coba-coba

R. Dodge Woodson

www.lonewolfent.net

 

Writing A Book Proposal

            The first step in getting a publisher to publish your book idea is writing a book proposal. This intimidates some people. It doesn’t have to be frightening. Once you know the components of a professional book proposal you can attack it one phase at a time and prevail with a superior proposal. If you can’t create a winning book proposal you are not likely to be able to sell or write a book.

            What does a book proposal consist of? The basic elements are as follows:

Cover letter Title of the book Table of contents Audience Competition Concept and approach Credentials Reviewers Sample chapters Contact information

 Cover Letter

            Your cover letter should be concise. Keep it to a single page. This letter is your sales pitch, so make every word count. Tell in no more than two paragraphs why a publisher should be interested in your idea. Follow this with a brief review of your credentials to author the book and then lead into the proposal contents.

Title of Book

            Choose the title of your book carefully. Don’t make it too long. Avoid being cute with the title. If you are selling a how-to book, the title should reflect the subject matter. An example might be: Remodel Your Bathroom in Less Than a Month! Another example could be: Building Your Own Compositing System. The book title is the beginning hook for securing a publisher, so invest enough time in it to make yourself successful.

 Table of Contents

            How long should a table of contents be? As long as it needs to be. Most non-fiction books contain between 10 and 20 chapters. I would say a good average is around 16 chapters. The word count for such a book is likely to be between 50,000 words and 85,000 words.

            Chapters do not have to be equal in length. You should make them as long as they need to be to convey the required information to readers. A table of contents should begin with a heading for an introduction. From there, you list chapters in numerical order as they will appear in the book. Under each chapter title you should either write a paragraph that explains what the chapter will contain or use a bullet list of at least five key topics to be covered in the chapter.

            Consider if your book will benefit from a glossary or appendix materials. If so, this information should be listed on the table of contents.

 Audience

            Who is the audience for your book? Never say everyone. There should be a prime audience and a secondary audience. If you are writing a book about treasure hunting, your prime audience will be treasure hunters. Secondary markets could be bottle diggers, metal detecting enthusiasts and so forth. The more defined list of an audience you provide, the better your chances of making a sale are.

 Competition

            You need to know your competition and point it out to your perspective publisher. Don’t look for a book that has never been written. Publishers like the comfort level of being able to check the sales records of similar types of books to see what the likelihood of success is for your project.

            Online book stores are excellent places to conduct your research. Find three books that match your concept as closely as possible. Then record the following data for your proposal:

 

Book title Author’s name Publisher’s name Date of publication Number of pages in the book Price of the book International Standard Book Number (ISBN) for the book

Determine what makes your book idea better or different and explain it to the publisher. If you can’t do this, your book will probably not get published by a major publisher.

 Concept and Approach

            The concept and approach is your big sales pitch. This is where you describe the contents of your book, your credentials, and what will make your book a pleasure to publish and profit from. This section is usually about two pages long.

            When fleshing out the concept and approach you will want to include the types of illustrations you will use and how many of them the book will contain. How many book pages do you foresee the book having? Will you incorporate tip boxes or sidebars?

            Don’t worry about pricing the book or suggesting cover designs. The publisher will take care of this when the time comes.

            Use this section to describe your writing style. Conversational style is usually desired. Tell the publisher whatever is suitable to your topic in a way to make the book appear more desirable.

 Credentials

            Credentials are a key element in selling a non-fiction book. List all of your experience related to the subject matter. Make note of your education, licenses held, or other information that makes you the right author for the book. List any organizations that you belong to that might be conducive to special sales. Essentially, sell yourself.

 Reviewers

            Many publishers will want to receive a minimum of three peer reviews of a proposal before taking a project to the editorial board for approval. Include the names, titles, credentials, and contact information for people knowledgeable of your subject who may be willing to do a review for the publisher. The publisher is likely to use your people and some of their own for the reviews.

 Sample Chapters

            Many publishers will require one or two sample chapters from unknown authors. This allows the publisher to study your style and ability. It is best to use chapters from around the middle of the book. Avoid using the first or last chapter. Make your work shine. If you have gotten to the stage where a publisher is willing to read your sample work, you are well on the way to getting a book contract.

 Contact Information

            Don’t forget to include all of your contact information for publishers to use. It may be surprising, but some authors fail to do this. Make yourself accessible and easy to contact if you want to make a sale.

 Submission

            The last step is the submission of your proposal. Some publishers will accept electronic submissions while others want printed pages submitted. Check the publisher’s guidelines for the name of the editor to submit your work to and in what form the work should be submitted.

            Publishers frown on multiple submissions. Don’t send your proposal to more than one publisher at a time.

            Once you make your submission, it is a waiting game. Quick answers are often rejections. Expect it to take weeks to get any type of desirable reaction from a publisher. Be patient. If you are lucky, you will get a phone call when you least expect it to discuss the prospects of publishing your book. Making the sale will be an unforgettable experience.



By: R. Dodge Woodson

About the Author:

*The succeeding article is about Marketing Self Published Books, Optimized Marketing Promotion, Book Marketing Strategies, and many other useful tips about online book marketing.

Marketing your book as an upstart or self-published author can generate sufficient sales returns if you know how to strategically plan and diversify your campaign to reach a greater number of demographic readers.

To begin with, a book publicity campaign can become effective if it satisfies the following factors: (1) the marketing campaign has a clearly defined business plan as well as a feasible promotion strategy; (2) the marketing campaign has prepared an extensive “what-if’s” marketing decision making process tree to be always prepared and flexible for any contingencies; and (3) the marketing campaign must be practiced and reinforced and reviewed consistently for its effectiveness and success rate.

You can maximize on your campaign more efficiently by employing various marketing tools to improve your chances of connecting with a wider demographic base. These combinable marketing options include owning a customized author’s website; submitting a summary article of your book to free PR sites online; posting a hyperlinked ad of your book in websites with high visitor rates; and hiring the services of an email provider that lets you rent an email list to send  articles and advertisements of your works.

For example, having an official website is a good start for your marketing campaign, because a customized site serves as your very own online bookstore, an important foundation base or support system from which other marketing tools and methods can be interrelated and dynamically linked. These Internet resources include online directory listings and online bookstores which have hyperlinks that reconnect or lead back to your official website, and vice versa.

Another usual recourse for authors after writing a new book is to send mails or emails to friends and acquaintances, aside from sending free press release articles to a print media company or an online organization for multiple reader browsing and even a possible critical journalist review, precisely resorted to because of its inexpensive feature as well as its capability to generate the so-called “word-of-mouth” or “viral vibes” of the new book’s interesting contents.

All in all, you can market effectively by combining these marketing options to connect with more readers with more beneficial results. This is called an optimized marketing strategy: simultaneously utilizing several cost-efficient marketing tools and programs available to reach an expanded demographic market, and ultimately leading to increased customer acquisition.

Just consider, from the marketing examples previously discussed, if, say, you combine any three of these—or more! What could that possibly spell for your book publicity efforts?

Your book has a potential to earn big profits especially if you market it well. Your book is unique, and its particular demographic are found everywhere and can be reached by various means—by email, by snail mail, by sending fax messages, by calling through the telephone, by preparing press kits, by posting online ad placements, and by conducting book signings, to mention just a few marketing methods. These methods can be as diverse as they can get; however, if you tend to take this matter for granted or just gloss it over as something unimportant or insignificant to your book promotion efforts, then you are severely limiting your given potential to earn greater profits from your newly released work.

Thus, getting the means and tools necessary to reach this target demographic need not be that expensive, complicated, and time consuming. For one, you can start simply by looking for book marketing services providers. A book marketing services provider specializes in planning for affordable and effective book marketing campaigns, and can conveniently help you with your marketing needs.

There are plenty of bargain offers from book publishing companies and over the Internet that will suit your marketing needs, and are reasonably-priced enough considering your limited resources. You can set your own selection criteria; just go and proceed with your own careful canvassing to see how well the various offers satisfy your specific marketing requirements and expectations.

Even if you are running on a tight budget or have limited means for the book marketing campaign, you can still get value returns for your precious investment by selecting wisely and keeping an open mind about the optimal prospects of your book marketing campaign.

Considering these, here are a few tried-and-tested techniques in optimizing your marketing campaign: Think “out of the box”, meaning you should be proactive, maverick and shrewd on your book publicity efforts, and never “resting on your laurels” for just a few marketing options relied upon initially. Moreover, find book marketing services providers that offer “package deals” or bundled programs, especially those with the greatest amount of features at a cost-efficient price.

In sum, you can reach more prospective readers and hopefully more book sales, if you carefully consider the highlighted features among the different offers, and finally choose which package combination is just right for you, according to your service preferences.



By: Jake Olvido

About the Author: