Devoted to publishing, publishers and to those who craft the written word

Can a book deal save your life?

Author Allen Rucker's life derailed in his early 50's when he woke up paralyzed by a rare disorder. According to his new memoir, The Best Seat in the House (in hardcover now, look for the trade paperback in January 2008), one of the things that helped him recover from this devastating loss was a contract to write The Sopranos Family Cookbook.

That comical book became a bestseller, giving a once struggling television and film writer new work as a non-fiction writer. Today he tells us how he pitched his most recent book.

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

Jason Boog:
Your memoir ends with you getting a contract to write The Sopranos Family Cookbook--an inspirational conclusion to the darkest time in your life. Landing a contract and writing your memoir must have been a similarly intense experience. On a practical level, how did you conceive, pitch, and finally land a contract for The Best Seat in the House? Any advice for fledgling writers looking to pitch a non-fiction book?

Allen Rucker:
As I said, I knew I wanted to write the paralysis book right away, but I waited, for two things: one, to figure out what I wanted to write, and two, to get to a place in the publishing business where I had a chance in hell to sell a book like this. Continue reading...

Personally, I’ve never had the gumption to write a book on spec, then give it on an agent to sell.

That’s the best way to do it, of course, if you can pull it off. After the second Sopranos book I wrote, the tongue-in-cheek The Sopranos Family Cookbook hit #1 on the New York Times Miscellany List, I knew I had a decent shot at selling an original book.

But before I took that shot, I co-wrote a memoir with madman Tom Green called Hollywood Causes Cancer. I learned a few things about memoir writing by doing that.

Practically, I put together the more or less standard package  – I wrote a short opening pitch, a long introduction that closely matched the introduction that I later wrote for real, a detailed chapter by chapter description of the whole book, a 25-page sample chapter, a one-page market overview (like I knew anything about marketing a book), and a brief author’s bio.

I even added a mocked-up photo of me in my wheelchair with my arm around the Washington, DC statue of FDR in his wheelchair, like we were brothers in arms. The whole thing was 61 pages long.

The beauty of this book is that all the research I had to do was between my ears. Unlike John Krakauer, say, I didn’t have to learn the history of the Mormons or travel to Alaska to visit a dead man’s bus. I didn’t really have to interview anyone but myself, my wife, my kids, and a close friend or two. And I had nine years of notes to draw upon. Most books , alas, aren’t like this – just sitting there, waiting to be written.

I then gave the proposal to my agent, super-agent Jay Mandel at William Morris, he went out and sold it for a modest advance, and that was that. My only tip about all of this is that the more you write about what you want to write, the better your chance of landing a deal. The rest is positioning – a good pitch, a good agent, some track record – and … luck.