Authors' Thread (New! Improved! Now With 10% More Questions!)

Re: Authors' Thread

Ickey -

In all the excitement, your question about proposals seems to have been overlooked. I'll rehang it here for the Council of Venerables to get a look at, and offer a couple of thoughts myself.

Book proposals are odd things, and can be completely idiosyncratic to the author writing them or the subject matter. I sold my first book by writing a single word on a cocktail napkin and sliding it across a table to an editor. With only a little beer foam on his mustache he said to me, "Okay. I can walk this damp cocktail napkin into my publisher and get you X number of dollars to write this book. If you write me a proper proposal, however, I can get you 3X. Do you want to order some jalapeno poppers? I feel woozy."

I took two weeks and wrote a very brief (15 pages double-spaced in 12-point Courier) proposal outlining how I'd explore the one word I'd written on that napkin. A couple of small chunks of writing from the proposal eventually found their way into the finished book - but mostly it was an outline of what I intended to do. In fact, the proposal asked a series of questions about the subject, which I then followed with some very short thoughts about how I might find the answers to them.

Colleagues of mine who've had to write fantastically detailed 70-page book proposals hate that story.

I wasn't asked for more detail, or sample chapters, because the book editor knew my magazine work well and assumed I'd be able to deliver something along the lines of what I'd proposed.

My second book proposal, for the same editor and publisher, and for a deeper, more complicated undertaking, was approximately the same length, and used the same simple question/answer dialectical strategy. Again, this works for me not only because they know my work, but because they know I don't write my books already knowing something. I write my books in order to learn something.

Your case is going to be different. If you have an agent, he or she can help you figure out what kind of proposal you're going to need. You might need a sample chapter or two - or half a completed book, or nothing at all - to sell yourself to a reputable publishing house.

As was stated on this thread last night, getting a good agent can be fantastically helpful. Especially when it comes to preparing proposals. After I presented my cocktail napkin, my agent (she's a dominant top, by the way, as all good agents must be) then dug up four or five successful book proposals for me to read, so I'd have some sort of template.

I look forward to hearing the thoughts of the other grizzled bookwrights. Does Ickey need to mention other books in the same genre? Does Ickey need sample chapters? Does Ickey need an agent? Or does Ickey only need an editor with a taste for jalapeno poppers?

 

Re: Authors' Thread

Oh, and I saw this from Garrison Keillor about the writing of books. Turns out it's a lot like having mono.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/05/23/keillor/

 

Re: Authors' Thread

The truth is, you pretty much have to be able to say it on the napkin. One sentence, maybe two...a graf at the most. If it takes more than that, you're going nowhere.

Here's the scene: Let's say you get the agent. Now she goes to talk to prospective editors. The editors talk to their fellow editors, their bosses, people from marketing, sales, publicity, etc. Your proposal gets circulated to a bunch of people who have little to no knowledge of your subject. If you can't explain it fast--and simultaneously get the little hairs on their necks to stand up--you're done.

The style of your proposal should reflect the book--there is no "right" way to do it. My agency specializes in commercial non-fiction (sports and entertainment), so I want proposals that read like an article I can't put down. Knock me out on the first page, a story or anecdote I can't stop thinking about. Don't save your best stuff for the book. If you're selling a house, you don't lock up the best room...you show it off.

Making comparisons to other books? Depends on your book, and depends on the comparison you're trying to make. I would only bring up other books if the question is obvious. If you're going to write a biography of Babe Ruth, you best be prepared to explain how you're going to cover new ground. On the other hand, if your book is clearly original, let it go. The publishers know more than you do about how well they sell certain subjects--you can sing the praises of (for example) crazed Red Sox fans, but if they bombed with their last five Red Sox books, you're not going to change their minds.

Do an outline. It will streamline your thinking, and help you see whether you actually have a book, or if maybe it's just an article. You can change it later, but a publisher wants to know how you're going to turn this great idea into an entire book.

I need to stop, I'm going to put myself out of business. The bottom line is, you're never going to get that book deal if you don't try, so don't worry about the logistics and red tape. If you have a good idea--fresh and original and newsworthy--you can sell it.

 

Re: Authors' Thread

Good thread.

Jones, if I had known you in 2000, I would have told you to run the other way from Martha Sharpe.

If you can't describe your book in 25 words or less, you don't have a book.

What's the hook?

If you're writing a book on say, high school football, what makes it differen from all the other books?

Why would someone want to read your book?

You have one chance and only one chance to sell your book to a publisher. The operative word here is "sell"

Your proposal is your sales tool. You have approximately 30 seconds (max) to grab someone's attention.

Write your proposal.

Then write it again.

Then have your agent look at it.

Then rewrite the damn thing all over again.

Some authors claim the proposal stage is harder than the actual book.

An outline is mandatory. It forces you to think about your book. Not the "idea"--which in and of itself is mostly worthless since ideas are a dime a dozen but the EXECUTION of the idea.

Your advance depends on the quality of your proposal and the amount of the advance will determine the print run, the amount of money spent on promotion and ultimately, the sales of your book.

You want to get the cynics at the publishing house EXCITED. They've seen everything, they've read every cliche in the book, they've read the " next Friday Night Lights" comparable a million times and quite frankly, they're looking for a reason NOT to publish your book.

Editorial will wax poetic about the newest proposal--the story of hockey in small town Canada.

Sales: "We got burned on the last hockey book".

Your book just died.

Five seconds.

If your proposal rocks (and it passes what we used to call the "smell test") and the sales folks are behind it, they have to commit to a number.

If they say, "I think we can put 10,000 copies out" you're screwed. Your advance will be a pittance, you'll get maybe $5,000 budgeted for promotion and the two copies will be shelved in the books' subject section--spine out.

If sales says, "Jesus, we can put out 100,000 copies of this sucker without thinking" ,you're on the way. Nice advance, some money behind it, probably a tour and more importantly, upfront real estate in the bookstores.

And also, yes, you spent two years writing this and yes the sales people are out flogging the thing but remember this: they're also flogging two hundred other books at the same time. They are not losing sleep over you.

And as Jones can attest there is nothing deader than a dead book

BTW, get an agent.

Don't, under any circumstances, float your idea around yourself to publishers, get rejections and THEN decide to get an agent. It's a small world, publishing.

"Oh, that annoying little prick Jones was trying to flog that half cocked idea last summer. Pass".

 

Re: Authors' Thread

Beware, beware, beware what the publisher can do.
On my first book, the Big Old House first listed the book under the wrong title and the wrong pub date on the master database for bookstores for FIVE MONTHS after it came out, guaranteeing that any pub I got for myself -- which included CBS Morning, Nightline and CNN -- was useless because anyone who went to the big stores afterwards got told that the book either a) didn't exist, or b) had been sold out two months before it actually had been published. Then, my national tour got changed to a "national radio tour." I saw the cities - Atlanta, Nashville etc. -- except that, in my experience, I had never heard of any of the stations. Checking further, "Atlanta" meant Waycross, and "Nashville" meant Murfreesboro. One guy did his "show" by having me talk for 5 minutes into his home answering machine, and then he'd play the tape. Another guy had me on just to pray with me. I did it.
Books R Fun!

 

Re: Authors' Thread

Show off.

 

Re: Authors' Thread

Hey, it was a GREAT prayer.

 

Re: Authors' Thread

Wow.

That qualifies as the publishing clusterfuck of all time.

Who published your book?

Books May Be Us?

Surprising as it may seem, most publishers are actually professional

 

Re: Authors' Thread

All right, let's not go crazy with the praise here, JR. There are impressionable young people reading this.

For an enterprise with a 400-year-old business model presided over by people who have no idea why anyone reads this something versus that something; that is run day-to-day by ever-changing battalions of twenty-something editorial assistants from Smith wearing matching sweater sets and midheel stadium pumps (or from Bard, lightly pierced and wearing sleeve-length henna chi tats, a kilt and Doc Martens); that refuses to advertise its own product; and which, while treating market research as a branch of Santeria, is essentially dictated to by a single retailer, traditional publishing - even when done professionally - is perhaps the dumbest business in the history of business.

And there's no feeling on earth like seeing your first book in a bookstore window. None.

EDIT: Updated to include F_B's editorial assistant.

 

Re: Authors' Thread

Mine had a lip-ring, but I take your point.
And I have stood on the sidewalk looking in through the window.
Oh, yes, I have.

 

Re: Authors' Thread

The first time I saw my space book in a store was in a pile, sixty copies high, on top of a skid, in a Sam's Club in Houston, across from giant bottles of ketchup.

It wasn't quite everything I had dreamed of.

 

Re: Authors' Thread

I'm entering into the lion's den here.

At least FB and Jones like me....I think.

And I'm not defending publishing because it is, as you say, the dumbest business in the history of business. Which also makes it the most fascinating business you can be in.

Where to start?

Well, first of all the day-to-day things aren't run by 20 something assistants. They're the human shields of the editorial department who can't explain why your book isn't selling. And the editorial director is a gutless puke who's hiding under the kitchen table.

The editorial director will pass you on to the sales/marketing director who'll tell you that it's "positioned well in the stores" but the "publicity hasn't broken yet". Bullshit, but it's our bullshit.

Here's the problem and I say this without apology.

Books are not a generic commodity. Each of the 10,000 new books (about that) are unique products.

Take Jones book, for example.

What kind of market research would tell you who's going to buy his book?

Those who read "The Right Stuff"?

Those who read his boxing book?

Those who read Jones's piece on McCain in Esquire?

Jones said his book advanced about 71,000 copies (pretty damn good) and he also said (and unfortunately, I agree) that whatever momentum it might have had ended with the NYT's review.

No advertising in the world would have pushed his book uphill after that. None.

Trade publishing is run by gut feel and instinct. And a book's success (unless you're a brand name author) is still based on all sorts of intangibles that are unpredictable: NYT's review, word of mouth, mention in the off book pages in a newspaper/magazine, Oprah, Rush, Nightline.

Publishing is literary triage.

After the books hit the stores and after the reviews and the publicity breaks, the publisher focuses on the books that have "legs". That's where you spend the ad money, not on the books that have either died or are about to.

And since books have become a commodity, as an author you have to deal with a stack of books in Sam's. Not pretty, but hey, they move stuff.

There were almost 4,000 independent bookstores in America in 1992. Now there are maybe 1900.

The chains and the mass marketers have the publishers by the proverbial balls.