book proposals - literary agents

The best I can say is that with non-fiction, well, unless you have some previously-published material to recommend you, you're going to need to have a pretty sizable portion of the project underway (ideally a whole draft manuscript!) before you'll be able to make much headway getting a serious agent on your side. With semi-established writers and specialized non-personal topics there's this possibility of getting contracted based on a proposal, yes -- but with something general-interest, and especially something about the writer's personal experiences or history (where the writing itself counts for everything), you're going to need the work up front to get people interested. Which is to say: get as far as you can writing the book before you start thinking too much about selling it!

i dreamt of a tv screenplay tonight - don't think i'll ever write it down tho.

what you should do is get one of those books, "how to write a book proposal" that outlines what a proposal should look like - with an intro, marketing plan, author bio, competing/complimentary books that are already on the market, table of contents, outline, sample chapters, etc.

write a one page query letter. something attention-getting and send them to agents. get a copy of writers market, or email me. i can point you to a website that shows email addresses of lit agents that take email submissions.

but most of all, dont get discouraged too easily.

also, take heart in the fact that if *i* can get an agent interested, ANYONE can!

1. State your book idea.
2. Establish why you of all people are best-qualified to write about this subject.
3. Give brief but absolutely compelling evidence that the world is jam-crammed with people who pine away for what your book can give them.
4. Establish that, curiously enough, no other authors are rushing to serve this market, or those who are so rushing are not as qualified or clever as thou art.
5. Mention that you are already a celebrity in the field.

Of course, this won't happen. You'll have to fake it as best you can, like the rest of us poor schlubs.

Just a little thought will tell you that a literary agent needs to bat a high average of books published to books represented, so they are looking for sure bets. The same goes for editors. Use any means you can to present your idea as a sure bet. Assertion of this is not good enough. Think of an angle that is persuasive. Sadly, this is not simple or easy, merely necessary and unavoidable.

Good luck.

Another idea: Could you try to write an article and place it in the largest circulation magazine you could? Preferably mainstream, but if not, maybe an educational magazine, or Texas magazine, or so on. Or a newspaper. Agents have been known to contact people based on the strength of one article, and ask the author if they would like to write a book. Or is it editors who do this? Seems there is always some two-bit article in the NY Times--about how women where sandals in summer or somesuch, that is then scooped up by a editor.

In any rate, it's the rare editor at a book publisher who will do much shaping of your material. The editors are business people and they are interested in pushing the book through and marketing it and so on. They might give you some general ideas but not the real nuts and bolts stuff. For this, I would recommend taking a nonfiction workshop. Try to find the most advanced on you can, where people are actually working on manuscripts and projects, and not just getting their feet wet. You can workshop your material and get help in giving it shape, and the teacher of the class would hopefully be a good resource both for ideas about the project, and also a good contact abuot how to go about finding an agent and getting it published.

Another idea: Go to your library and check out both the high and low points of similar stories--the ones that have done well like Kozol and the ones that haven't done well. Read these and see how they shaped their narratives. Also see what was not successful. If you could study with someone who has written a similar book that you admire--doesn't have to be the same topic, but a style or sensibility that you share, that would be ideal. That person would automatically have advice on the business side. Another tip, find the nonfiction books that you enjoy reading, find out who their agents are and who their publishers are. These people will hopefully share a similar sensibilty to you. And you could pitch your project likewise.

You may have to decide what your book is--an indictment of the Texas school system? a portrait of the kids you taught? a memoir of your experiences as a new teacher?

I think you would have to decide if it is going to be more journalistic or memoir-based.

Of course, I've never tried to do this, so I could be way off. Good luck!

You may have to decide what your book is--an indictment of the Texas school system? a portrait of the kids you taught? a memoir of your experiences as a new teacher?

This is kind of where I am right now. Instead of focusing on talking to agents maybe I should do more reading and research first and decide exactly what I want to do first.

A book prospectus of the following kind should be submitted irrespective of whether the book has already been written or not. It should contain as much information as you yourself would require to offer a meaningful evaluation. There is no prescribed length for such outlines but they will tend to be at least 5 pages long. They should in all cases include the following information:

The title of the book.

A description of its rationale and scope.

An explanation of how it relates to other books on the topic that have been published recently.

A breakdown of the table of contents with descriptions of the contents of each chapter, or in the case of a textbook either a complete table of contents or syllabus.

A description of the intended readership.

Details of the proposed length of the book and its intended completion date. Brief credentials of the author (N.B. a full curriculum vitae is not required).

If you are proposing a textbook your prospectus should contain specific details of the level at which the book has been or will be written, as well as of the kinds of courses for which it would be suitable.

If you are submitting a proposal for a collaborative volume please indicate clearly who the contributors are and what they will write on. Affiliations should be supplied.

This prospectus should be sent to the relevant editor. It may be sent out for external review or circulated to editorial and marketing colleagues, and so you should not expect to hear back from the editor for several weeks. You will be told by the editor whether your project fits with current publishing plans in a given subject, and if it does, will be asked to submit a complete manuscript or sample chapters as appropriate. The review process varies in length depending on the nature of the project, the number of reviews considered necessary to reach a publishing decision, even the time of year of submission. The review of a proposal and sample material or full manuscript will rarely take less than 3 months and should generally not take more than 6 months.

I can say that, in my field at least, editor/agents don't seem to exist. If they did, I'd be one! By and large, the whole of an agent's life involves the money-making side - selling their clients, basically. Which isn't to say that agents don't have creative input, if it's sought by the client - but it tends to be on the level of "so, what did you think of the new script?" "Well, I thought i thad moved on, I liked the dveelopment of the female lead, and the balance is better" and that's about it.

we had an editor for that

When it comes to finding an agent, a targeted approach can save you a lot of time and money. Look in the Acknowledgements of books that you'd compare to yours: usually, the agent will be thanked. Contact that agent when you send out your queries (agent info can always be found in the Literary Market Place, or at Writers Market); referencing that book will often put you a step ahead, will show that you've done a bit of homework, and will also flatter the agent.

No offense to Mary (and hi Mary! and hi Ned! and hi to anyone else I know!), but I completely disagree about agents' and editors' role in the shaping of manuscripts; most agents and editors I know (and I know a lot of them) take an extremely active role in helping their authors shape their books (and, in the case of agents, their proposals), particularly when it comes to nonfiction. There will always be some agents and editors who are more concerned with selling the book than with publishing it well, but in my experience this is not the norm. Of course, before you've found an agent, this is kind of a moot point; you clearly want your proposal to be as strong as you can make it before you submit it to any agencies. Phil's advice about buying a book on the subject is wise (writersmarket.com, if you want to subscribe, also often offers good advice on such things).

My biggest piece of advice is that you should look up every other book you can find about teachers and their experiences, and make sure yours stands out in some major way (and then, in the proposal and the query letter, openly state why yours is different). In the four years I've worked in general trade publishing (I'm an editor), one of the most common nonfiction proposal subjects I've seen has been that of teachers recounting their experiences, in a memoir type way. I don't tell you this to deter you, or to suggest that there isn't room for books about teachers out there. Rather, I just want to warn you, and to stress that you should do everything you can to guarantee that your book either includes very original, interesting stories, has an out-of-the-ordinary message or point of view, or is told in an extremely unique and engaging voice.

Good luck!

Hello! It's very good to see you again here! :-) Hey, mind if I drop you a line or if you could drop me one or etc., just a couple of private questions. Much thanks!

Rather, I just want to warn you, and to stress that you should do everything you can to guarantee that your book either includes very original, interesting stories, has an out-of-the-ordinary message or point of view, or is told in an extremely unique and engaging voice.

Good luck!

― nory (nory), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 02:59 (8 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thanks Nory, that last bit especially was news. My first step is to the bookstore and see what's out there already.

― Miss Misery (thatgirl), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 16:15 (8 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink