Publishing minutiae gleaned however one disseminates information these days:
If you’re self-publishing you may not need this but if you’re attempting to place your work with a literary agent or publisher a book proposal is a must.
Know what is expected:
You’ll need a bio, an overview, a marketing plan, comparative title analysis of similar books who your target audience is, your vision and scope of project, a table of contents with brief description of each, a sample chapter and any testimonials or relevant support
you may have.
The introduction should include why you’re the perfect person to write this story. It must also answer these three things: So what, who cares, and who are you? Focus on benefits and proactively answer big picture and possible questions or counter intuitiveness.
Most importantly, you need a short elevator pitch (1-2 sentences). For Home Cookin- I use “Studs Terkel meets Julia Child”.
The overview needs to be justified, not just described. That description needs to help you specifically reach your target audience.
Your bio should be up to 2 pages double spaced and written in 3rd person. Your marketing plan- 2-4 double spaced pages.
Without the above you’re wasting your time.
No footnotes or bibliography unless academic. Sight sources in line, not as footnotes. Good to know and I’ll be correcting that in my own work.
There needs to be a symbiotic relationship between you and your publisher. So as not to get lost among the giants, smaller presses may be a better fit. Independent publishers often have a path for submission without an agent- depends on the size of the publisher although the big 5 publishers will not take unsolicited queries and you MUST go through a literary agent.
Why so many opt to self-publish.
Speaking of lit agents, do your homework. Find out who they rep and what type of books they place. They work in select genres so no point in querying someone that handles erotica and feminist study with a cookbook.
Platform is paramount.
Social media is but one part of your platform. Be active and visible. Partner and advocate with others that support your work like Substack, relevant partnerships (my author’s group for instance), podcasts… anything that can amplify your message. That said, it depends on the category of your book but it is most advantageous to cookbooks or self help books.
If your self-publishing, some other things to consider: 6×9 trim size is the default for affordability but use of color pictures, paper weight and binding all affect your print cost.
Game changer:
ChatGPT is a form of open AI that’s trained to follow a prompt and answer in detail- helping in brainstorming and writing in the desired format or style. Many authors are using it. At the moment I will resist- kind of like I resisted drum machines when they came out but was forced into adopting them or lose work as they became more prevalent. I hope that’s not the case as it smacks of cheating and enjoy the writing process but seems like the future. That said, though I embraced them I never liked and haven’t used one in decades.
I mention this because I found out that my work on another
website that I’ve contributed to for years is “crawling with bots”
who are scrubbing the site to train their AI, which pisses me off
no end.
To me it’s not flattering it’s theft.
Alan Lake
Chef/percussionist/writer/