When To Begin the Book Proposal

Using the proposal process to work smarter

It’s been a week since I realized that the audience is key to deciding what kind of book I’m writing. And still, I am no closer to an answer despite harping on this question by myself for the past week. So, to figure out what kind of book to write—one for an academic audience or one for a general, non-specialist audience—I decided to start drafting a book proposal. It might be a bit early for some but this makes sense for me right now. In this post, I talk about why I started the book proposal so soon and what advice I’m following. In a future post, I’ll compare an academic book proposal to a nonfiction book proposal and let you know how the draft is going.

As I’ve mentioned before, there is really great advice out there for authors of all kinds who are writing their first book. For an overview of the nonfiction book proposal process, see Jane Friedman’s book and this post on her blog in particular. For the academic book proposal process, see Laura Portwood-Stacer’s book and this post on her blog. (I use affiliate links here for these two books only because I am actively using them to navigate this draft-to-publication process for my as-yet undefined nonfiction book. All that to say, I personally find their advice insightful, practical, and well-tested.)

Both authors get into the granular of each process and speak directly to potential authors to help them navigate its mysterious ins and outs. I will do my own comparison of the different proposals in a future post, but I would recommend visiting these existing sources for an introduction to this genre of writing.

---

There are a few reasons why I want to begin the process of writing a book proposal now, before I have established my main argument with full certainty. Number one on that list is the research that’s involved in writing it.

Similar to a grant or research prospectus, a book proposal has to include a well-researched and articulated section on competing titles—a “lit review” of sorts, except it’s not that easy to write. Portwood-Stacer writes about this section in relation to academic book proposals here and here. In an academic proposal for research, you would lay out the research you have already done on a topic and specify the contribution your new research will make to it. But in a book proposal, you have to identify what books have *recently* been published that your audience will be tempted to buy instead of yours, which usually does not include texts that you’ve already read.

Both academic and nonfiction book proposals require a market analysis to write this section well and convince the publisher that your book will stand up to the competition. There is no room in this section for the language of “building off,” “drawing on,” or “following”: your book needs to distinguish itself from the others on the shelf by owning its argument 100%.

So why would I choose to write this proposal before I have an argument? Here’s my thought: because the audience will also determine the kind of argument I make, I want to see how academic books and nonfiction books approach the same subject matter and see which one my book aligns with more. The hope is that this part of the book proposal process will help me develop my argument by asking me to compare my (semi-formed) argument to those that already exist in both markets.

By seeing what it means to write for each audience, I expect to be able to come to a decision about who I want to write for and what kind of press I want to pursue. It could be a genius way to “work smarter” and get the market research to help me with writing the actual book, or it could be a huge time-suck. We will see!