A Practical Story: Why A Proposal Is Important

At a small coffee shop, I met Joe Leininger who had traded for ten years in the Eurodollar Pit of the Chicago Mercantile. In that incredible greed-centered environment, Joe thrived and made a million dollars every year for ten years and then retired. He had some strange and fascinating stories about his experiences on the Merc floor, which he began pounding out in a nonfiction book manuscript. While the writing experience was cathartic for Joe and lots of fun, he wanted a regular publisher to produce his book manuscript.

Unlike the average author, Joe had a few personal connections with some book publishers. He thought this would give his manuscript an advantage for publication, so he submitted it for their consideration. After several weeks, each package was returned with a rejection note. Without professional guidance, Joe was unsure how to get his book published and into the traditional bookstores. Because of his personal resources, he could self-publish his book and have a garage full of his work, but he was wise enough to understand that, in general, book publishing is a closed system. For your book to be sold in the bookstore, it needs to go through a traditional publisher who has a distribution channel for these stores. To test this, pick any self-publisher, go into your local retail bookstore and search for any title from this publisher on the shelf. You will be hard pressed to find much (if any) of this type of product.

I met with Joe, and he gave me a copy of his manuscript. From my reading, I could see potential, but I also spotted a key flaw. Joe included fascinating stories about his experiences in the pit, but these stories had no takeaway information for the reader. He missed passing along the lessons from his experiences to other people—whether they ever saw the crazed action on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile or not. Readers approach books from a selfish viewpoint. Every book has to answer the key question, “What’s in this book for me?”

With some prodding on my part, Joe produced a series of 16 lessons about life and success from his work in the Pit. These lessons became the backbone of the book proposal that I wrote. Eventually Broadman and Holman published our book entitled Lessons from the Pit. Each lesson became a single chapter in the book.

Every reader approach nonfiction books with the desire to learn something for himself and take away some information or insight from their reading. The material has to be told in an engaging manner, but every sentence must be written with the reader in mind. The same approach is necessary when writing a book proposal. You are writing the proposal to attract an agent or editor, and eventually the publisher. If you focus the entire book manuscript on what you want to say without thinking of the reader, it will not be a book a publisher will want to print.

Always remember one basic lesson about nonfiction book publishing: In general, publishers buy book proposals for nonfiction—not book manuscripts. I know Joe has multiple ideas and hopes to write other books. The last time I checked, he was pounding out another complete manuscript. I trust he learned this basic lesson. Certain people are doomed through their stubborn persistence to repeat the lessons from the past. If you follow the advice in Book Proposals That $ell, however, you can benefit from my long-term experience in the publishing world.

W. Terry Whalin, a writer and acquisitions editor lives in Colorado. A former magazine editor and former literary agent, Terry is an acquisitions editor at Morgan James Publishing. He has written more than 60 nonfiction books including Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams and Billy Graham. To help writers catch the attention of editors and agents, Terry wrote his bestselling Book Proposals That $ell, 21 Secrets To Speed Your Success. Check out his free Ebook, Platform Building Ideas for Every Author. His website is located at: www.terrywhalin.com. Connect with Terry on Twitter, Facebook, his blog and LinkedIn.