Today, I’ll speak with author and book coach, Jennie Nash. This will be the first part of a two episode special, where we dive deep into the art of creating a successful book proposal. Jennie will share what it takes to craft a compelling proposal and offer advice for authors embarking on this process.

1:16 - Could you start off by telling us a bit about your background and what you do?

• Sure, so I’m a book coach. What a book coach does is work with a writer while they’re writing to optimize what you’re doing while you’re doing it, much like a basketball or singing coach.
• I have my own private clients. I specialize in helping people with non fiction book proposals.
• And I also run a book coach training company called Author Accelerator where I train and certify people to do this work as well.
• I’ve been in the publishing industry for more than 30 years and I’ve done all kinds of things in all kinds of ways in the realm of publishing.
• I’ve also written 10 books and have been teaching for 12 years at the UCLA writing program.

2:43 - As a baseline, why don’t we help our listeners understand the goal of a book proposal? And why is it an important part in querying an agent?

• Sure, so traditionally a book proposal is used to get a traditional publisher. So the way to do that is pitch to an agent and have the agent pitch to a traditional publisher.
• The book proposal is like a business plan for how the whole book is going to function, look, and feel.
• More and more it’s also a document writers are using to understand their idea no matter what direction they’re going to publish. It’s a way for them to wrap their minds around the idea and really pin it to the page.
• On the nonfiction side, books are often sold on proposal alone. You can take a proposal, get an agent, have that agent pitch a publisher, and get a book deal before the book is completely written. And that’s quite typical on the nonfiction side.
• If you're going to a hybrid publisher with a book proposal, it means you’re further down the road of producing that book and getting it ready for publication. It’s an excellent step to take no matter what tool you're going to use to publish or what path you’re going to take to publishing.

5:22 - Why don’t we break down the essential elements of the book proposal, the key sections that have to be there, and how long those sections should be.

• My clients' proposals typically fall in the range of 45 to 90 pages. The reason they might differ has to do with the length of the sample chapters.
• The typical proposal has 8 sections.
• There’s an overview, which is a summary description of what this book is. You might think of it as an extended book jacket copy.
• The manuscript specifications are a few simple lines about what the book is going to look like, such as its size, length, if there’s illustrations, and there’s usually a description of when the author believes the book will be finished.
• There’s always an author bio and photo. This is an argument for why this writer is the best person to write this book. This section is typically about a page long.
• The audience analysis section is where we’re segmenting the audience and defining exactly who that is. It’s one of the most important parts, because we’re circling around who the primary buyer of this book might be and who the secondary audiences might be.
• The next section is the comp titles section. People call this comparative tiles or competitive titles. It’s the context into which your book will be born. The books that are already published and out in the world are having a conversation. And that conversation is what you want to be jumping into.
• The next section is the marketing plan. A marketing plan is about how you are going to connect with those ideal readers you identified and what you’re going to do in the world to get the book into that reader’s hands.
• And you can see about the iterative process here. If somebody is working on their marketing plan, they may begin to tweak who their audience is and they may go back to that audience section or they may then go into the comp titles and define those titles better.
• The core of the proposal is the annotated table of contents. By annotated we mean, for each section or chapter of the book, you’re really describing what’s going to be in that book. The annotated table of contents is where you have to know everything that’s going to be in the book. This part of the proposal can be between 6-8 pages long.
• And the final section of the proposal are sample chapters. These are chapters you write and polish to show that you can pull off what you promised and to prove you can write this content that you described.

17:18 - Would you say the annotated table of contents is similar to an outline?

• Yes, except the reason it’s called an annotated table of contents is, whereas an outline is very linear and flat, the annotated table of contents (while technically an outline) is meatier and more robust than a traditional outline.
• For example, I was working with a client who’s an executive leadership coach and he’s working on a book about high-level networking. And for his annotated table of contents, each chapter of his book describes a different skill you need to be a master networker. And each chapter featured a case study, so the annotated table of contents would talk about the skill he was teaching, why it’s important, what people get wrong about it, the case study, and why he chose that case study. Then each chapter was rounded out with exercises to build that skill.
• The reason deciding these things matters so much is because in this case, the author was debating who his primary audience was. So while we were working on the content in the annotated table of contents and choosing those stories, it launched us into a debate about the audience
• And the genius thing about a book proposal is when you’ve got it done right, writing the book becomes a piece of cake, because you have a roadmap.

24:11 - What are some of the key issues you see authors run into in the proposal drafting process?

• One of the biggest is the temptation to put everything they know into the book. We forget that when we’re experts on something, we have so much knowledge it’s hard to define the edges of that knowledge or idea for a book.
• Another thing I see alot is the idea of perfection or perfectionism.But there comes a time when you have to call and say ‘this book is everything it’s going to be’ and let it go.
• Another thing people struggle with, which is my favorite part, is structuring the material and figuring out what’s the best way to convey that material and present it to the world.
• My favorite example is Simon Sinek’s Start With Why. The thing I love to talk about is, he describes that golden circle idea with ‘why’ at the center and ‘how’ and ‘what’ in concentric circles. And everyone knows about this golden circle yet all it is, is a structure he made and designed to contain this idea and convey this material in a way we’re all going to remember. That’s what we want, is for our ideas to have an impact.
• Sometimes writers struggle, not with their information, but the way it’s being packaged, put together, designed or structured within the book ends up making it fall a little flat and it ends up sounding like every other book.
• I also love Made to Stick! I can still remember the cover of that book. That title, the way the cover was designed, the way the material was designed, the idea that so many people need or want their idea to stick, those are all decisions those authors made probably in the proposal to work all of that out.
• That’s what’s so fun. How do you take good content and make it great?

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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