Book Proposal Basics
How to sell agents and editors on your memoir or nonfiction book idea
Hello everyone,
I’m writing this post in the happy wake of finishing a book proposal (for a project I’m ghostwriting) that took nearly four months to get right. During that time, several people asked me for tips on writing proposals, so I thought this might be a good moment to reflect on the process.
Over the course of my career, I’ve produced half a dozen proposals for books that went on to be published by major houses, and I’ve ghosted at least a dozen more books that were sold on the strength of proposals written before I signed on. Throughout these years, a few rules in this arena have changed, but most have not.
Bottom line: Proposal-writing is a fundamental skill that nonfiction authors must master. So if you write nonfiction and are new to the proposal process, it’s worth your time to read this post. I’m sorry it’s a bit long, but I wanted to include all the important stuff!
What does a book proposal do?
Let’s start with the core concept: Your proposal is the primary selling tool that introduces agents and editors to you and the book you plan to write. It is every bit as important as the finished book, if not more. Which is awkward, since you generally must write the proposal before you can be certain exactly what will be in the book. Everybody in the book business understands this, and authors are rarely held to the letter of the proposal when they deliver the final manuscript. Nevertheless, you must write your proposal as if you knew exactly what was going to appear on every page of the book to come.
What this means is, you can’t bullshit your way through a proposal. You’ve got to have enough expertise in your topic to prove you’re the right person to write about it. If the book is to be about a personal experience, then you need to have processed that experience long and hard enough to have some clear and meaningful perspective on it. If the book is research based, then you must put in enough study to claim your authority before starting the proposal. This takes time, concentration, and effort, especially if you’re writing about something outside your normal area of interest or field of study.
The job of the proposal is to make agents and editors fall in love with you and your project. It must convince them that you possess a keen, authoritative, and unique concept that will ignite readers’ desire to buy the book. Furthermore, the proposal must serve as a sterling example of your ability to write clearly and compellingly.
Think of the proposal as a snapshot of your voice, talking to audiences about your book at readings, summarizing your book for interviewers on television, describing your passion for your subject in a TED Talk. Even if you have zero social media followers today, your proposal needs to persuade publishers that you’ve got the right stuff to wow readers, audiences, and media interviewers once your book is published.
Who needs a proposal?
If you only write fiction and have read this far, you can stop after the next paragraph. Agents and publishers don’t want proposals for novels or short story collections. You will need to write stellar queries, distilling your story to a single page or less, but that’s a whole separate skill from proposal writing. With rare exceptions for established best-selling authors and celebrities, agents and editors decide to go forward with fiction only after reading the entire finished—and exquisitely polished—work. That’s because most fiction is promoted not on the basis of subject matter, but on the strength of the story, literary quality, and integrity of the work as a whole.
For more on query letters, check out this post by veteran agent Kate McKean at
(you might want to subscribe, too!):Nonfiction writers, including memoirists, who are approaching agents for the first time also need to kick the submission process off with a stellar query. Your short kick-ass letter should sell the highlights of your book and include a brief bio that sells your expertise. If you’ve hooked the agent, they’ll then tell you what they want next. If your project is straight nonfiction, they’ll ask to see the proposal. If you’re pitching a memoir, some agents will want to read the first 50 pages or the whole manuscript. But you might help your chances if you can offer a proposal, too.
Nonfiction pitches are different from fiction, in part because the up-front promise, or concept, is what sells a nonfiction book, both to publishers and to readers. Editors don’t need to find out how the story ends before they can decide if a guide to fly-fishing or yoga or partisan politics or global travel is going to appeal to a broad audience. What they do need is a sample of the author’s voice, point of view, and insight that convinces them this writer has something new and worthwhile to say. The proposal can deliver that sample long before the whole book is written.
Memoirists generally have the worst of both worlds. Most must write the whole book before they can get it published, and they must query and write a proposal to prove they can sell it to readers. That’s because memoirs are generally promoted like nonfiction; the strength of the underlying experience and the author’s authentic wisdom matter more than the literary merits of the work. I have the battle scars to prove this.
Some years back, I ghosted the proposal for a memoir about a family drama that had received a great deal of publicity. My agent was very high on the project. The story was strong and the author sympathetic. When the proposal went out, one editor at Scribner was “over the moon” about it. He wrote to me privately: “This is some of the best writing you've ever done. Wonderful, rich story. I will be working my colleagues hard to pursue.” And yet, when those colleagues met the author (as the ghost, I was not present), they passed, and so did every other publisher. The problem was that the author was still too close to the lived story and did not yet possess the perspective or insight that I had brought to the page. The marketing teams envisioned this author freezing, tongue-tied, or going off on some tangent on the Today show. And that was that.
The point I’m trying to make is that you, the author of your own work, must be able to walk and talk, as well as write, the book that your proposal promises. If you’ve written a true work of art that details your experiences as an explorer deep in the Amazon, the artistry is important, but most of your readers will likely be drawn first and foremost by interest in you and the Amazons, rather than your fine prose. So, publishers are going to want to know up front that you have complete authority over your story and that you’re going to tell them something authentic and compelling about exploring in the Amazon that hasn’t been written before. They don’t want to have to read the entire memoir to find out what this something is. That’s why they need the proposal.
After the proposal leaves your hands, you’ll most likely have to surrender any hope of controlling the timetable.
How long is a proposal?
The length of a proposal can vary widely, depending on the number of elements it contains. Most tend to run about 25 pages and are accompanied by a sample chapter that brings the total page count up to about 50.
My current proposal, at 77 pages, is unusually long, but it also is comprehensive and representative enough that we did not need a sample chapter.
*Pro tip: If you use Microsoft Word, turn on your Navigation Pane and use it to track through your sections and to move pieces around as the proposal develops. It can save your sanity! More here:
How is a book proposal structured?
The contents of a proposal also can vary. If you already have an agent, it’s a good idea to consult with them before you dive in. My agent, for instance, hates comps (comparative titles) in a proposal, and he recommends sample chapters for some projects but not all.
If you’re writing a proposal to get an agent, however, best include all the elements below.
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