How to write a nonfiction book proposal

Most nonfiction is sold before it is written. A publisher buys a proposal: a document of a few dozen pages that describes the book, the reader it is for, the books it will sit beside, the person writing it and how the chapters will go, with one or two finished chapters to show the prose. Memoir is the usual exception, sold on a full manuscript like a novel; a history, a guide, an argument or a book of ideas is sold on the plan. Here is what goes in one, in the order agents and editors read it.

What a proposal is for

A proposal is a business case written like a book. The editor who likes it has to persuade a meeting of people who have not read it that the book will find enough readers to pay for itself, and your proposal is what they carry into that room. So every part answers one of three questions: what is this book, who will buy it, and why you. The parts that feel like boasting are the parts that let your editor win the argument on your behalf; write them plainly and with evidence rather than leaving them out.

A proposal you have written properly is also the plan you write the book from. The hard thinking about the reader and the shape is done before the first chapter, and the chapter outline becomes the table of contents you fill in. Write it as if you will have to deliver it, because if it sells, you will, to a date.

The overview: the problem, the promise and the reader

One to three pages. Open with the problem or the question the book exists to answer, in the reader’s terms rather than yours: not “a study of urban beekeeping” but what the person with two hives on a roof is getting wrong and why it matters. Then the promise: what the reader will know, be able to do or see differently by the last page. Then the reader, specifically. “Anyone interested in history” is nobody; the person who bought three books on the subject last year and is still missing the one you are writing is someone.

Say what kind of book it is (a narrative, a guide, an argument, a reference) and how long, in words; most trade nonfiction runs between sixty and ninety thousand, and a short book on one idea can be half that. Give the title and the subtitle; when the title is a phrase, the subtitle carries the promise. End with the paragraph you would say aloud if someone asked at dinner what the book is about. If that paragraph is dull, nothing after it will rescue the proposal, so it is worth as many drafts as it takes.

The market and the comparable titles

The market section says who the readers are and how many of them there are, with evidence you can point to: the size of the field, the trade or the hobby, the courses taught, the communities, the conferences, the books already selling. A number from a source you can name beats an adjective every time, and a modest number you can defend beats a large one you cannot.

The comparable titles are five to eight books from the last few years that your reader has bought, one paragraph each: what it does well, who it reached and what yours does that it does not. The point is not to find a subject with no competition; a subject with no books is a subject with no readers. The point is to show that readers exist and that there is a gap your book fills. Be fair to the comparable titles. The editor may have published one of them, and will know if you have not read it.

Your platform, as it is

Your platform is the readers you can reach yourself: a newsletter and its subscriber count, a podcast or a channel and its audience, a course you teach, the talks you give, the organisations that know your name, the publications that have run your work, and the credentials or the experience that make you the person to write this book. Write it as it is, with numbers, and do not round up. If it is small, say what you will do over the year the book takes to make it larger, concretely: the newsletter you will start, the pieces you will pitch, the people who have agreed to read it early.

How much platform matters depends on the book. For a practical book the reader buys from someone they already trust, so it matters a great deal. For a narrative or a history, authority counts for more than following: the archive you have access to, the people who talked to you, the years you spent inside the subject. Say which kind of book this is and make the case that fits it.

The chapter outline and the sample chapters

The chapter outline is the longest section and the one editors read most closely. For every chapter: a title, a paragraph or two of what it covers and what the reader has by the end of it, and how it hands on to the next. A list of topics is not an outline. The outline shows that the book has a shape, that it builds, that chapter nine could not come before chapter four. Expect it to take a week or more; it is the book in miniature, and writing it will change the book, which is the cheapest moment for the book to change.

The sample chapters are one or two finished chapters in their final prose, usually the introduction and one from the body, chosen to show the range: a chapter of argument and a chapter of story, or a chapter of instruction and the one that explains why. They are the only evidence that you can write the book the proposal describes, so they get the revision a published chapter would. Everything else in the proposal can be plain; this part has to be good.

Putting it together and sending it

The usual order: a title page, the overview, about the author, the market, the comparable titles, the platform and what you will do to promote the book, the chapter outline, and the sample chapters last. One document, with a contents page of its own and page numbers; the sample chapters in the format a manuscript takes, double spaced in a readable twelve point face. Most proposals run between twenty and fifty pages with the samples. Nothing about the design should draw attention; the words do the work.

Agents first, unless you are approaching a small or an academic press that reads unagented submissions. Each agent’s website says what they want and how, and the query letter that introduces the proposal follows the same rules as a novel’s. Expect to revise the proposal with the agent who takes it on before it goes to editors; that is normal and it makes the proposal better. Then write the book while you wait, because a sale on a proposal comes with a delivery date, and the first chapters you write afterwards are the ones the outline already planned.

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