Book proposals 3 – Understanding the Publisher’s Market

Publishers are always receiving what are known as “unsolicited manuscripts”. i.e. people randomly submit their work to a publisher in the hope that it might catch their attention. In reality, very few unsolicited manuscripts end up being published.

There could be a host of reasons why, but one very common reason is that the author has not researched the publisher’s particular market niche – and therefore their manuscript was never going to be suitable.

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Book proposals 2 – A Lack of Clear Focus

The easiest books to market are those with a very clear purpose or message that can easily be described. We would regularly ask authors to sum up the message of their book in no more than 50 words. It’s a good exercise to do because it forces you to focus on you core message and crystallise it. If you struggle to describe the central theme of your book in max. 50 words then it probably means you are trying to address too many issues.

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Book proposals 1 – Writing in a Vacuum

The fact is, there is no shortage of talent out there. There are plenty of great, gifted writers, writing some great stuff. But we’ll say this now (and probably repeat ourselves later), publishing is a commercial business and often authors forget this. We wouldn’t want to discourage anyone from simply writing whatever they wanted as a creative exercise. But if you are serious about getting published, then you need to think like a publisher.

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