Writing the Proposal: Planning Stages: How to Write a Non-Fiction Book

"I’m Bobbi Linkemer on behalf of expertvillage.com, and I’d like to invite you to visit my website at writeanonfictionbook.com. There’s lot of questions to ask, and that’s what the planning stage is for. This is the part of the process where you write the proposal, which is a living, growing dynamic document that keeps getting bigger; keeps answering your questions. In the proposal, you ask…Let’s assume you’re going to send this proposal to a publisher. They are going to want to know what the book is about and why you’re writing it, how this book differs from others already on the market. This is an important question: why is this the right time and the right book for that time? What’s going on in the world? We’re having a lot of news about immigration in this country, and a book about the immigrant experience is pretty timely. If you wrote a proposal, you would set it in the backdrop of the big picture. What is the greatest benefit that your book is going to deliver? I don’t know what the story is, but many people who came from Europe and now they’re coming from Asia and Spanish speaking countries, they’re making it here. They worked hard and they bought into the American dream, and this is still a really good place to be when you compare it to other places. So the immigrant story is terrific in terms of being inspirational. Who’s your audience? Why are you uniquely qualified to writ this book? What is there about your experience or your knowledge or your education or your background that you can explain to agent or a publisher why you are the natural author of this book? Those are all the kinds of questions that you have to answer in a proposal, and then you put it together in a certain way. Assuming you’re going to a conventional publisher, you put it together in a certain way so that there is a form. You start with a short concept statement. This is the length of the concept statement. What this book is about is described in 2 paragraphs. If an agent or an editor picks that up, reads those 2 paragraphs and thinks we can’t sale this, there’s no market, this is irrelevant, we did just did a book on this; they close it and put it in a return envelope, if you sent one, and they send if back to you. So how you put your proposal together is important."