Do you want to write a book?

Did I?

I just thought I brought in a dose of reality.

Publishers get dozens of "ideas" a day, most of which don't amount to a hill of beans.

If you want to get published you have to think of your idea as a business proposition.

Do you have a proposal? Without one, you're dead from the beginning.

What differentiates your "idea" from probably a hundred similar ones?

What's your track record?

Does anyone know you?

What value can you bring to the proposal?

Have you won any awards?

Who do you know in the media/journalism world that can help with promotion?

As several of us have mentioned before, if you want to read about publishing a book, there's a very good thread over at the Writer's Workshop where published authors kinda, you know, tell you about how it's done.

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/posts/1359907/

Sitting around talking about "ideas" is the first in about a thousand steps.

 

This thread wasn't about whether or not we're currently trying to write one, but whether or not we want to, and yes, your surliness was out of place on thread basically about ideas for books.

 

on your first post on this thread, you should have just admitted you meant to be asshole and then gave your dose of reality. most realize daydreaming doesn't get it done.

really, it's just a handful of people chitchatting, nothing more, nothing less, before you started to kitbitz.

 

Back to this debate over the value of an idea:

To be honest, it's ALL about the idea. You get about one minute to explain--and any smart publisher or agent knows in about ten seconds whether it's worth listening for the other fifty.

The idea should be simple black and white; the proposal just fills in the color. You can sell a good idea on the back of a napkin, in a two sentence email, over a beer at the ballpark. If you need a thirty page proposal to explain/justify/salvage it, I promise, you need an easier idea.

 

I don't know anything about writing books although I am realizing my dream of being part of writing an on line novel right here at SportsJournalists.com.

I do know a little bit about ideas though and swenk is spot on. Really the idea is the core of any business. Industrial America was built on people following their dreams and ideas to reality.

Go read the the story of Charles Goodyear and how he invented rubber or Henry Ford and how he came up with the Model "T'. Seeing any idea to completion is about not taking no for an answer. There would not be many who would say it was easy.

One of the most insightful quotes i've ever read was from inventor Thomas Edison- "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931) I keep a copy of this quote on my desk.

Don't pay no mind to JR - follow your dream. You just never know.

 

I've written three novels. Haven't sold any of them.
In my opinion, one sucks (but gave me ample opportunity for character development), one's pretty good (but I couldn't find a buyer) and I haven't tried to sell the last one for a variety of reasons.
I'm still working on what I think will be the Great American Novel.
And at some point, I'll write my autobiography. I've even got a title for it: It Wasn't Funny at the Time

 

Mr Swenk,

Idea is important, yes. That said, a thirty-page proposal (including analysis of potential readership, marketing and a reading of comparable tomes and their sales), a detailed chapter outline and sample chapter(s) are the writer doing his homework. Pretty well standard. I've seen at least a dozen book proposals for books that have netted six-figure advances (including the Significant Other's). Thirty pages? Some were twice that. You might be able to sell with less (or even a lot less) after having an established working relationship with a publisher and an editor. If you want a full-in commitment from a publisher--not just a workable advance but also promotion and advertising and other TLC--you have to show that you're up for it. A thirty-page proposal won't sell a bad idea. Nothing will. A thirty-page proposal will net you and your good idea enough market competition to drive up your advance money. Further, a thirty-page proposal forces the writer to hammer out a chapter outline that will actually serve as a blueprint to work from. It's a worthwhile exercise. The idea of genius on the back of coaster or something--well, I'm sure you or people you know have had success that way. But offering up the-idea-and-the-idea-alone-will-speak-for-itself to beginning writers is like telling melanoma sufferers that sunshine will cure what ails them.

YHS, etc

 

Perhaps this nugget is buried within the authors' thread -- and, if so, say so -- but what all goes into said proposal (besides the stuff you just mentioned, FOAF)? The chapter outline/sample is separate from the proposal, or part of it?

 

"Buck Table" might be my new hotel name.

 

I'm sorry but JR's post was perfectly within reason.

We all TALK about writing books. That's great. But in the grand scheme of things, having an idea for a book isn't even the equivalent of planting a seed. It's like looking out at your yard and going "A garden would look good here."

Going from having an idea to planting the seed to actually writing a book, for reasons mentioned on this thread, is an incredibly tough endeavor, and, I presume, a shitload tougher than planting a garden (my sister has one, not me). Imagine looking out at the garden every day and freaking out, thinking to yourself "Self, I am never going to be able to grow that plant to fruition" or sitting in the kitchen, looking at the garden and posting at SportsJournalists.com instead of writing psyching yourself out of going to water the garden because you're so freaked out and overwhelmed because what was such a simple idea at first--I just wanted to grow corn!--now includes plants you'd never even heard of when you bought your first packet of seeds.

All you can think of is how the neighbors are going to say your garden sucks, how you didn't put as much effort into it as you should have. So you buy more seeds, clear more land, because you've seen shitty gardens and what if other people think your garden is shitty?

The worst parts: Writing a book doesn't get easier with 10,000 or 20,000 or 60,000 words under your belt. At that point, to switch metaphors, writing a book is like running a marathon in which the final three miles are uphill. You're tired, you're frustrated, you're not sure if you should laugh, cry, shit your pants or puke, yet you know you'll never forgive yourself if you quit.

And the kicker: If you've written one book, you're no closer to figuring the whole thing out than you were when you had zero books on the shelf. In fact, the more you know, the more you sit by the window, staring at the garden.

But the concept of feeling like Jones did--like I just took the greatest, most cleansing shit of my life--keeps me going. Good God, I can't wait. I'm fucking constipated like a motherfucker.

 

And a word to the wise - it's probably not the best idea to mention the subject matter of an "idea" in any detail on a message board such as this. Books are hard enough to get published anyway without risking the fact that a more motivated writer might be inspired by "your" idea, making it even less likely that a second book on the same or very similar subject will ever find a publisher. Also, if you have the time to post thousands of messages here, you probably have the time to write the book, instead of just writing about writing it. If you wait for everthing to be lined up before you start, you never will.

So get cracking.

 

I apologize if some of you took my comments the wrong way.

I'll add that after having spent 13 years as an independent bookseller and another 10 or so in actual book publising, the posts by Jones, FoF & BYH pretty much sum up what it's all about. I've also dealt with hundreds of authors over the years and I'd venture to say that FoF may be one of the hardest working ones I've ever met

And yes, there is the occasional best-seller created on the back of a napkin but I'd suggest that it's not the way to approach your first book.

And many successfully published authors will tell you that the toughest writing they've ever done is their book proposal because it forced them to think, rethink and justify their book idea.