I’m in the foothills of another book project. I’m going to tell you about the process, as a way of proscrastinating prevaricating letting you know of a little-known part of the book-writing process – writing a book proposal.
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I, Editor by Henry Gee
This is the Nature Network and therefore Terribly Extremely Very Serious foothold for Nature Senior Editor Henry Gee. If you want fun and games, visit http://cromercrox.blogspot.com/
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A Modest Proposal
- Date:
- Monday, 12 Oct ober 2009 - 16:02 UTC
Many years ago when the world was young, I wrote my first proper, full-length book as sole author for an academic publisher. The proposal consisted of me pestering the commissioning editor (whom I kept meeting at conferences, and had become a friend) until he gave up. Sure, I wrote a quick screed outlining what I was about to do, which the editor had refereed, but he can’t have paid much attention to it, as the reports were terrible, and when I finally came up with the copy, the book was somewhat different from the original proposal. The book was published, and, bizarrely, is still in print and sells copies (some people have actually claimed they like it).
After that, I felt I should try for the big league and write a ‘trade’ science nonfiction book – something that might attract an advance – and for that I figgered I’d need an agent. I asked scientist friends of mine, who’d written books I admired, who their agents were: one, in particular, stood out from the crowd. Her office was in NY. Next time I was in the Big
VegetableApple I called in, with a copy of my first book and a scrappy proposal for another.She signed me up.
With her help, I developed the scrappy proposal into something she thought was marketable. I couldn’t just pester editors until they gave in – unlike the rarefied world of academic publishing (at least, as it was in the mid-1990s) the real world of trade publishing involved the outlay of substantial amounts of real money. Editors had to be sure that what they were getting was going to turn into something saleable.
The result was that it took me a year or more to get the proposal right – revision after revision after revision, involving at least one substantial change in conceptual outlook – to a state of polish and perfection which my agent felt right to inflict on a waiting world. The proposal was taken up and some drafts and years later the result hit the shelves. It was followed a while later by this one for which the process of writing the proposal was just as lengthy. When the book was eventually taken up, I had to write the thing from scratch three times, but that’s not what I want to concentrate on here – it’s the proposal that’s the thing.
Perhaps more than anything else, it’s the proposal that separates fiction from nonfiction. Unless you are already a big-name author, and not always even then, agents and publishers won’t look at fiction until you have already written the book. In non-fiction, a proposal suffices, perhaps with sample chapters (though I’ve never had to submit any sample writing, as it happens).
Not that this means any less work. As any author of a grant proposal will tell you, a proposal means draft after draft after draft, as well as a great deal of research into the subject itself, the demonstration of a comprehensive knowledge of that subject, and also of the market into which this project will be launched. One could say that the process of writing non-fiction is heavily front-loaded: as one seasoned (and very successful) non-fiction author of my acquaintance said to me recently – get the proposal right and the book should be a doddle.
As some of you know I took a diversion for a few years into fiction during which time my agent and I parted company on the amicable understanding that I might want to call her should I have another non-fictional itch to scratch.
It turned out that I had. An itch, that is. When you want to write a book – any book, of whatever genre – you have to have an idea so compelling that nothing will assuage your almost messianic urge to tell the world about it. I’ve been brewing a nonfiction book for a while, and, early one Sunday morning with nothing in particular to do (the kids and chickens were all still in bed) I wrote a very quick sketch and sent it to my agent.
Her response was very interesting. She reminded me of a proposal I’d started working on before I got sidetracked into fiction, which she’d found promising. I had completely forgotten about it. It had some connection to my current ideas, so she sent over the documents she’d saved. She’d even had the proposal reviewed, and sent me that, too (it was a stinker).
And so now I have taken up the pen and have started reworking these ideas, old and new, into a new proposal. The draft I am working on will be about 10,000 words long. I’m about halfway through, and don’t expect to finish this draft until the end of the year. My agent is being very supportive, knowing that proposals are the hardest things to write, harder than editing and rewriting the book itself (first drafts, though, are fun).
What’s the book about? Well, I expect you can guess that it will involve my usual polemics on missing links, fossils and evolution, but I won’t say more. I think I’ve come across some genuinely new concepts, and I don’t want to spoil the fun.
But don’t hold your breath. I expect the proposal – not the book, just the proposal, you understand – will take another year at least before I get it right.
Last updated: Monday, 12 Oct 2009 - 16:02 UTC
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Comments
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Good luck, Henry – and very comforting to read that these things take you a long time to write too.
wow, interesting. considering the huge investments of time, energy and writing, i suppose i should stop deleting all my book proposals before anyone reads them, huh?
I was reading this thinking “I hope Grrl doesn’t see it, she’ll get discouraged”. Then I saw the comments and thought “bum”.
Gah! Grrl, yes, STOP DELETING THE PROPOSALS! You don’t have to show them to anyone, just hold on to them. Even if you never finish the proposals at all, there’s got to be a thought in there somewhere that you can recycle for something smaller than a book, and now you’re starting over every time!
Bob, make her stop deleting!
How, short of bumping into one on the train, does one get an agent? I have an itch…
@Grrl – don’t delete those proposals. Eva’s right. I deleted mine, and would have completely forgotten about them had my agent not ben carefully preserving them for
posteriorposterity.@John – you ask your mates who’ve written books of the sort you’d like to write. But are you not the author of an serious tome ?
Henry – Admirable their work!
Grrl – don’t delete those proposals. I’ve sending a one non-fiction (Scientific) monograph to three editorials finally it was accepted in July 2009. In November or December 2009 it is published the book.
Congratulations, Alejandro – what are the details?
Specifies Henry, the question is very broad.
But the theme is about on biological and ecological traits of birds.
Sorry!, Thank you for the congratulation, Henry.
Along 10 years fighting, Grrl, for finally publishing the book of birds in some editorial. Is very hard sometimes and it is very hard when you are not known.
Just last night, I was thinking about a different sort of book production process, after watching an episode of Craft in America that I’d recorded last week. One of the book artists featured in the program was Tom Killian, who produces Japanese-style woodblock prints using a hand-cranked press. In particular, he described the number of years over which he produced the prints for his beautiful book 28 Views of Mt. Tamalpais (which I’ve seen at some point in the distant past – it’s driving me nuts that I can’t remember in what context). It was, in my mind, an astonishing amount of work and time, for a book that had quite a limited production run. Your post, Henry, drove home the point that many books require an astonishing (to me, at any rate) amount of time, research, and work. The mind boggles, as they say. Perhaps I should feel bad about altering books.
I’m enjoying Mallorn 48, btw; especially appreciated Glendon Mellow’s artwork and Sir J of G’s tree photo.
Good luck, HG! I’ve had a sabbatical from writing grant proposals over the last year, and I don’t envy you one bit at the moment. Oh, and
I can’t decide if that should say “been carefully” or “bent carefully”.
I forgot to say that my agent is not called Ben Carefully. Apologies.
What if the proposal is better than the book? Does that happen a lot? (I’m a clueless person when it comes to book publishing)
Or is that just the pessimist in me rising to the occasion?
Perhaps more than anything else, it’s the proposal that separates fiction from nonfiction. Unless you are already a big-name author, and not always even then, agents and publishers won’t look at fiction until you have already written the book.
Actually, for the record, that’s not entirely true. Agents will occasionally take on fiction authors with only a few sample chapters, even first-time novelists. I’m sure it’s relatively rare but I know several people to whom it’s happened. What’s important for fiction writers is the synopsis and the so-called query letter. Of course this is nothing anywhere near as much work as a non-fiction book proposal, but these two small items are incredibly difficult to get just right (and entire books have been written on the art of crafting them). I put about two months work into my successful pitch – a total of only four pages! I must say writing 10,000 words that could more productively be used in the final product would have been a lot more satisfying.
Good luck with it! I’m really looking forward to the finished product.
I’ve never heard of a ‘query letter’. Might you elucidate?
Fingers crossed, Henry. I hate writing book proposals more than anything else I have to do in the writing business, so you get my sympathy. The query letter is just the cover letter, that’s supposed to hook in your reader and get them excited about your project, so has to be honed to beautiful perfection.
‘Just a cover letter’ – nicely understated!
@Brian – thanks for your sympathy – means a great deal, it really does.
@Jenny – I guess ‘just a cover letter’ is like calling the Second World War ‘a little local difficulty’.
@Kristi – Thanks for your kind words about the tree photo. Drop me a mail if you’d like an electronic copy of it – Henry has my address…
Kristi – Beautiful your comment.
Henry – my modest proposal, here goes:
Biological similarities