At Last — A Book Proposal That Really Works

A comprehensive and detailed guide to writing a book proposal, containing more than 20,000 words of guidance.

Your current piece “How to Write a Book Proposal” is a watershed piece, foundational, completely accurate – presented as well as I have ever seen this topic covered. My hearty congratulations to you and I recommend this piece as highly as I have ever recommended a piece.

Cliff Feightner. Principal Publisher – FlaAuthor Publishing, LLC

The Complete List Of Book Proposal Lessons:

• 1. What is a Query Letter?
• 2. The Four Paragraph Method
• 3. The Tag Line
• 4. The Elevator Pitch
• 5. Defining Your Genre
• 6. The Importance Of Word Count
• 7. Competitor Titles
• 8. Is Your Book Finished
• 9. Writing A Brief Synopsis
• 10. Writing Your Biography
• 11. Explaining Your Marketing Plan
• 12. Odds and Ends
• 13. What is a Synopsis?
• 14. Using the 5 Key Elements
• 15. Questions and Answers
• 16. What is an Extract?
• 17. Self-Editing
• 18. Using Beta Readers
• 19. Getting Professional Help

Gary Smailes

Each year thousands of book proposals are rejected by agents and publishers. The sad truth is that the reason that many of these ideas are never turned into books is that the initial query letter and synopsis were not strong enough to be worthy of further consideration. I can help you to make sure that this does not happen to your book.

In 2001 I wanted to be a writer. At the time I was working for author Terry Deary (of Horrible Histories fame), as a researcher. I showed Terry some of my work and he encouraged me to try and get it published. However, a bucket full of rejection letters later and I was left disillusioned and ready to give up. I went back to Terry and asked him what was the key to his success. It turns out there was no secret, just hard work and (here it comes) a great book proposal.

I knew that if i was to build any kind of a career as a writer I would need to crack the book proposal code. Since that day I have been obsessed with decoding the book proposal, both fiction and non-fiction, and over the years I have talked to literally hundreds of writers, publishers and agents about what makes a great book pitch.

Today my dream has come true. I have not one, but more than twenty books in print by a number of publishers including Hachette, one of the biggest publishers in the world. I also have an agent (Andrew Lownie).

However, I did nothing special. I have no special book proposal writing skills, and I learned nothing that you can’t also learn and apply to your book proposals.

This site is the accumulation of the knowledge that I have gathered in the process of becoming a professional writer and publishing more than 20 books. If you follow the guideline I set out in the site you will learn how to write book proposal that instantly appeals to both agents and publishers. It will also teach you how to avoid writing a book proposal that fails to answer all the relevant questions an agent or publisher may ask about your book.