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| April 16-17, 2005: Conference and Workshops Grand Hyatt Hotel 42nd and Grand Central Station, New York, NY
Book Proposal Workshop You must be registered for the Saturday conference to register for Sunday sessions. Transform your book idea into a proposal no agent or editor can resist! This half-day workshop - designed for veteran nonfiction writers as well as first-timers - offers insider advice from an expert panel:
You'll have ample opportunity to ask questions - and the panel will offer candid reactions to several proposal excerpts chosen from those submitted by participants. Additional information below:
Posted January 3, 2005. Please check again in a few weeks for updates. SCHEDULE The workshop runs from 9:00 AM to 12:00 noon. We will start promptly.
Michael Carlisle, founder of Carlisle & Company, recently merged his agency with Arthur Pine Associates and Witherspoon Associates to create InkWell Management. His client list includes many Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners. Among the New York Times bestsellers he has represented are: Eats Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss, Chaos by James Gleick, and Longitude and Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel. See this listing for additional information. Margot Schupf is Executive Editor of Lifestyle Books at Rodale, which is the largest independent book publisher in the United States. Recent Rodale New York Times bestsellers include The South Beach Diet and other books in the South Beach series by Dr. Arthur Agatston, Pete Rose's My Prison Without Bars, and 8 Minutes in the Morning by Jorge Cruise. Annie Jennings is a leader in the book promotion and book marketing industry. Her company, Annie Jennings PR, pioneered the concept of "pay for placement" publicity. Author clients include Dr. Bernie Seigel, Deepak Chopra, Ann Louise Gittleman, Richard Carlson, Iyanla Van Zandt, and Tony Robbins. Her website offers valuable free reports, as well as the opportunity to sign up for free teleseminars. Sarah Wernick (moderator) is an award-winning freelance writer, whose co-authored books include the bestselling Strong Women Stay Young (Bantam, 1998), written with Miriam Nelson of Tufts University. Five of her six book proposals drew six-figure advances. Her website provides many useful resources for writers. WHAT TO READ FOR A HEAD STARTPreliminary reading will help you benefit from this workshop, especially if you plan to submit a proposal excerpt for discussion. Try to read at least one book or article about the publication process and another about book proposals. If you previously submitted a proposal to agents or editors and it was rejected, have a look at this article in addition to anything else you read: The Ten Most Common Reasons Book Proposals are Rejected – and What These Reasons Really Mean, by Marcia Yudkin. About the publication process: For a quick overview, see So, You Want to Write a Book by Sarah Wernick. Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction - and Get it Published, by Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato (Norton, 2003). Susan Rabiner is a former editor who is now an agent; Alfred Fortunato is a writer. Together, they provide an insider view of publishing, helping you understand how things look from the other side of the desk. Publishing Confidential: The Insider's Guide to What It Really Takes to Land a Nonfiction Book Deal, by Paul B. Brown (AMACOM, 2004). Brown, a veteran business writer, offers the voice of experience in this easy-to-read, schmoozy book. For a cautionary tale about one writer's experiences with her first book, see "The Education of Stacy Sullivan: A First-time Nonfiction Author Learns That Getting Published Is Not Necessarily the Hard Part" by Gal Beckerman, an article from the September/October, 2004 Columbia Journalism Review. About book proposals: Nonfiction Book Proposals Anybody Can Write: How to Get a Contract and Advance Before Writing Your Book, Revised and Updated, by Elizabeth Lyon (Perigee, 2002). This superb book provides step-by-step instruction, illustrated with brief excerpts from proposals. Write the Perfect Book Proposal: 10 That Sold and Why, Second Edition, by Jeff Herman and Deborah Levine Herman (John Wiley & Sons, 2001). In addition to instructional material, this book features extensive excerpts from successful book proposals, with candid comments about them. If you don't have time to read a book, read this article: Book Proposals at a Glance: Concise Summary of What Belongs in a Book Proposal, by Sheree Bykofsky, a literary agent and ASJA member. HOW TO PREPARE A PROPOSAL EXCERPTAgents and editors typically receive dozens of queries and proposals each week. A non-fiction book proposal usually runs between 25 and 50 or more pages, so they can't possibly read all of them. But they do take a quick look. An enticing first page can determine whether they'll read on. During the workshop, the expert panel will comment on one-page proposal excerpts submitted ahead of time by participants. Selected proposals will be read aloud and then discussed; authors will not be publicly identified. If you're working on a proposal, this could be a valuable opportunity to receive feedback. But even if your material isn't chosen, focusing on your first page will be instructive. Your page should be polished and carefully proofread. Here's what to include: At the top, present the information you might find on the cover of a published book: a compelling title; your name (which only the panelists will see) with a 25-word author description; and a brief summary of the book's contents (50 words maximum). Present the first 250 words of your proposal - words that will both inform and seduce the reader. For inspiration, read the sample proposals in the books listed above. Go to a bookstore, a library, or to Amazon.com. Look at the covers and book jackets of successful books that are similar to yours; read the first few pages. (Amazon's "search inside the book" feature often permits you to display the first pages of a book.) SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONSIf you would like your proposal excerpt to be considered for discussion by the expert panel, email it to Sarah Wernick at sarah@sarahwernick.com by April 4. Acceptable formats are Word, RTF, HTML, plain text, and PDF; all submissions will be acknowledged. This isn't a contest! Those chosen for discussion won't necessarily be the "best" proposals but the ones most useful to review, given the goals of the workshop. |
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