How do you learn what a book is about? If you’re like most readers, you read a synopsis—maybe the back cover, perhaps you read the description online. But how do agents and editors find out what a book is about when they receive a proposal? They begin by reading the Overview.
Your Overview is a synopsis of the book and why it should be published—its purpose is to give the editor as much information as possible while being as concise as possible—like an executive summary or a précis. A tall order? Yes, but think of it as advertising for your book: it grabs the reader’s attention and gives the basic information that highlights the most intriguing points. Continue reading “Overview: Step 9 of How to Write a Compelling Nonfiction Book Proposal in 10 Easy Steps”
Writing a nonfiction book proposal can feel overwhelming. You have a great idea for a book, you’ve written a chapter or two and are excited about shopping it to an agent or publisher, and now it’s time to create your proposal.
Your book proposal includes sections that outline everything your (eventual) publisher needs to know to position your book in the marketplace. In the first five parts of this series, I’ve outlined what you should include in your proposal in the following sections:
I’ve outlined what you should include in the following sections of your proposal:
As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m covering these sections in the order I usually read and write proposals, since each section tends to build on those that come before.
Everything you’ve presented in your proposal so far has been about you, your platform, your marketing plans, and the competition for your book. Now the rubber meets the road, so to speak, as you describe your book in enough detail to let an agent or editor understand what it’s about and why it is unique in the market—and why it will be profitable to publish.
Summarize each chapter in a paragraph or two, giving the agent or editor a feel for how your book covers the subject, demonstrating your writing ability and style, and presenting the information each chapter will cover and what questions it will raise and answer.
These summaries are the reason a nonfiction book proposal will sell an idea, even before you’ve written the entire manuscript—they give agents and editors an idea about the arc and flow of your manuscript.
As you write the summaries, think outline or précis—the goal is to be clear, compelling, and concise. Literary agent Jeanne Fredericks suggests, “To make the summaries more appealing, include some intriguing case histories, anecdotes or data, if possible. Communicate how the chapters will build on each other and advance your thesis.” And the Bradford Literary Agency suggests, “The style in which you deliver the description should be informed by the type of non-fiction book you are selling. A how-to book chapter description would necessarily be quite different from a travel narrative chapter description.”
While it’s important to have a topic or overview sentence to begin each chapter summary, this is the place to let your writing shine, so make sure each summary reads like a mini-chapter, not like a drab and boring outline. Don’t start each one with a version of “In this chapter I’ll discuss.”
On the heels of my post about the importance of a strong author bio in your book proposal, author Chris Mentzer offered to further discuss that elusive author platform we hear so much about. (Chris’s book Nexus of the Worlds will be published by Tiger Dynasty Publishing in December, so he’s lived this firsthand.) Chris and I connected through social media, and we are both proponents of building those personal relationships every author needs to create a strong platform. I know you’ll enjoy reading his thoughts, and don’t forget to visit Chris’s blog at Tales from the Fifth Tower when you’re finished here. Take it away, Chris:
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One of the hot topics of discussion in the world of writing concerns the writer’s platform. Some ask, “Should I have one, even though I don’t have a book?” or “I’m fiction author, so is it necessary for me to have one?” Let’s look at both these questions and some related ones.
What Is a Platform?
In simple terms, and speaking from a material standpoint, a platform is a series of planks connected together to make a raised surface for an individual to stand on. In politics, a platform is a candidate’s basis for being elected; each plank is a promise that he makes to be elected. In writing, the platform is your place in cyberspace for people to find you and know who you are among other writers. Each plank is an outlet where you can be noticed and heard.
I read articles that say a writer’s blog or website is the platform, as that is the hub of his or her activity. In theory, I agree with this. However, looking at the definition of platform, the blog is only one part of the entire structure. It may be the main section, but it is not the whole platform. When you add your presence on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and other social media outlets, those the additional planks strengthen the entire platform. Author interviews, books blurbs, author bios, and book trailers are additional planks.
But I Don’t Have a Published Book
There are a lot of writers out there who claim they don’t need a platform since they don’t have a book to sell. I can understand this, but in the busy world of cyberspace, even with a book you may not be heard; it might take months—even years—to develop a fan base for you and your books.
Let’s look at this through the lens of a historical landmark event. Everyone is familiar with the moon landing in 1969. We are introduced to the astronauts, we follow them to the rocket, we cheer the liftoff, and then we rejoice as it lands and the astronauts walk on the surface. The significance of this (besides the event itself) is that we know a great deal about it before long before the rocket leaves the launch pad. In a speech on May 25, 1961, President Kennedy promised we would put a man on the moon before the decade was over. That was eight years before it happened.
Now, let’s suppose that you, the author, are an astronaut, and your book is the moon landing. NASA is your publisher (traditional or self-publishing). Your platform then is the announcement to the country that you are heading to the moon writing a book. The news travels around from one person to the next, interviews are posted in papers and on television, and this leads up to your departure into space book being released. If you release the book first and then develop a platform, it’s the same as landing on the moon first and then telling everyone about it. Imagine the disappointed astronaut on the moon’s surface jumping up and down and waving his arms at the people on earth—and nobody is paying attention.
Selling Yourself
Your platform sells you and your brand and allows people to get to know you and your style of writing, and from there you build a fan base of followers. That way, when the book is released, you already have the attention of a number of people who will buy your book and/or tell others about it, and you hope they will get on board and buy as well.
How do you sell yourself? That’s where the blog comes into play. Talk about yourself, the genre you write, the books you have read, and other basic things about who you are and what makes you tick. Have someone interview you asking these questions. There are bloggers out there who specialize in helping people get discovered even before a book is available. On Twitter, follow fellow authors of the same genre and pick their brains. Find out how they got to where they are right now. They may soon follow you, and from there you can develop a following of your own.
I received official notification from WordPress that my blog is now a year old:
Thank you to friends, followers, and everyone in this wonderful writing community for your friendship and support. I love working with writers, and my goal for my blog posts is to provide useful content that will help you whether you write for publication or “just because.” In honor of this auspicious occasion, I’m listing links to some of my most popular articles and guest posts from the last 12 months, and I hope I’ve grouped these in a way that makes searching topics a bit easier for you. Feel free to add a comment on any of them—your comments are always welcome.
What is “it,” exactly? In the context of the sentence above, “it” is used as a pronoun, and illustrates a common (and avoidable) writer error:
Undefined pronouns
A quick grammar review: Pronouns are a useful part of speech that give writers greater flexibility in naming schemes. Instead of using and reusing a noun, the substitution of a pronoun allows for a type of shorthand. For example, instead of writing, “The moment John walk into the store, John realized John had forgotten John’s wallet at home” (pretty clunky, huh?), this sentence becomes, “The moment John walked into the store, he realized he had forgotten his wallet at home.”
Personal pronouns are fairly straightforward. Most of us use I, he, she, they, him, her, them, his, hers, and theirs properly . . . but “it” often present unique problems for writers.
When I edit manuscripts, I usually see two different but related problems with the use of “it”:
The pronoun “it” does not relate to the antecedent
The pronoun “it” is part of vague sentence construction.
In plain English, the first problem is using a pronoun that is ambiguous or doesn’t refer to a specific noun. Example:
Although the pizza delivery van ran into the school bus, it was not damaged.
Does “it” represent the pizza delivery van or the school bus? We just can’t tell by the way this sentence is constructed. The pronoun doesn’t clearly relate to the antecedent.
Vague sentence construction and the indefinite use of “it” often calls for a sentence revision. Here’s an example of a problem sentence:
“Mary wondered if it was something about the energy of young people that animals pick up and want to be around.”
When “it” is combined with a form of the verb “to be,” take a closer look to see if there might be a better way to construct your sentence:
“Mary wondered if animals pick up on the energy of young people and want to be around it.”
In the above example, “it” stands in for “the energy of young people.”
“Mary wondered if the energy of young people was something animals pick up and want to be around.”
This example eliminates “it” completely.
When self-editing your work, remember to add “it” to your list of words and terms to search and possibly replace. You don’t need to avoid this pronoun, but use “it” wisely and properly.
If you have any great tips for avoiding the overuse of “it” in your writing. please share in the comments.
Happy Writing,
Candace
If you enjoyed reading this and want to improve your ability to self-edit and revise your work, please subscribe by entering your email address on the right side of this page. And please know that I’ll never sell, share, or rent your contact information—that’s a promise!
And if you want more great writing and publishing information, check out my Facebook page at Change It Up Editing and Writing Services, where I share all kinds of interesting articles and links.
Candace Johnson is a professional freelance editor, proofreader, writer, ghostwriter, and writing coach who has worked with traditional publishers, self-published authors, and independent book packagers on nonfiction subjects ranging from memoirs to alternative medical treatments to self-help, and on fiction ranging from romance to paranormal. As an editorial specialist, Candace is passionate about offering her clients the opportunity to take their work to the next level. She believes in maintaining an author’s unique voice while helping him or her create and polish every sentence to make it the best it can be.
Summer brings trips to the beach, family get-togethers, fun in the sun . . . and guilt for writers who don’t write the way they “should.”
How many recent blog posts have you read that begin with a version of “Sorry I haven’t posted in a while,” or “I’m struggling with writer’s block on my WIP”? It happens to everyone at some point, but the summer sun seems to put a spotlight on those guilty feelings. (My apologies to my friends in the southern hemisphere for being either six months too early or six months too late with this post!)
I’ve read some excellent posts recently about accepting and overcoming the guilt we’ve all felt at one time or another. Here are a few excerpts from my favorite blogs:
Dave Pagan (According to Dave): “I’ve struggled with [guilt] for so long I’ve very nearly giving up writing altogether. And it’s been relentless, beating me down until I barely have the motivation to lift my fingers to the keyboard.”
Victoria Grefer (Creative Writing with the Crimson League): “Writer’s guilt is knowing you write well, but feeling that you’re selfish, idealistic, and irresponsible for writing when you could be doing something more profitable and practical with your time.”
Cat Lumb (The Struggle to Be a Writer That Writes): “I think my lethargy has come from focusing too much on one goal; to finish my novel. I haven’t written any other form of fiction in a long while.”
Alex Kennedy (Fiction Writing for Teens and Adults): “I guess all I am saying is “Am I wasting my time doing this?” Should I be keeping my work for my dream job as a creative writer or the hope for a literary agent to scope me out and sell my work to a TV network? Is that what I want? Probably… But as a human, I don’t really know what I want.”
Kimberly Harding (Soulhealingart.com): “There is a part of me that wants to dig into this hesitancy. I want to question- am I tired? do I feel too off-center to create? Am I bored? What is going on?And my inner artist, ever the observer, simply says, “You think too much. I just want to take a break.”
Wise words all. But I think I know the perfect antidote to writer’s block:
I don’t mean the two weeks you spend with your in-laws while you stress about all the work that will be awaiting your return to your day job as well as the word count you can almost see flying out the window.
Nope. I mean a honest-to-goodness getaway.
I speak from experience because my sweetie surprised me for my birthday and whisked me away for a four-day mini-vacation to Bimini, The Bahamas.
As people who are younger than I am like to say, “SQUEEEEE!!!”
I even took my laptop with me so I could stay connected through social media, post photos for my family and friends, and get a little work done on my “down time.” But a terrible thing happened: the resort’s wifi was slow when it worked, which wasn’t very often.
I was unplugged. And it was WONDERFUL.
We had an incredible few days of swimming, snorkeling, kayaking, eating, sleeping, relaxing . . . vacationing! Four days of basically no work.
And when I returned, I was amazed at how invigorated I was to get to work, how the words just seemed to flow, and how energized I felt.
Apparently, I’m not the only person who needed a vacation. Brooke Warner of Warner Coaching wrote on her Facebook page, “Okay, back from vacation. Wow, how amazing to totally unplug. Note to self: do that more often!!”
Sara Weston (How to Be Happy Now) wrote, “The mind is so much more quiet and unconcerned with the goings-on of the world when released from the tyranny of the Internet :–).”
And your vacation doesn’t even have to be “away” as long as you are. Polysyllabic Profundities wrote, “I am in a very zen state right now. I’ve just come back from having a Hot Stone Massage and the tension that used to ride shotgun on my shoulders has dissipated to nothingness. . . . I have a writing deadline looming, but I cannot conjure the idioms that are required to complete the task. And the most glorious thing is – at this precise moment I don’t care.”
So my words of advice to all you writer’s-block-suffering bloggers reading this post is to get away from the “shoulds” of writing, even if only for just a few days or even a few hours. You’ll be amazed how rejuvenating a little break can be!
If you enjoyed reading this and want to improve your ability to self-edit and revise your work, please subscribe by entering your email address on the right side of this page. And please know that I’ll never sell, share, or rent your contact information—that’s a promise!
And if you want more great writing and publishing information, check out my Facebook page at Change It Up Editing and Writing Services, where I share all kinds of interesting articles and links.
Candace Johnson is a professional freelance editor, proofreader, writer, ghostwriter, and writing coach who has worked with traditional publishers, self-published authors, and independent book packagers on nonfiction subjects ranging from memoirs to alternative medical treatments to self-help, and on fiction ranging from romance to paranormal. As an editorial specialist, Candace is passionate about offering her clients the opportunity to take their work to the next level. She believes in maintaining an author’s unique voice while helping him or her create and polish every sentence to make it the best it can be.
Whether you plan to self-publish or try for a traditional publishing contract, your post-writing/prepublication steps should be the same:
Pat yourself on the back for completing your manuscript, and then put it away for a few weeks.
Once you’re ready to begin self editing, review your outline (if you have one) to refresh your memory about your original plans; this step will help you remember, for example, that the character who was originally named “Mary” was later changed to “Marie,” so you can do a search to be sure they were all changed. It will also help you if (when!) you begin moving chapters around.
Run a spell-checker and grammar checker. Be careful, though—don’t automatically assume the computer software will catch all your mistakes. Here’s a fun example of correctly spelled words that prove the point:
Now it’s time to begin going through your manuscript with a fine-tooth comb. For most writers, moving from macro to micro works best, but if you’re easily distracted by minutia, you might want to reverse the process.
I’ll cover micro issues in another post. Macro issues include big-picture concepts, like how the characters develop over the course of the story and whether or not the story arc works; micro issues include sentence structure and word choices.
When checking a manuscript for macro issues, here are some points to consider:
One of the writers I’ve come to know and admire through writing this blog is JH Mae, who asked me to write a guest post about beta readers. Please join me at By, JHMae, and while you’re over at her blog, I hope you’ll take a few extra minutes to read some of her amazing work!
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After you complete your manuscript, it’s time to send it out into the world.
Or is it?
If you are serious about publishing, your first readers should be beta readers.
And just what is a beta reader?
Think of beta readers as superhero partner/readers for your WIP. Correctly employed, your superheroes can save you a lot of time and money. How? I’m glad you asked!
Ideally, you want to assemble a team of beta readers. By getting focused, constructive criticism from multiple viewpoints, you’ll be able to identify (and you’ll have the opportunity to address) potential problems with your manuscript before you spend money on professional editing. Then, when you do hire an editor, you’ll get more bang for your buck. (I wrote about that in Three Things You Shouldn’t Hire an Editor to Do.
Each one of your superheroes will have a different strength, and no one beta reader will offer the same level of advice in every area. (That’s why you’ll get the most comprehensive feedback from a team.)
Some will be generalists, some will be detail-oriented, but they’ll each see your story in a new way, because
If you enjoyed reading this, please subscribe to my blog and never miss a post! It’s easy: Just enter your email address on the right side of this page. And please know that I’ll never sell, share, or rent your contact information—that’s a promise!
And if you want more great writing and publishing information, check out my Facebook page at Change It Up Editing and Writing Services, where I share all kinds of interesting articles and links.
Candace Johnson is a professional freelance editor, proofreader, writer, ghostwriter, and writing coach who has worked with traditional publishers, self-published authors, and independent book packagers on nonfiction subjects ranging from memoirs to alternative medical treatments to self-help, and on fiction ranging from romance to paranormal. As an editorial specialist, Candace is passionate about offering her clients the opportunity to take their work to the next level. She believes in maintaining an author’s unique voice while helping him or her create and polish every sentence to make it the best it can be.
Creative dialogue tags are a topic of some heated discussion among writers. Do you use them? I’d love to know if you agree with Jen Matera of Write Divas, who writes that “Creative dialogue tags can become a crutch for the author, and then they’ll begin to take the place of creative narrative.”
Candace Johnson is a professional freelance editor, proofreader, writer, ghostwriter, and writing coach who has worked with traditional publishers, self-published authors, and independent book packagers on nonfiction subjects ranging from memoirs to alternative medical treatments to self-help, and on fiction ranging from romance to paranormal. As an editorial specialist, Candace is passionate about offering her clients the opportunity to take their work to the next level. She believes in maintaining an author’s unique voice while helping him or her create and polish every sentence to make it the best it can be.
If you enjoyed reading this, please subscribe to my blog and never miss a post! It’s easy: Just enter your email address on the right side of this page. And please know that I’ll never sell, share, or rent your contact information—that’s a promise!
And if you want more great writing and publishing information, check out my Facebook page at Change It Up Editing and Writing Services, where I share all kinds of interesting articles and links.
In my work as a freelance editor, I often work on manuscripts that contain verbatim quotes and/or referenced quotes from other sources. My editorial comment in these cases is usually along the line of “You might need permission for this quotation.” I’m not an attorney, so I can’t say with absolute certainty that a specific quote is or is not fair use, but I’m sharing this excellent article about the use of copyrighted material from Jane Friedman’s blog that might help you answer that question for your own book. You might want to bookmark this one: Is It Fair Use? 7 Questions to Ask Before Using Copyrighted Material.
Candace Johnson is a professional freelance editor, proofreader, writer, ghostwriter, and writing coach who has worked with traditional publishers, self-published authors, and independent book packagers on nonfiction subjects ranging from memoirs to alternative medical treatments to self-help. As an editorial specialist, Candace is passionate about offering her clients the opportunity to take their work to the next level. She believes in maintaining an author’s unique voice while helping him or her create and polish every sentence to make it the best it can be.
If you enjoyed reading this, please subscribe to my blog and never miss a post! It’s easy: Just enter your email address on the right side of this page. And please know that I’ll never sell, share, or rent your contact information—that’s a promise!
And if you want more great writing and publishing information, check out my Facebook page at Change It Up Editing and Writing Services, where I share all kinds of interesting articles and links.
