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* A title page, with the title, subtitle, author, word count of the completed book, and estimated time frame for completion. You may state: “75,000 words, completion 3 calendar months after agreement”.

* An overview: a description of the script. This may be as brief as a paragraph, or multiple pages long.

* The background of the writer. Your biography, as it concerns your expertise for this book.

* The competitors in the market. This is where you reference the top 4 or 5 titles which are your book’s competition. (Note: if there are dozens of competitors for your book, this can be a beneficial thing, since it implies that the field is popular. Your book will have to adopt afresh slant.)

* Promotions. This is where you identify how you’ll promote your book, both prior to and after publishing.

* A chapter outline.

* A sample chapter, or 2 chapters. This is always the 1st chapter, and if you are sending 2 chapters, it’s the Introduction and Chapter 1, or if there is no Introduction, it is Chapters 1 and 2.

* Attachments. Optional. You might prefer to attach articles you have written on the book’s subject, or any pertinent supporting material.

Let’s compose the proposal

Your chapter outline

You have already been working on a better part of the proposal — the chapter outline. If you wish, you are able to begin by spending an hour or 2 with that. If your chapter outline still bears major holes in it, don’t trouble too much about it. You can fill in the gaps later.

Your background-why you’re the person to write this book

Next, we’ll work on the background section.

The first piece of info you’ll need to include in the background section is a brief bio. Every book you possess has a bio of the writer, so take a few books off your shelves and study the author bios. Most are brief. Fiction Book bios mention the author interests, partner, children and pets. The bios of nonfiction authors (that’s you) punctuate the author’s scholarly credentials if it is important to the author’s credibility, or the writer’s experience in the field the book covers, or anything else which might be relevant.

Here’s an example of a bio, which I wrote as part of the book proposal for: 7 Days To Easy Money: Copywriting Success–

Quick Bio

Australian author and journalist Angela Booth has been writing successfully for 25 years. She writes about business, technology, women’s issues, and creativity. Her books include: LifeTime: Better Time Management in 21 Days, Home Sweet Office: Your Home Office, Improve Your Memory in 21 Days, and Making the Internet Work for Your Business. Her feature articles have appeared in magazines like Energy for Women, The Australian Women’s Weekly, Woman’s Day, New Idea, Vogue, and numerous other print and online magazines.

She’s also a working copywriter, writing copy for businesses ranging from international corporations to small businesses with less than five employees.

Your bio must be slanted so that it relates to those experiences which make you the perfect person to write the book you’re proposing. For example, let’s say that in your daily life you’re a doctor. The book you’re proposing is a gardening book: how to grow your own organic vegetables. In your bio, might call yourself “Dr. Jane Smith”, but for this bio, you’d mention that you grew up on a farm, have grown organic vegetables for ten years, and write a monthly column for Eat Your Organic Veggies Magazine. Your experiences as a doctor wouldn’t be appropriate for this book. On the other hand (just to confuse you), if you intended to cover the health and nutritional benefits of organic vegetables at great length, then your credentials as a doctor would be important, and you’d include them.

Please remember that there is no way you can do any of this wrong — something either works, or it doesn’t. You can always make changes later, when you get feedback .

Don’t focus so much on the “correct” way of doing something, and never get anything done. Join any writing group, and discussions of correct formatting abound. If you start to get nervous about anything you’re doing, wondering whether you’re doing it “right”, simply tell yourself: “this is the way I choose to do it. I may choose another way at some other time, but right now, I do it this way, and it’s the right way for me.”

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Tags: article writing, author, bio, book, book marketing, book proposal, chapter, Writing

This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 3:53 am and is filed under Book Marketing, Ghost Writing, WAHM, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.