How to Write a Book Proposal

Video Transcript

"You have this wonderful idea for a book. How do you convince a publisher or an agent to consider it? That's the book proposal. You want to be able to develop a powerful book proposal, and let me share with you what I did when I created my book proposal for The Impostor Syndrome. The Impostor Syndrome had to replace self doubt with self confidence and train your brain for success. It's my first self help book. My name is John Graden. I'm a professional, speaker, trainer. I've written seven books, but this was my first mainstream book, and I was very excited about so I had to think about how can I capture this person's mind? How can I persuade this agent or publisher to take this book on? So, let's go through my book proposal, because, I'm proud to say, that I received a confirmation from an agent within ten minutes, and within three days I was signed with that agent. Most people it takes one to three years to get an agent, I had one in days using this proposal. The first thing I did was I wanted to lead with a provocative, powerful statement that would get their mind going. Here's that statement. Why do stars like John Belushi, Britney Spears, and Lindsay Lohan self destruct once they finally achieve the success that they work so hard for? The answer is The Impostor Syndrome. Then I go on to kind of support that story, and talk about my story. How I overcame self doubt to build a multi-million dollar business. I did that for about one page. Then I go into why this book will sell. I'll just run through this pretty quick here. It'll sell more timely than ever, because in our celebrity-obsessed world people are hungry for information on these starts. And for some reason they really like to see them self destruct. And there's a study that shows an estimated seventy percent of the population suffers from the impostor syndrome. So I'm kind of digging into the tabloid side, but at the same time I'm supporting it with science. I'm working both sides of the brain here as we go. It's also difficult to know how many people have the impostor syndrome because a lot of people won't admit it. Women tend to admit it more than guys. Well, women make up the bulk of the self-help buying market. So I'm targeting my market with exactly what they like. So finally, I make a competitive analysis. I've gone through Amazon.com, found other self-help books in similar categories, and I just started listing what their sales rankings are, and then what the differences are between their books and mine. And then I had one minor challenge. I'm not a psychologist. A lot of these other authors were psychologists. But here's what I said. They--any psychologist can run some tests, do some studies, and publish some numbers. Only I tell my story. Only I can share the strategies of how I overcame self doubt and the impostor syndrome to become a great success. So I'm excited about that. That's the essence of a good book proposal. It has to be persuasive, it has to make an emotional connection, and it's support in fact. I'm John Graden and I hope that helps you create a successful book proposal."