The Story behind the Book

The Proposal

Having worked in the TV business, I had some idea about writing a proposal. I knew how important it would be to identify the target market, the gap in the market the book would fill, my own credentials, and assess the competitive offerings. However, I had never written a book proposal before so I needed to do some research into the details of what any proposal would need to contain.

This was made easier by Philip Greenspun's (see above) description of the process he went through. It also gave me some benchmark ideas about how much I could expect in royalties, as an advance, whether an agent would be a good idea etc. I also took 1 day off work to research which would be the most relevant publishers to approach. This I did simply by going to a specialist computer book retailer I knew about from a trade magazine I read (www.computermanuals.co.uk and Internet.Works respectively) and then searching for books similar to mine and noting down the URLs of the book's publisher. It would have been possible to do this via Amazon or any large book retailer. At the publishers' sites, I noted down the email addresses of the relevant editors and also printed off the guidelines for proposal submission that all publishers' sites will give you.

Whilst away in Australia I wrote out the Table of Contents and 4 example chapters. I also created answers for many of the staple questions that proposal submissions ask you. Once back in the UK I had to type up my hand-written proposal content (next time I will take some form of PDA!) and email the proposals to the editors whose details I had noted previously. It takes some time tweaking the proposal to suit the varying guidelines of each publisher but there is no point submitting the proposal at all if you are not going to adhere to what they request, especially as a first time author.

In the end I sent proposals to 10 different publishers, only 1 of which was based in the UK. The wonders of email allowed me to send my proposal at almost no cost direct to the relevant editors in a matter of 10 minutes. Time to sit back and wait.

4 of the publishers never replied, 4 replied to say 'thank you very much but they already had something like this in production' (very suspicious I think…) and 2 replied to say they were interested and would like to take things further. I suspect that if you don't hear anything within 2 weeks, you're not going to hear anything.

There is also a concern at this stage that the publisher might take your idea and get one of their regular writers to do your book. And what could you do about that as an unknown writer? Realistically, not much. It's like ideas for TV shows, ideas for web sites, ideas for most things: until you are established and the balance of power is weighted more in your favour there is little hope in trying to protect your idea. If you do, nothing will ever come of it and if you don't, it could get taken from you. In large part it comes down to luck, but I also think it is important to pick an idea which you, uniquely you, have the ability to execute better than anyone else could. That is the only real leverage you have. People know that they can take your idea but they must believe that you will implement it better than they ever could so why should they compete when partnership would benefit all concerned? The book proposal is vital because it must give away enough to convince the editors that you are the best person to write the book without giving away the entire book itself. At least, that was my take.

Over the 3 months following the submission of my proposal the 2 interested publishers went through a process of due diligence. They tested the idea with the target market, asked further questions of me, sought reviews and feedback from other authors and industry experts, toyed with the structure of the book and its focus, ran it by the marketing and sales people so they could be convinced that the book would actually sell in sufficient numbers. This involved a fair amount of work on my part and was a little like being in the final rounds of an interview for a big job: you knew that after all your hard work you were getting close to the big prize but that it could easily all evaporate leaving you exactly where you started.

The Contract »