be reaching out to them for stories, seeding her audience, and leveraging that audience.
• Pillar 2: How she’s going to leverage connections with other influencers and their specific connections in specific ways like pitching guest posts for big blogs she’s already working with and reaching out for partnerships. You want to make it a specific and strategic plan.
• Pillar 3: How she’s going to connect with podcasters. Again, we’re focusing on the strategy. What can I talk about to a general parenting audience that would help sell my book and establish me as an expert but also help the audience?
• Pillar 4: How she’ll be reaching out to other kinds of parenting print media. For example, you might include a specific article you would pitch to a specific magazine.
• Another pillar involved connecting to live speaking events on women’s empowerment.
• You can see that what you do is leverage what the author is bringing to the table and build a strategy around it.
• Let’s say an author doesn’t have a big audience.
• One client I had, didn’t have a large following. He mostly worked by word of mouth with high-end executives. We had a few marketing hurdles we were trying to solve for, and our strategy was involving his really killer network and we realized he had some genuine marketing and strategic advantages he wasn’t even aware of. For years, he actually had a guidebook he was selling to different business schools and that means he has connections with people who can help sell the book at business schools around the country.
• You have to show that you know the audience, you know how to reach them, and you can get the book into their hands. It takes a strategic mindset and digging into how you can best position your book. It has nothing to do with what media they’re going to get but with the strategy of how they’re going to approach it.

18:55 - I love how you talk about solving for the reasons why they might say no. Would you say of the proposals you’ve seen that really stand out, that that’s the key: to not leave a ‘no’?

• Exactly. When people are being pitched in the world of publishing, they kind of are looking for no’s because that makes it easy. If you’re an agent you’re looking through so many pitches, you’re looking through those with a very critical eye in a short amount of time. They want to say no because that’s easier; saying yes means they have to keep reading and that takes a lot more time.
• If you know right from the get-go why they’re likely to say no, you can immediately address those things and get that person to give you the benefit of the doubt and spend more time reading your proposal.
• A vast majority of writers are going to have the problem of a lack of platform. That’s usually the thing you have to solve right away. And that’s okay because in most cases it’s solvable. It’s about knowing what you’re bringing to the table and what might get in your way.

23:10 What resources do you suggest for people who are just getting started on their proposals?

• You can go to my website, jennienash.com and on the home page I have a video where I go through the 8 sections of a book proposal. That’s a good resource for what goes into a proposal.
• And at jennienash.com/idea I also have a free download called “How an Idea Becomes a Book” and it takes you through the process I've been describing for writing a book. I take you through the process of choosing an idea, defining an idea, asking why you want to write this book, etc. It’s a 50-page ebook download that I think is a good place to start.

24:50 - We might have some listeners who are understanding the scope of writing a proposal and they might want to hire you so are you accepting new clients right now?

• Yes! At jennienash.com you can take a look at how I work and my packages. I love working with entrepreneurs, educators, and area experts. I also love working with Greenleaf and I love bringing clients to Greenleaf but I also help clients go to traditional publishers and help people figure out the best publishing path for them.
• I do take new clients and I train coaches that can also take clients. At authoraccelorator.com we have a matching system where we can match you with a book coach and see if they might be right for you.
• You can also email me from my website and say you heard me on this podcast and I’d love to help you out.

26:15 - Any parting advice for our authors?

• If you're listening to this and you feel overwhelmed, that was not my intention. I love what I do and that’s because I get to help people bring their books and their dreams to life.
• It’s a life changing thing to write a book and have a powerful way to make an impact on your readers.Writing a book really is as powerful as it seems. And the ROI is not necessarily straight up dollars and cents. It’s often that you become a thought leader, someone known for this idea, someone who codified a way of thinking about this and that has ripples that are hard to quantify. The investment of working with professionals to get your book into the world is well worth it.
• My point is, don’t be discouraged. It is a totally doable thing. A lot of people do it everyday and you can figure it out. It is definitely worth it.

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ABOUT JENNIE

Jennie Nash is an author and book coach, and the founder and CEO of Author Accelerator, a company on a mission to raise the bar on book coaching. Author Accelerator has trained more than 75 book coaches to support writers through the entire creative process. Her own coaching clients have landed top New York agents and six-figure book deals with Big 5 houses such as Penguin, Scribner, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette. Jennie is the author of 9 books in 3 genres, including her most recent, Read Books All Day and Get Paid For It: The Business of Book Coaching. Visit Jennie www.jennienash.com and authoraccelerator.com