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

"[I]t is harder today than ever before to get into a selective college. Harvard College turned down almost 21,000 candidates--including thousands of valedictorians and students with perfect SAT scores--in 2006-2007. That same year, Columbia University denied admission to about 16,500 high-achievers. And Stanford University sent out approximately 21,500 rejection letters." 

Those are a few depressing statistics from Joie Jager-Hyman's new non-fiction book about the mind-numbing struggle to get into an Ivy League school. In Fat Envelope Frenzy, she followed five students from the application process to the final acceptance and rejection letters.

Jager-Hyman is our special guest this week, explaining how she used her experience as a college admissions officer to pitch, research write and promote this captivating 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 conversations with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog:
How did you go about proposing this book? What did you do to make your idea stand out in the field of college-prep books? Any advice for journalists looking to propose a larger project?

Joie Jager-Hyman:
I hadn't seen any books that talked about the college application process from the students' point of view, so I guess I'd tell other writers to look for something that hasn't been done. Continue reading...
 

That being said, you also don't want to break the mold too much.  I think publishers are most comfortable with formats that have been tested.  My book is sort of a reality TV show model in that it follows five real kids.  

However, my professional and academic experiences allowed me to write the meta-narrative where I give all this history and research on different topics.  

Editors and readers always love a good story so it's great when you can take serious issues and combine them with stories.  They also want to know why you're the one to tell the story.

In my case, I could say that I worked in admissions, but writers can have a variety of different connections to various topics.