My new non-fiction book, "Your Writing Coach" is now on track to be published in April 2007 by Nicholas Brealey publishing (London & Boston), and I thought it might be interesting and maybe even instructive to keep a journal of the process in this blog. So, here's the story so far:
I wrote a book proposal for a book to be called "Time to Write," with the emphasis on time management and productivity for writers and sent it to a new agent (my previous book agent having retired since my last book came out). She offered to represent it and sent it to four publishers. One didn't answer, two said it wasn't for them, and the fourth, a major publisher of writing books, said they thought it was interesting but "it seems like it calls for a lot of work on the part of writers, and we're more interested now in books that offer easy tips, or instant results." I thought that was kind of a sad commentary on the state of publishing these days. (I'm not identifying this publisher by name since I may want to do business with them sometime in the future, but if you have lots of writing books in your library, you'll figure out who I mean). Lesson 1: a non-fiction book is likely to be received well if it makes things sound easy and instant. Lesson 1.5: there's only so far you can go in promising this and still maintain your integrity.
Those four submissions were also the extent of the work that the agent was willing to do. So I sent out the book to three likely publishers myself. One said they were not interested, one never answered, and one, Nicholas Brealey, said they'd been thinking about publishing something in this field and invited me to phone them and then invited me to come in for a chat (since we were both based in London). Lesson 2: Timing is everything. And the more you get your proposal out there, the more likely it is that it will be encountered by someone who is ready for it at that point.
Nicholas Brealey said that he would be interested in a book in which time management and productivity were only two elements. We discussed my background and the fact that I teach writing internationally and have been a coach/consultant in this field, and out of that came the idea for a book that would guide people all the way through the writing process and would include elements that most writing books leave out, for example, how to get the people in your life to support your writing dreams and goals. Although this meant I would be doing a substantially different book, it sounded exciting to me and I offered to put together a new outline. Lesson 3: It helps to be open to changes and to respect the idea that the people who will sell your book probably have a good handle on what will sell.
I submitted a new outline and received some further suggestions and an offer of a contract. As this was now basically a new book, I didn't feel obliged to involved the agent who gave up on the previous one after four submissions. The advance the publisher was offering was modest, but I was encouraged by the fact that he had said that his plan was to keep the book in print over the long run. I felt the contract was fair, and signed. The advance was to be paid out one-third upon signing, one-third upon delivery of the manuscript, and one-third upon publication. Lesson 4 (or opinion four): Your long-term relationship with a publisher is more important than squeezing out every last dollor or pound for your advance.
It took only a couple of months to go from the first contact to signing the contract, which called for me to deliver the manuscript within about 5 months. I made up a folder for each chapter and went through all of my previous writing and the articles I'd clipped from various sources to allocate them to the appropriate folder. I was glad that my sometimes obsessive saving of material that might come in handy someday was paying off. Lesson 5: If you have even a vague idea of writing about a particular subject, keep all the information you run across about that topic.
I submitted the manuscript on time (well, just under a week late, actually, which I guess in the history of publishing isn't too bad). A few weeks later I got the feedback from the publisher, which pointed out that two of the chapters were a bit weaker than the others, which was totally accurate--I'd kind of not wanted to notice that myself. They also suggested that I switch the order of a few of the chapters around, and integrate into the chapters information that I'd planned to put into three appendices. All good ideas. I had planned to use my proposal for this book as the sample book proposal but the publisher felt that might be confusing. Instead, I'll use the proposal for the book I want to write next, which means I now have a firm deadline for coming up with that proposal, which is good. Lesson 6: You're not done until you're done. And when the feedback is useful, that's good.
The deadline for the revised manuscript is November 1, so I'll keep you posted. One other thing I should mention is that the agent and publishers were very interested in my plans for marketing the book. Everybody these days wants to know about your "platform." By this, they mean the method you have to reach potential buyers. The days when authors could just sit back and expect the publisher to do all the marketing are gone (if they ever existed). In my case, my Brainstorm ebulletin reaches about 1500 people every month, and the www.timetowrite.com website and this blog are other ways of reaching writers. The book will also have its own website and I have proposed several marketing strategies that I'll share with you as I continue to write about this project. Lesson 7: Marketing is king. To attract a publisher for your non-fiction book, you will have to propose a credible marketing plan.
