The Surprising Truth About Book Proposals That Could Make or Break Your Publishing Dream

Successful Fiction Writing = Creating + Organizing + Marketing

I blog weekly on one of the above three topics, alternating between them. This week, I’m blogging on Marketing. Specifically, do you always need to write a book proposal for your novel? Let’s start with the obvious question…

What is a Book Proposal?

A book proposal is a document you use to sell your novel to a traditional royalty-paying publisher. It spells out in detail the following:

What kind of novel you’re writing.
Why this novel would be a good business deal for the publisher.
Why you are the right author to write this book.

If that sounds intimidating, good. If you feel intimidated, you won’t underestimate the task, so you’ll do a better job at it. And this is one thing you want to nail. Learning to write a great proposal is an essential skill for anyone trying to sell a novel to a publisher. Essential. It’s not enough to write a good proposal. You need a great one. The market is extremely competitive, and the proposal shows a publisher that you’ve got the professional skills you must have in order to write a successful book.

It also gives the publisher the information it needs to know where your book would fit in the marketplace, and how much of an advance your novel would be worth.

But What If You’re an Indie Author?

You may be an “indie author”—meaning that you intend to act as your own publisher. Do you still need to write a book proposal?

You don’t have to, of course. You can just upload your manuscript to Amazon and the other online retailers. They won’t ask for a proposal.

But if you’re not an experienced novelist, I still recommend that indie authors write a proposal. Pretend you’re trying to sell your book to a publisher, a corporation that needs to earn money on the books it publishes. This will force you to think like a publisher. It will make you think about the marketability of your novel. Small changes in a book can make a big difference in its marketability. Which may very well earn you a lot more money when you self-publish your book.

How Do You Write a Book Proposal?

This is a large subject. Whole books have been written on how to write a proposal. So I can’t say everything here. But I can tell you the parts of a proposal and give you some tips on how to write each section. Most agents will tell you on their website what they want in a proposal. I strongly recommend that you read any agent’s guidelines very carefully and follow them. Ignoring an agent’s guidelines is a good way to get an instant rejection.

Here are the main parts of proposals that I’ve written in the past:

Cover page—one page with the following elements:
- Title of the novel
- Name of the author
- Mailing Address of the author
- Phone Number of the author
- Email Address of the author
Executive Summary—one or two pages with the following elements:
- Working Title (Call it “Working Title” because editors all think they are smarter than you, and they’ll want to change your title. Sometimes they’re right.)
- Target Audience (Define your audience by their “psychographics”—how they think and what they want. Defining a target audience by their “demographics”—age, sex, etc.—is rarely as relevant.)
- Category (For example, Romance, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Historical, Horror, etc. You will probably want to specify a subcategory also, because each of these main categories is very broad.)
- Word Count (Round this to the nearest 10,000 words. If you haven’t finished the manuscript, estimate the word count. Word count matters to a publisher, because it translates into page count, and every page costs money. The publisher will hold you to the word count you give in your proposal, so get this right.)
- Completion Time (The time in months that you estimate it will take to finish the manuscript after you sign the contract. If you are previously unpublished, this is probably irrelevant, because you usually have to have the manuscript already completed before your proposal will even be considered.)
- Story Summary (Write a one-paragraph summary of your story. This should reflect the 3-Act Structure of your novel. You can take this straight from Step 2 of the Snowflake Method, if you’re a Snowflaker.)
- Similar Books (Name some books that are “similar” to your novel in some way. One paragraph on each is enough. Don’t assume that the person reading your proposal has read any of these books. Tell how your book is like each book, and how it’s different. Resist the urge to put down the other books. It’s enough to show how your book is “different”; you don’t have to show that it’s “better.” Resist the urge to compare your novel to books that have sold millions of copies. Yours probably won’t, so it’s best not to make yourself look delusional.)
- Platform (Describe your channels for reaching your Target Audience, with hard numbers. Maybe you are a public speaker and speak to 5000 people per year. Maybe you have a blog or email list with 5000 subscribers. Maybe you have a Substack with 300 paid subscribers and 12,000 free subscribers. Maybe you have 100,000 followers on Facebook, or 300,000 on TikTok, or 5,000,000 on X, and hopefully some of these are not bots. Publishers know that social media follower count is not very meaningful and rarely translates into sales, so highlight the communications channels that work best—speaking, email, blogs, Substack—if you have them.)
- Research (An optional paragraph or two spelling out any research you might have done for this novel, or any unusual qualifications you might have. If you are writing a hard science fiction novel and you have a PhD in physics, this is a nice place to say so. If you are writing a historical novel and you have a degree in history, that’s relevant. Resist the urge to brag. If your novel doesn’t require any research, skip this section.)
- Endorsements: (An optional list of people you’ve lined up to endorse your novel. If you’re a beginning novelist, you may not know anybody who could endorse it; in that case, leave this section out. Never say that you will get an endorsement from a certain person unless you have already asked them and they have written the endorsement or have promised to write one. Endorsers should be relevant to your novel.)
About the Author—one page with a long paragraph or two of relevant information about the author. If you have published any similar book, that’s relevant. If you have any degrees in creative writing, that’s relevant. If you have credentials that relate to your book, that’s relevant. If you have been reading since the age of four and “love reading,” that’s not relevant; most authors began reading early and they all love reading. If your mother loves your novel, that’s not relevant, unless your mother is a well-known author or a celebrity.
Synopsis—typically one or two pages summarizing the plot of your story. This is the most boring thing you will ever write in your entire life, but all agents and editors insist that you include it, so grit your teeth and do it. If you’re having trouble grinding out your synopsis, here is a blog post I wrote a few years ago on Writing the Perfect Synopsis for Beginners.
Character Sketches—this is optional, and very few authors write these, but they are the secret sauce that I’ve put in all of my proposals. Editors and agents love these. Love, love, love. A strong set of character sketches can turn a good proposal into a great one. I did a blog post on Your Secret Weapon—Character Synopses not too long ago that has a nice example of how to do this.

For those of you who use my software, Snowflake Pro, I’ll note that it generates a book proposal with most of the sections filled in. You have to work through the Snowflake Method process first, and then the software creates an RTF document that you can import into your word processor and finish. I don’t sell Snowflake Pro anymore, nor do I support it, but it still works just fine. If you need a running start on your proposal, it will get your rolling.

If you mail in your proposal on actual paper, you will also need a cover letter—a one-page letter of about four paragraphs that does the following:

Introduces you to the editor or agent (or else reminds them of how and where you previously met them, usually at a writing conference).
Describes your story in two or three sentences. This includes the category of your novel, sets the backdrop for the story, and then tells enough of the Three-Act Structure (up to about the First Disaster) to hook the editor or agent’s interest. If you’re unclear on what the First Disaster is, you can review it in my blog post Writing That Pesky Three-Act Structure.
Optionally mentions any special qualifications you have for writing the story. Also tells whether you are previously published and gives a few details on your most recent book or your most successful book, if any. If you are unpublished, say you are a debut author and mention any degrees in creative writing you might have. Avoid puffery here. Just keep to the facts, like any professional would.
Closes with a paragraph saying that you’re enclosing a proposal and three sample chapters. (If the editor’s or agent’s website specifies more or fewer sample chapters, then do what they request.)

It’s much more common these days to email your proposal. If you do that, the body of your email should contain the above information, so you don’t need to attach a cover letter. You should attach the proposal and sample chapters as Microsoft Word documents. Word is the standard in publishing. Whether you love it or hate it is irrelevant. Don’t make an editor or agent do extra work to read your proposal.

How Do You Know if Your Proposal is Any Good?

The first proposal you write will probably be awful. That’s OK. Every author who ever lived has written an awful first proposal. My first three were awful. I don’t think anyone ever died of writing an awful proposal. However, many novels have died of this disease, so you really do need to get beyond this stage. An awful proposal is the necessary first stepping-stone to a great one.

You can’t cure a problem you can’t see, so you need an honest diagnosis of what’s wrong with your proposal. The only people who can tell you are publishing professionals with experience in writing or reading proposals.

And who are these mysterious “publishing professionals?” It’s a small group:

Editors
Agents
Authors who have written numerous proposals and have used them to sell a novel to a traditional, royalty-paying publisher.

If you already have an agent, send the proposal to your agent. They will almost always have suggestions to improve it. A good agent will make good suggestions. That’s one way to know you have a good agent.

If you’re good friends with an author who’s been published by a traditional royalty-paying publisher, that’s ideal. Most authors are happy to help a beginner whom they know well.

If you don’t know any publishing professionals who could critique your book proposal, then you need to find one. You might take a class at a local community college, as long as it’s taught by a published author. Once you get to know your teacher, you can ask them to have a look at your proposal and tell you what’s wrong with it.

An alternative is to go to a writing conference that offers appointments with publishing professionals. Conferences are expensive, so if you take this route, make sure the conference offers one-on-one appointments with faculty members. When you get to the conference, make appointments with one or more people who seem to be the best fit for your novel. Appointments are usually 15 minutes, so you won’t have a lot of time. Say right away that you are a novice writer learning to write a proposal and you would like a critique on your current best effort. If you’ve made an appointment with an author, they will empathize and will be amazingly helpful. If you’ve made an appointment with an editor or agent, make it clear that you are not pitching the book to them. Tell them you are trying to learn how to write a proposal and this is the best you’ve come up with so far, and ask them to critique it. This takes the pressure off them. Editors and agents have to reject a lot of pitches at a conference, and this wears them down. Asking them for a critique instantly changes an adversarial relationship into a cooperative one. Now they’re on your team. They are no longer looking for a reason to say “no.” Now they’re looking for how to get you to “yes” with somebody else, someday. If they spot a gaping flaw in your proposal, they may also suggest how to fix it.

What Do You Do With a Book Proposal?

The purpose of a book proposal is to provide written information on a proposed business partnership between you and a publisher. A proposal is the tool you use to sell your novel to a publisher. It’s the only tool most writers will ever have.

Most publishers require you to submit your proposal through an agent. (Not all publishers do, but most of them do.)

If you don’t have an agent and need one, your proposal is your ticket to getting one. Look for suitable agents online, read their guidelines, and follow them to the letter in making contact. It is better to do a carefully targeted submission to one agent than a scattershot submission to a thousand. Yes, really. A targeted submission has a low probability of success. Scattershot submissions have zero probability. Don’t use AI to write your submission. Use your own personality. Humans can tell the difference.

If you have an agent, send your final, polished proposal and sample chapters to your agent. You will probably have been through several rounds of revisions with them, as I mentioned earlier. They’ll create their own cover letter and submit your proposal and chapters to suitable publishers.

If you’re submitting your proposal to publishers who don’t require an agent, review their guidelines carefully and follow them to the letter. Just as with an agent, it’s better to carefully target a few publishers than to shotgun out hundreds of submissions.

If you’re an indie author and have a proposal, you don’t need to do anything with it. The act of writing the proposal forced you to “think marketability.” Which changed the way you wrote your novel. And changed the way you designed your cover. And changed the way you wrote the sales copy for the online retailers. And made your book better in a thousand ways. Upload your novel and reap the rewards.

Homework:

Do you need to write a proposal? If so, what do you hope to gain by writing it? If not, why do you not need one?
In case you need to write one, give yourself 5 hours to write a first cut. This may take several days of calendar time, but 5 hours of clock time is just enough. Don’t overthink this. Sit down and drill it out. The first cut is just a first cut; it doesn’t have to be pretty.
Once you have a first cut at your proposal, make a plan for how you’ll polish it. You have a lot of options. You can read through it yourself, pretending you’re the marketing director of a major publisher. You can show it to your critique group. You can show it to a published author. You can show it to your agent, if you have one. You can take it to a writing conference and get it critiqued. Make your plan. Then execute it.

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