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?
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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]
Tracked on: February 14, 2008 11:31 AM | Permalink to Trackback