Even though I was contacted by the publisher asking if I’d be interested in turning the Bailey Boat Cat blog into a book, I still had to prepare a proposal that the editor could present to the sales team. I had no idea what I was doing or what was expected for a proposal, and of course no agent to guide me, so I was very lucky to have a kind and patient editor to walk me through it. We worked together to decide roughly what the book would include and the style and format that it would take.

We considered what would make the book stand out from the crowd and why people would buy it. Statistics were extremely important to convince the sales team that Bailey already had a good readership and that his social media reach would help encourage sales. The proposal needed to be interesting and catchy to get the sales team on board so I worked hard on it.

So what did the proposal actually include?

* Firstly a working title.

* A summary of the book.

* A short synopsis which included the themes and objectives of the book.

* Key features.

* Table of contents with a summary of each chapter.

* Estimated word lenth.

* Delivery Date.

* Market- competition, comparable books, target audience, international market expectations.

* Key selling points.

* Author details and CV.

Since Bailey’s book is a very visual book we also included a few high-res photos to wow the team with. one of which was eventually used for the book cover!

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Once I’d sent the proposal to my editor she also worked on it, tightening things and generally polishing everything. We also discussed a few new ideas for features as our idea for the book as a whole became clearer.

These points are all very important to consider if you want to publish a book and I hope that you find it useful to learn about them or revise them. Please join me next Wednesday for the next instalment in my Blog to Book series.

Wishing you all Sandy Toes!

Lou x