Writers ask us regularly if they can float a book idea past us to see if it might attract interest from publishers. If we know the writer, or they have a lot of credibility in their fields (whether as a writer or a professional in something else), we’ll usually be keen to hear it.
When our clients are drafting book proposals, many of them tell us that the section that confounds them the most is the market competition section. After all, who enjoys staring their competition in the face?
Stephen King says in his memoir, On Writing: “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out.” He meant that you should think about your reader when you’re revising your manuscript.
If you want to get a traditional publishing deal for your non-fiction book, the good news is that you can get one without writing an entire manuscript first. Publishers evaluate non-fiction based on proposals. The bad news is that proposals take a lot of work to write, sometimes many months.
