We’re at the tail end of our series on book proposals! So far we’ve talked about the five main parts of the book proposal - the Overview, the Author’s Bio, the Competitive Analysis, the Marketing Plan and the Chapter Summary.
So, what do you need to know about choosing your sample chapter? Let’s get into it.
First of all, it’s always a good idea to include your first chapter/introduction, as well as a later chapter. If you’re writing a self-help or guidebook, you want to make sure that one of the chapters is prescriptive – this is where you’re teaching them something, or detailing a particular step they need to take.
The chapters should be somewhere around 5,000 words/10 pages each – this is a general guideline, but you don’t want to drown the agent or editor in your book.
You want your chapters to be reflective of your writing style, and of the themes and content that make up the rest of your manuscript. The proposal acts as an overview of you and your book, and the sample chapter serves as a preview of what the reader can expect.
It’s also a good idea to make sure you are incorporating stories in your chapters – and not just your own. If you are writing about steps people can take to turn themselves into millionaires, or lose weight, or find the loves of their lives, you want to demonstrate that your “secrets” have worked for people other than yourself. Your introduction can be all about you and your journey, but subsequent chapters (including the sample chapter) should include other success stories.
If your book is more educational than instructional – say, you’re writing about the Civil War, a memoir of your childhood, or a book on good management principles – your later chapters should all build upon the ones that precede them. In the Civil War example, this is when the “action” will pick up. With your memoir, your later chapters will take you further down your life’s path – these chapters are where the change starts to happen. And when you’re talking about management principles, the chapters can get deeper as time goes on – so you as the pages go on, you will start addressing more advanced ideas (because the readers will theoretically have built the knowledge foundation).
This is obvious, I hope, but make sure that you have edited and proofread the chapter(s) that you include with your book proposal. It is incredibly disconcerting to read through a beautifully-edited proposal and then be hit with page after page of spelling errors, improper formatting, etc.
So there you have it – now you have the tools to create a stellar book proposal that will get agents and editors excited. I wish you all the best of luck on your publishing journey.
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