Chuck Dietrich, CEO of Sliderocket gave a sample business pitch outline at entrepreneur.com, and it occurred to me that this is also a terrific outilne for a non-fiction book proposal. Here are the topics he suggests and my notes on how they can apply to books:
- Headline (your vision) - this would be one paragraph about the core of the book.
- Problem (customer pain) - what problem does your book solve?
- Solution (value prop to customer – great to add real customer stories) - how will your book solve this problem? And what evidence do you have?
- Why Now (history and evolution) - Why is this the right book in today's market?
- Market Size (who are your target customers)
- Competition (honest list) - What other books are dealing with similar topics? Cite successful ones, because they are demonstrating that there's a market. If you say 'there's no book out on this topic at all,' usually it makes publishers run the other way.
- Product (description and road map) - This could be a table of contents and a summary of each chapter.
- Business Model (revenue, pricing etc.) - This is more for yourself, not to tell the publisher: how will you use this book to promote other products and services (assuming you want to)?
- Customer Acquisition plan (marketing and sales) - How will you help attract readers to this book?
- Team (founders & management) - You may be the entire time, or you may plan to hire a publicist or PR person to help you publicize the book, you may have lots of friends who will pitch in to help promote the book, etc.
What this underlines is that a book is part of a business, not just a creative endeavor, and that's true of fiction as well as non-fiction. If you want a publisher to take your book on, you have to help them understand how that will make money for them. If you want to self-publish, you need to work out for yourself how you'll make at least enough money to cover your expenses (or more if you want your book to be profitable).
(There's more about book proposals and how to write a winning one, in my book "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline booksellers.)
