Features

A Brief Description

What is your proposed project about? What do you hope to accomplish by writing your book? If you have a particular perspective or philosophical orientation, it is not a bad idea to state this up front.

Market

Who will buy your book? Who are the people who will use your book, and how will they use it? Are they undergraduate students, graduate students, school administrators, classroom teachers, curriculum coordinators, or staff developers?

Competition

Are there other books like yours? Please list three or four primary competitors. What are their relative strengths and weaknesses? What will make your book better or different? 

A lack of competitors may or may not be a good thing. It could mean either that the market is very small, or that the market has not developed. Publishers are wary of both. When discussing your competition, do so objectively. Remember that reviewers may be long-standing, satisfied users of some of the books you list.

Features

What will make your book better? How will it benefit its users? How will they use the book?

Apparatus

What will make your book work as a learning tool? Will you provide practical examples, lists, or resources, ideas that readers can actually use? Will there be end of chapter questions, a glossary, chapter overviews? How many drawings, charts, photographs, if any, will your book have? Do your major competitors have the same elements?

Status of the Work

How far along are you in the book's development? How long do you think it will take you to write the book? Will you have co-authors, and how much of the writing will they be responsible for? 

It almost always takes longer to write a book than any author ever imagines. Be pessimistic, then add four months. Allow at least six months for chapters in a contributive volume.

Length of the Book

How long will the finished book be? You should have at least a rough idea, based not only on any work you have done so far, plus the length of similar books. We look for books in the 200-300 page range (manuscript length of 300-450 pages)

Table of Contents

This will give reviewers some idea of how your book will be organized and how it will work as a whole. Contents, at this stage, are very flexible, but can be helpful along with sample chapters. You are encouraged to include a brief paragraph describing each chapter to add some substance to the outline.

Sample Chapters

Can you really write? An outline is relatively easy to pull together, but actual chapters can be revealing regarding sustained writing. When you are deciding which chapters to write as samples, they should be ones of substance that show you and your approach at your best. Introductory chapters are not helpful to reviewers since they generally tell rather than show what your book will do. An editor's input here can help you select which chapters to write as samples.

In our experience, prospective authors have the most trouble with the market, writing level, and competition. It is all too easy to reinvent the wheel, particularly in large markets, where there are many books. An author must have a good sense of the market he or she is targeting;  it does little good to list the biggest sellers in a particular market if your book is in fact aimed at an altogether different segment.

Authors must keep their readers in mind as they write. A common problem is to assume too little or too much prior knowledge of the subject area on the reader's part, or assume incorrectly what readers will do with the knowledge they acquire from the book.

We hope this information is useful to you as you develop your prospectus and sample chapters. Good Luck!

For additional information, please contact us at 1-781-762-5577 x113.

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