“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.”

~Eleanor Roosevelt

“What do you mean, I have to write a book about my book?!”—says nearly every wannabe author when first hearing about book proposals. I know what you’re thinking: Aren’t business plans for businesspeople? I’m a creative, a tired one at that. I started writing so I wouldn’t have to do crap like this! Can’t publishers just read my manuscript? Are you really saying I have to crank out boring, garish marketing copy? I hate having to sell myself. And what if I decide to self-publish?

I get the dread. The idea of another thousand-mile journey sounds exhausting. Trust me, you need to stay the course. Yes, your proposal can be as riveting as the rest of your prose; in fact, that’s the key to a proposal that sells. And if you decide to publish your story on your own, you’ll have every stage mapped out, making finishing and marketing your book infinitely easier.*

It didn’t take me long to go from hating book proposals to being their #1 fangirl. Just as you wouldn’t build a house without a plan, publishers don’t often publish books without them either. A book proposal is your chance to script your book’s success. When you start with the end in mind and sketch the landscape of the intricate world your book will inhabit, you not only enrich your story’s content but give agents and publishers a vision in which to invest. A well-written proposal (even for fiction, as you’ll see) compels a publisher to fall in love and commit to a long-term partnership.

Translation: Proposals get you PAID and PUBLISHED!

There are approximately three quantum leaps and five leaps of faith, ten giant steps, and a thousand baby steps to getting your book on the shelf. Enter your book proposal. Hatch your plan. Plan for amazing.

“Do you have my mommy’s book?” Tosh asked the clerk at the Brodsky Bookshop in downtown Taos.

“I don’t know, sweetie,” the woman answered, a pile of titles resting against her hip. “What’s the name of Mommy’s book?”

“Charmed Lives!” Tosh said, tall on tippy toes. I put my hand on his shoulder and explained that right now Mommy’s book, Lives Charmed, lived only on my computer, but that as my biggest fan and future publicist, I’d put Little Man here in charge of letting this nice lady know as soon as it was out. She laughed and gave me her business card and Tosh a packet of dinosaur stickers that he proceeded to paste all over his arms.

On our drive back to Wind Mountain, I reminded T-man that he and his pops would be roughin’ it alone for a few days while I went to LA.

With my book still on his brain, Tosh said, “Is that guy you’re going to see on the big airplane going to put your book in that store?”

“He sure is, Bug. He sure is.”

Vibrating with excitement, I arrived at the Four Seasons ten minutes early to see Dan, a feat since my relationship to time could be described as on the “casual” side. Unlike my father, who’d had a lifelong love affair with checking his watch, I rarely wore one or worried about a few minutes on either side of an appointment. But this was different. This was Lunch with My Agent Day!

I walked past oversized windows looking out on a lush patio, my eyes drinking in the scene of this beloved second home to out-of-towners and in-towners alike. How lovely to be in my old dog-walking stomping grounds, with clients like Kirk Douglas and Catherine Oxenberg living just up the street. Instead of a fanny pack bursting with poop bags, I was decked out in Diane’s hand-me-downs: fancy Seven jeans and a fitted cashmere sweater.

The hostess took me to Dan’s booth.

“Linda!” Dan said, getting up to give me a hug. He introduced me to his wife, Janet, also a lit agent. Before I could unfold my linen napkin, Dan got down to business.

“I can’t shop Lives Charmed until you write a book proposal,” Dan said. “But it shouldn’t be too hard. You’ve seen one before, right?” Wondering why he hadn’t mentioned this earlier, I glanced at Janet, who was quietly buttering her bread. I had not, in fact, seen or heard of a book proposal. Dan pulled out a manila folder with a sample proposal he’d brought for me to study. I hoped my face didn’t register the horror I felt.

The waiter came to take our orders. Then Dan said, “You’ll need to have an Overview section, summarizing the book and why you’re the best person to write it. And an About the Author section, which gets into even more detail about who you are. There’s a Competition section that outlines the top sellers in your genre.” This sounded hard. Couldn’t we all agree that I’d just done enough hard, writing four hundred pages of a manuscript? Dan’s wife must have seen my glazed look and jumped in.

“For that section, you just need to read the top books like yours and outline briefly how your work is similar and why it’s different. And—”

“How long will this take?” I interrupted, feeling dizzy.

“A few weeks or months,” Dan said. Months? “Maybe longer. But it’s worth taking the time to make it professional.”

Janet nodded. “There’s no rush,” she said. Says who? Jesse was good for about three more months of fairy tales, tops.

“And I’ll need one more thing before I can take your proposal to publishers,” Dan said, pausing to look around.

“. . . Yeah?” I asked. Good God, now what?

“Who else do you know?” Dan said, coming back to focus and searching my face. “Can you get access to any more celebrities? Because publishers are going to want a few bigger names.”

Seth Godin

It’s really hard to have empathy for the acquiring book editor [at a publishing house], but you need to try. And that means, understand that she has to read twenty of these proposals today, she only gets to pick one book this week, or one book this month, and that there’s a lot of social capital on the line, not just money. The purpose of the book proposal is not to prove that you have written a great book. The purpose of the book proposal is to make it unbelievably obvious that if she doesn’t buy this book, she will regret it.

Most people can’t write a book good enough to deserve a book proposal like that. But when a book proposal like that truthfully makes it clear that someone else is going to publish this book and you will regret it, those book proposals sell in two days. It always works. But the hard work is making that part true. And the way you make that part true is writing a book that people can’t forget, writing a book that changes people, that they can’t not talk about. We try to avoid that and instead write a better book proposal. But I don’t think that’s the way to do it. I think the way to do it is to write freely and often, to share it and share it and share it for free [blogging], until one day, you discover that strangers are asking you for that thing you wrote.

I still recommend that some people publish traditionally. There’s no question about it. What book publishing does has nothing to do with paper. Nothing to do with printing. Book publishing is the act of bringing someone else’s idea to people who don’t know about it but will be glad to have heard about it after they’ve encountered it. That’s really difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. If you can find someone talented and passionate, who will pay you money in advance for the privilege of doing that for you, I strongly suggest you explore the idea.

“Linda, don’t panic!” Diane said when I walked out onto Burton Way, blinking back tears.

“But I’ve interviewed everyone I know, Di! I’m sure the hotel’s filled with celebs, but what can I do—pretend I’m room service and start going door-to-door?”

My greatest fear was staring me in the face, that I’d fall short of the fame needed to wow anyone, and thus never get my writing or green dreams off the parched ground.

“If only I was a novelist and the only stories I needed came from my own head!” I whined. I could barely hear Di’s attempts to calm my fears as images flashed through my racing brain. Jesse and Tosh disappointed in me and ceasing to believe. Me letting my mother and Mother Earth down by not fulfilling my eco-promises. The dramatically lessening snowpack and frequent lightning-sparked wildfires in our forest back home. The sight of deer and rabbits racing en masse to the highway to save themselves during each blaze. Snowdrifts as high as chimneys as recently as five years ago, and now a dusting of inches. But it wasn’t just our forest. The same was happening in forests everywhere. I had to hurry!

“Linny, you haven’t come this far not to succeed,” Di said. “Come bunk with me and Chris at Caesars Tahoe for the July Fourth weekend. The Isuzu celebrity golf tournament’s then. We’ll get you an A-list athlete.”

Chris Chandler was nearly as good at hitting little white balls around on grass as he was at throwing big brown ones on artificial turf. Coming from the LA Rams to the Houston Oilers and now Atlanta, he’d recently been named the starting quarterback for the Falcons and would ultimately take them to the Super Bowl. By being their third wheel for the tournament, I’d have access to any superstar NFL, NBA, PGA, or NHL name on the roster and get to snuggle with my new goddaughter, Ryann Mae, who was just four months old.

“You can schmooze to your little heart’s delight,” Di said. “But there’s one rule. Don’t get too stalkery and embarrass Chris.”

“Oh hell, Di. I can’t promise that!”

Mary Karr

I always write a book proposal because I take a week or two to think about the book and what I want to do, and what’s going to be in it, to map it out, though what I map out is almost never what gets written. Plus they give you money with a proposal, and I’m a big fan of shoes.

I’ll tell you the biggest secret—the real secret to this whole game: Learn how to write. If you write the best book you can write, you’ll sell it. And if it’s not that good, then write it again. When people ask me the secret, I spent twenty years getting ready to write The Liars’ Club. And I wrote it a bunch of different ways, and I rewrote it, and spent nine months on the first chapter. So, if you spend a lot of time on every piece, you’ll make it better. It’s an art, a made thing. You don’t just vomit onto the page.

Publishers don’t read, but agents read. If you turn in a book like Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, if you turn in a book like The Bluest Eye, trust me, they’ll notice from the first sentence. If they’re only looking for you to have fifty thousand followers on Facebook, then you’re dealing with stupid publishers. Write something good. It’ll find its audience.

My lucky stars, wouldn’t you know who was sitting not twenty feet away from us at the blackjack table at Caesars Tahoe, on our first foray into the casino?! Air Jordan . . . His Airness . . . the greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan! How do you like me now, Dan? MJ wasn’t just a superstar. He was the whole galaxy. I couldn’t have written this scene any better. Except the part where I didn’t have a snowball’s chance.

“Di, get a load of that,” I said, nodding toward the table where Michael sat with his close friend, Charles Barkley. “Can you believe those women?”

Di smirked, accustomed to the gold diggers who hang around alpha males with big bank accounts. MJ was surrounded by at least forty, maybe fifty, women who were just standing there, watching his every move. Their hair perfectly coiffed, nails recently painted, bodies swathed in slinky outfits and high heels, these women were hot as hell and on a mission from there too.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” said a man eavesdropping next to us. “They’ll be here all day. Yesterday they stood here for seven hours straight.”

“But he’s married!” I said. “With kids! It’s not like he’s going to ride off into the sunset with any of them. He’s not even smiling. He doesn’t know they exist!” My next thought terrified me. Do I look that desperate?

I could forget asking him for an interview. MJ was too famous, the price too high. But Charles Barkley, whose star shone only slightly less dimly, seemed plausible. I’d read his autobiography, Outrageous!, in which he said that he might want to get into politics one day, so maybe “Sir Charles,” as sportscasters called him, would be more amenable?

That afternoon, Di stayed behind to watch John Elway and Chris in the final few holes of the tournament while I lined up for the PGA shuttle. I noticed a tall Black man standing in front of me holding court in front of a large group. It was Sir Charles Barkley!

“Yeah, and I told them where they could stick it!” Charles bellowed. The crowd roared. The bus started loading, and I sat three rows behind Charles, within perfect earshot.

“My mother can’t believe I’m a Republican now,” he yelled over the hum of the shuttle’s engine. “‘But honey, you used to be a Democrat. What happened?’” he mimicked his beloved mama. “Well, Mom, I got rich!” The people around him laughed again. Here was my opening. I knew it was risky—Di would die three times over—but I couldn’t not try.

“She’d rather you be a Republican and her personal ATM than a poor Democrat!” I yelled, borrowing a line from his book, as best as I could remember. Charles let out a gut laugh and whipped his head around.

“You got that right! Who said that?” His eyes found me grinning, and he gave me an air high five. Phew. That was risky. But I had his attention.

“That was hilarious,” Charles said, waiting as I exited the bus. “Great delivery.”

“Thanks. Guess you can tell I’ve read your book. You’re a hell of a writer. Speaking of which . . .”

“Girl!” Di squealed when I showed her his cell phone number. “You nailed a three-pointer!”

Elizabeth Gilbert

A proposal for me now doesn’t look like a proposal for me twenty years ago. I’m able to say, “Hey, you guys. I want to write this book. Do you want to be part of it?” It’s a lot simpler, obviously, because I’m already inside the system. Hopefully, no one will lose money on me. I don’t think I’ll ever lose the tap-dancing instinct, though. Once a tap dancer, always a tap dancer.

I wrote a book proposal for City of Girls; I’m trying to remember now if I had Big Magic finished. I don’t think I wrote a proposal for Big Magic. I think I just sat down and wrote it, and then I offered it along with this book proposal for City of Girls. So, it was kind of a bundled package, probably ten or twelve pages long. It wasn’t enormously long because I didn’t yet have a huge amount of research done. But I had written what is still the first few pages of the book, where Vivian says, “When I was nineteen years old and an idiot, I came to New York to live with my Aunt Peg who owns a theater in New York City.” I wrote that whole beginning piece about her getting kicked out of Vassar and her parents not knowing what to do with her and then putting her on the train. So, I actually began the book and said, “This is where it’s going to start, and then from there, these are the main characters, and this is essentially what’s going to happen.”

As often happens, I had the whole story mapped out, but it didn’t turn out that way. When I sat down to write, it wasn’t exactly what I had knocked out because the story had its own ideas. But the general idea was pretty close. At that point, if you were a first-time novelist, I know that a great deal more would be expected and demanded of you.

Dressed up for dinner that evening, I exited our room and stepped onto the elevator. As it began its descent, I looked at my reflection in the mirrored elevator doors. I’d never be mistaken for a supermodel, like Di, who resembled a cross between Carol Alt and Cindy Crawford. Still, my wavy brown hair was halfway behaving tonight, and my skin was surprisingly unblemished for a change, even glowing. The elevator stopped on the twenty-ninth floor. The doors opened, and standing alone before me was the tallest, best-looking man I’d ever seen—Michael Jordan.

“Hi, how ya doin?” Michael said as he stepped inside, holding my gaze. He flashed that same toothy, pearly-white smile from the Hanes commercials, and my stomach flipped.

“Great, thanks,” I answered. No need to ask how he was doing. Everyone knew he’d just won the NBA world championship for the fifth time. He was here on vacation, playing with his buddies. He was great! One more sexy and genuine smile from this superstar, and I was a goofy fan, like everyone else.

Wow. This is it—my chance to make a name for myself and a difference. How hard could it be? Michael was a captive audience to my world-saving mission, and I, clearly in God’s pocket, was in the right place at the very right time. I had twenty-eight floors to make a connection. Twenty-seven. Twenty-six . . . Twenty-three. Twenty-two. Twenty-one . . . I looked down, giggled awkwardly, and out came the single most brilliant words any interviewer or salesperson has ever uttered:

“Um. You wouldn’t want to be interviewed for a book I’m writing, would you?” Eleven. Ten. Nine . . .

“Nope. Don’t think so.” Seven. Six. Five . . . “But thanks anyway,” Michael said as we touched down in the lobby. Not exactly the type of “elevator speech” all aspiring artists know to be ready for. Who knew that was literal?!

Just like that, and on perfect cue, the elevator doors opened. Oh, God. He’s leaving. In desperation, I added, “Your best friend Charles is doing it.”

“I can see why,” he said with a wink and then stepped out into the crowd. My glowing cheeks now flamed with failure.

Total air ball.

At the end of the longest evening of my life, I called Jesse with the update. He’d been cautiously optimistic about me making yet another trip for my book. Things were taking far longer than I’d promised, and he’d been dropping all sorts of hints lately that I’d need to start looking for a job in our one-horse town. But he was stoked about Charles and laughed at my Jordan encounter, even as I bitched about the female zombies surrounding him.

“Honey,” Jesse said, a professor giving a lecture. “You can’t knock ’em. They’re just holding out hope that he’s not happily married and that he’s in the mood to share the wealth. He can’t spend all that money by himself! And besides, it works both ways, babe. Maybe Charles said yes to you because he wants to sleep with you.”

Well, apparently not badly enough. Charles and I played phone tag for a month before the energy totally fizzled out.

Maria Shriver

I’m trying to think if I were in the elevator with Michael Jordan, what would I actually ask him? I think one of the things that well-known people really miss or don’t get enough of is normal questions, an occasion to be themselves. When I’m on an elevator, what has meant something to me is usually like, “Thank you for your work on Alzheimer’s,” or “My mom has Alzheimer’s, and I know your dad did too. How are you doing?” In my journalism [career] when I did that, and then followed up later with an interview, I always got an interview. Start with the human connection.

I licked my wounds back in New Mexico as Thomas’s gentle teachings continued to infuse our way of life. When we gathered wood, we gave thanks to all our relations, mindful that our walk needed to be in every way in love, honor, and respect. Interestingly, my writing hours were the same as Thomas’s “vision hours” and Guru’s “ambrosial hours”—3:00 to 5:00 or 6:00 AM when both men believed the earth was freest from thought forms and when access to God or the Great Spirit was easiest.

Di convinced Chris to purchase eighty acres of raw land to our left, and they flew out to have Ryann ceremonially baptized by Thomas and Grampa in the Inepi lodge. As Thomas held the perfectly peaceful baby Ry in the dark sweat lodge, singing to and praying for the littlest angel in our midst, five-year-old Tosh tended to the sacred fire outside as he’d been trained by Thomas.

Every chance I got, I studied the recent addition to my Linda University Reading List: Jeff Herman and Deborah Levine Herman’s Write the Perfect Book Proposal. That’s where I learned I needed to create a one- or two-sentence description of my book, the so-called “hook” or “elevator pitch.” You don’t say. Book sales representatives only have about thirty seconds to describe your book to potential bookselling accounts. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have mastered that before my MJ elevator fail!

Trying to come up with a snappy book summary hurt my brain. I couldn’t! Jesse had the idea to look up some of the most successful movies for their loglines to use as inspiration—a one- or two-sentence descriptor of a story.

“A weatherman finds himself inexplicably living the same day over and over again.”—Groundhog Day

“A small-time boxer gets a supremely rare chance to fight a heavy-weight champion in a bout in which he strives to go the distance for his self-respect.”—Rocky

“When a killer shark unleashes chaos on a beach community, it’s up to a local sheriff, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer to hunt the beast down.”—Jaws

“A heartwarming, how-I-made-it-tale from a working writer you’ve never heard of, and inspiration and advice from the legends you love.”—Psych! That’s from THIS book! (Books have loglines too!)

Tosca Lee

I have fun creating my loglines. They’re really hard to write, even though they’re so short—because they’re so short. But you know what? It’s a great exercise because you need to summarize your story in a line or two. Break it down to the essentials. I always think of the TV Guide. When you go through the guide channel on your TV, there’s a short little explanation. Or go to the New York Times list and look at the books on the top of the list. There’s a very short one-line summary of each book. For The Line Between, I wrote: “A young woman gets ousted from a doomsday cult just in time for the apocalypse.”

After the logline I like to add a sales handle, which in this case reads: “Inspired by actual headlines, The Line Between is a frighteningly realistic apocalyptic tale featuring the multi-faceted characters and breakneck pacing Lee’s thrillers are known for.” Lastly, I add a hook: “An extinct disease has re-emerged from the melting Alaskan permafrost to cause madness in its victims. For recent apocalyptic cult escapee, Wynter Roth, it’s the end she’d always been told was coming.”

Ta-dah! That’s what the hook is supposed to do, hook your reader. The sales handle is how you’re going to hook the sales team because when this proposal goes to a publisher, it must not only get by the editorial committee but also the marketing and sales committees. The sales handle says why the book is relevant. It explains my strengths as the author—the “why me?”—that I’m bringing to this tale. The hook is the part that says, “You know you want to read this.”

I always include a section in my proposals called “The Appeal.” That’s important because it talks about why this story now. It could be anything from the fact that witches are really in right now, which is true—it used to be vampires. Or it could be because of something in the news that’s timely. It could be because this really appeals to a certain demographic. This is your chance to say why this book, and why now?

Patricia Cornwell

The book [Autopsy] starts with a woman’s body down in [Scar-petta’s cooler]. You’re going to find out soon enough that this serial killing case is connected to something that’s going on in low-Earth orbit, in an orbiting commercial laboratory that’s top secret. And [Scarpetta] ends up having to remotely deal with the death scene that happens in outer space.

The official logline for Autopsy is: “Scarpetta returns to Virginia in a post-pandemic world and must hunt a cunning serial killer terrorizing Scarpetta’s own city while politicians cover up the truth.” That’s the blurb the publisher wants out there everywhere.

But if I were going to try to write something clever, that you might see on the side of a bus going by in Los Angeles, I would write: “From space to ground, to six feet under.”

I never did come up with an elevator pitch for Lives Charmed. The subtitle came close—as subtitles often do: Intimate Conversations with Extraordinary People.

But the book proposal Dan gave me to study had a detailed marketing plan that got my imagination fired up. For instance, I called the Brodsky Bookstore and asked if they’d give me a letter for publishers, stating that I’d be invited to do a signing in their store—that they’d promote. Affirmative! Encouraged by that yes, I asked the same of the Bodhi Tree Bookstore. Again, the answer was all green lights. The owners, Stan and Phil, did me a huge solid by putting in writing that they’d give Lives Charmed its own window display in their store, throw me a book party, and promote the book and signing in their monthly catalog to forty thousand subscribers.

Next, Catherine Oxenberg approved her chapter, which was a win! Not even counting her career as an actress, her status as European royalty—second cousin to Prince Charles, granddaughter of Princess Olga of Greece, granddaughter of Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, and named after her great-to-the-seventh-power grandmother, Catherine the Great of Russia—had left her exhausted by paparazzi and tabloid lies. It had taken me a long time to get her to trust me with her powerful story of the healing she’d done recovering from incest, bulimia, and Hollywood.

“I’ve been trying to write my story myself for years,” she’d finally said, “but it’s just too damn painful.” I’d been holding my breath she wouldn’t pull out, so Catherine’s enthusiasm excited me to no end.

Sure, I was back to crafting more what’s-in-it-for-them letters to try and land celeb interviews, but the more I studied Dan’s sample proposal and the Hermans’ proposal book, the more creative I felt. I could do this—I was doing this! I was back in the flow. Momentum was my ally. I had an agent. A mission. Helpful friends. And a plan. Soon, I’d be publisher worthy!

Marie Forleo

I gave myself a challenge for Everything Is Figureoutable. I kept saying, “I want to get this proposal done!” But in running my business, I was not making the time.

One day I told my agent and one of the women on my team, “You know how they do these hackathons in tech companies where they’ll take twenty-four or forty-eight hours and produce the product, and everybody stays up all night, and they’re kind of cracked out on caffeine or whatever, and they get it done?” I said, “I want to do a version of that for this goddamn book proposal because I’m so tired of hearing myself talk about it. I know it’s in there, but I can’t seem to get it done.”

I set up two days where I told everybody to leave me alone, and I worked with the woman on my team and my agent. I said, “I want to get this to the 80 to 90 percent mark over these two days.” And I did it. We spent another few weeks getting it from 80 to 100 percent. That can be the most difficult—getting over the finish line. But I had so much created in these two days because I forced myself to do it. It was one of the most effective ways to get that thing done.

I had seven or eight different Tables of Contents—maybe this one, perhaps this one, maybe this one, until I figured out the one that felt like it served the book best. And then here’s the truth. I’d spent so much time stressing over that damn Table of Contents, and it frigging changed the moment I started writing!

Proposal, DONE. Sample chapters, ready. Next stop—Book Deal Express! Dan was taking Lives Charmed to auction, where publishers would fight for my book baby. I hadn’t asked many questions and Dan was a man of few words, so I didn’t know much about the process. But what I did know was that this day couldn’t come fast enough!

Remember, it only feels like you can’t write a book or a book proposal. All the greats feel this way. But by taking your book proposal one section at a time, it gets done. As you’ve heard me say, if you have the ache, you have what it takes.

Danielle LaPorte and I noted in Your Big Beautiful Book Plan: A book is more than just a book. Much more. Writing a book could direct the course of your career for the rest of your life. It could lead to infinitely important connections, multiple revenue streams, spin-off products, breakthrough ideas, and international relations. It could send more business your way. It could change another person’s life for the better. It could start a revolution.

Excited? Terrified? A little bit of both? Understandable! Book proposals are beasts. But they’re easily tamed with time and TLC. Fortunately, planning for success makes you more creative. Again, here’s what I tell writers who are scripting their books and don’t yet feel ready to tackle their proposals: Go where the juice is. Diving deep into a story line that’s intense or highly detailed in your book requires all your focus. Let’s say you’re currently pulling your spleen out through your nose, as I referenced in chapter six. Maybe, as I was doing, you’re reliving painful memories from your divorce. That’s going to require you to work from a very different part of your brain than writing sales copy! If you’re in it, inside your story, stay there. When proposal ideas bubble up, get them up and out as quickly as possible on a voice memo, a piece of paper you throw into a file, or as a note on your computer. Honor the creativity coming through and then dive back into your book.

When it’s time to write your proposal, I recommend giving yourself self-imposed, scheduled deadlines and sticking to them. It’s easy to live in “terminal vagueness,” where time keeps evaporating. In developing your book plan, you’ll scrap parts you spent hours toiling on, get stuck on ideas, pray for breakthroughs, and stretch and grow—just like writing your book! And I trust you’ll come to love the process. Or at least not be a total hater.

For a free PDF of my favorite sections of a winning book proposal, go to BookMama.com/BWBookLinks. Just like good clothes open all doors (especially if they’re from Diane), a good proposal will open publishing doors.

__________________

*Full disclosure: I’m no expert on self-publishing. Outside of self-publishing Your Big Beautiful Book Plan with Danielle LaPorte, and depending on her massive platform for marketing, I’ve preferred to publish my titles with traditional publishers. Depending on platform size, time, and resources, self-publishing could be a painful learning curve or a beautiful thing. In most cases, you can get to market faster and have total creative control. But it’s all on you to run the business of printing, distribution, and marketing. With hybrid publishing options, new publishing models spring up all the time. So far, I choose to spend my limited time putting my focus on becoming a better writer while aligning with a time-tested publisher. But you have options!

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Beautiful Book Proposals

Enchanting Publishers with THE Book About Your Book