Establishing Its Place in the World: How To Write the Best Book Proposal

Know More: Five Easy Questions, Publishers, Sam Douglas 2.0, Five Easy Questions

After a week of publishing advice from Sam Douglas--an associate editor at Picador--we've saved the best for last. Today, he explains what a good book proposal looks like, helping you take that first step towards a nonfiction book.

Picador has published critically acclaimed novels like Paul Auster's The Brooklyn Follies and memoirs like Running with Sissors by Augusten Burroughs.

Welcome to the final installment of our interview with a fiction editor.

It's part of my deceptively simple feature: Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a serialized set of weekly interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing...

Jason Boog:
What does a good book proposal look like? What are the most important elements? Are some topics better than others?

Continue Reading...

Sam Douglas:
Well, I don't see many proposals, since I look mostly at fiction and fiction comes almost always as a whole manuscript.

But I'll speculate: a proposal should give a very clear sense of the proposed books distinctiveness, establishing its place in the world against whatever other similar books may be out there.

A book that articulates--implicitly or explicitly--why it matters cosmically, and proving the author's ability to deliver a well-written account of that exceptional story.

It should give a sample of the author's writing, somewhere between 20 and 50 pages of text, and an outline for the whole book as it will ultimately be delivered.

Note: If serialized interviews drive you batty, just click here to read the whole interview as it is collected this week...

» Establishing Its Place in the World: How To Write the Best Book Proposal from ThePublishingSpot
After a week of publishing advice from Sam Douglas--an associate editor at Picador--we've saved the best for last. Today, he explains what a good book proposal looks like, helping you take that first step towards a nonfiction book.Picador has publi... [Read More]

» Interviewing Sam Douglas: Real Advice from a Real Fiction Editor from ThePublishingSpot
As my Valentine's Day gift to you, I retrieved an old interview from the dusty archives of The Publishing Spot. Way back in 2006, I interviewed Sam Douglas--an associate editor at Picador.Picador has published critically acclaimed novels like Paul ... [Read More]

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