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    Writer's Guide to Book Proposals: Templates, Query Letters, & Free Media Publicity
    Writer's Guide to Book Proposals: Templates, Query Letters, & Free Media Publicity
    Writer's Guide to Book Proposals: Templates, Query Letters, & Free Media Publicity
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    Writer's Guide to Book Proposals: Templates, Query Letters, & Free Media Publicity

    By Anne Hart

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    About this ebook

    Here is your new author's guide to writing winning book proposals and query letters. Learn how to find free media publicity by selling solutions to universal problems.

    The samples and templates of proposals, query letters, cover letters, and press kits will help you launch your proposed book idea in the media long before you find a publisher.

    Use excerpts from your own book proposal's sample chapters as features, fillers, and columns for publications. Share experiences in carefully researched and crafted book proposals and query or cover letters.

    Use these templates and samples to get a handle on universal situations we all go through, find alternatives, use the results, take charge of challenges, and solve problems-all in your organized and focused book proposals, outlines, treatments, springboards, and query or cover letters.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateApr 19, 2004
    ISBN9781532000515
    Writer's Guide to Book Proposals: Templates, Query Letters, & Free Media Publicity
    Author

    Anne Hart

    Popular author, writing educator, creativity enhancement specialist, and journalist, Anne Hart has written 82 published books (22 of them novels) including short stories, plays, and lyrics. She holds a graduate degree and is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and Mensa.

    Read more from Anne Hart

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      Book preview

      Writer's Guide to Book Proposals - Anne Hart

      Writer’s Guide

      to Book Proposals

      Templates, Query Letters,

      & Free Media Publicity

      Anne Hart

      ASJA Press

      New York Lincoln Shanghai

      Writer’s Guide to Book Proposals

      Templates, Query Letters, & Free Media Publicity

      All Rights Reserved

      © 2004 by Anne Hart

      No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

      ASJA Press

      an imprint of iUniverse, Inc.

      For information address:

      iUniverse, Inc.

      2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100

      Lincoln, NE 68512

      www.iuniverse.com

      ISBN: 0-595-31673-5

      Contents

      Introduction

      Chapter One: Writer’s Guide to Book Proposals: Templates, Query Letters, & Free Media Publicity

      Chapter Two: Open a Home-based Online Business as a Book Packager

      Chapter Three: How to Format a Salable Book Manuscript

      Chapter Four: Cover and Query Letters for Book Proposals

      Chapter Five: Action Verbs for Cover and Follow-Up Letters, Book Proposals, and Resumes

      Chapter Six: Starting Your Public Relations Campaign

      Chapter Seven: Pop-Up Public Relations for Your Proposals

      Chapter Eight: Pre-Sell Your Book

      Chapter Nine: Write About Nourishment and Power

      Chapter Ten: Launch Your Writing Fast

      Chapter Eleven: Writing, Publishing, and Promoting Your Own Small Booklets

      Chapter Twelve: How to Format Your Book Manuscript

      Chapter Thirteen: Creating Electronic Press Kits

      Chapter Fourteen: Cover Letter Mistakes and Mystiques

      Chapter Fifteen: 15 Steps To Marketing To The New Media

      Chapter Sixteen: Book Proposal Writer’s Business Plan

      Chapter Seventeen: How Do You Sell Solutions to Problems in Your Book Proposal?

      Chapter Eighteen: How to Write Book Proposals for the Inspirational Markets

      Appendices

      Introduction

      Here’s how to write book proposals and cover letters that position you first to make a favorable impact. If you’re a beginning writer with your first book or a book that you want to launch in the media before it’s published, you can serialize the chapters as columns, articles, or features and sell the one-time only rights to publishers in a variety of publications—newspapers, magazines, and trade journals or sell the electronic media. Your goal is to promote your writing by strategic public relations to the credible media long before you offer your work to a publisher, agent, or entertainment attorney.

      Launched in the national media, your writing can sell over and over not only as a column or feature, filler or how-to piece, but as a book or even a movie. Keep all your publishing writes and offer one-time publication writes to the periodicals and newspapers. Make a tape of your columns and offer the tape to radio stations or broadcast audio and video on your own Web site.

      You have a personal broadcasting network online. Your first step is to learn how to write a winning book proposal using these samples and templates. Then look at the cover letter samples and templates. Write your proposal based on your research and interviews. It’s the cover letter that markets and publicizes your proposal. Fill in all the details in your proposal that the individual publisher wants you to include for the publisher’s ‘line.’

      Then move to the media and start syndicating or selling 400 to 500 word columns or short features of your book. Ask for the publishing rights back on what you sell to the media. The media only needs one time rights or reprint rights on your material. Launch your book in the media in chunks of feature articles, fillers, and how-to columns.

      With all that free publicity, the book will have a chance in the credible media to be pre-sold before it’s published. With media coverage of your book and its parts, you’ll have the lead with marketing the book to publishers. Don’t overlook the print-on-demand publishers or self-publishing.

      You already would have launched your book in the media before you submit it to publishers. So you can collect a database of news coverage on your subject of choice and show that news coverage/publicity to publishers. Below you’ll find the first chapter composed of book proposal templates and samples. Use these templates and samples for your research into what your individual publisher wants on a book proposal.

      Most publishers want the same basic items: a query letter, a synopsis of your book, a cover letter that doesn’t repeat the proposal, a brief biography of the author’s credentials or background, or if not impressive, a brief detailing of your research and interview sources, projects, or grants, a detailed summary of your chapters with your outline, and a reason why your book is different than the competing books out on the market.

      Most publishers want to know who your intended audience is—the readers, and how wide or narrow a niche or general market will be interested in your book and why. If the market is too narrow, your book would not be accepted unless you provided clear evidence of who will buy your book.

      This could be a list of names of prospective customers or businesses. A how- to book already has a built-in market: people who want to learn how to do the craft or project. Too often books on how to write book proposals are written by people who read and evaluate the proposals and not those who write them for a living.

      Buy books on how to write proposals written by people who write many book proposals and book package deals often for publishers and authors. You could read thousands of book proposals a year as a literary agent or editorial professional and still see more rejected than accepted proposals. People in the business end of selling the proposals to publishers are experts in making business deals and negotiating business contracts. Publishers know what they want but don’t have the time to train writers. The best way to learn to write proposals and cover letters is to write them for a living. Or become a book packager and negotiate deals for book packages and movie rights. You work from synopsis and cover letter to proposal and then to a series of books or books, scripts, and video or film rights.

      Or you can start a business at home or online writing book proposals and cover letters for authors. After writing several proposals for others, find out how many proposals that you have written for others actually have ended in books being accepted by publishers. Was the acceptance and publication based on the proposal and cover letter you wrote? Or did the author win the contract based on experience, celebrity status, or academic degrees?

      Before you dream of starting a proposal writing business, your first step is to write a proposal for your own book idea. Write your query and cover letter after you have written your proposal so that you can detail the most important points in as brief a one-page letter as required. Keep the letter to one page.

      Any less would be seen as too short and placed in the query-letter category. Arrange your research in files so you can number your details in order of their importance. The reader of your proposal and cover letter won’t give your paper much time. You have about 20 seconds at first reading of the cover letter. The proposal will be glanced over as if it were a resume. So the important points should be in bold headlines and summarized in short sentences right up front. Unless you can hold the attention of the reader in the first few sentences, the entire proposal most likely will not be read to the end.

      Chapter One

      Writer’s Guide to Book Proposals: Templates, Query Letters, & Free Media Publicity

      How to Write Book Proposals: Samples and Templates of Book Proposals, Cover and Query Letters, and Book Proposals for Book Packages. Write Book Proposals for Yourself or Open a Book Proposal and Cover Letter Writing Business for Authors or Job-Hunters.

      Book Proposal #1

      Writing Fiction for the New Media Table of Contents

      Table of Contents

      Preface

      Writing Fiction for the New Media details twenty-five uses of fiction writing in the new media and where to sell fiction to non-traditional markets. Such online and multimedia markets include the government, therapists, business, speakers, educational learning materials publishers, laboratories, industrial dramatization writing for training videos and films, theme parks, trade shows, events, hospitals, manufacturers, weddings and celebrations, grand openings, advertising agencies, infomercial writing for the Web, virtual reality, restaurants, children’s centers, and the military.

      Introduction

      Fiction writing skills can be transferred. Scriptwriters who write dramatizations for industrial training videos and films are using fiction writing skills to produce practical learning materials. The same scripts may now be streamed in video on the Internet or put on CDs and DVDs.

      Entertainment is used in speechwriting, and Internet audio has brought radio to the Web. Writing drama and narration for Internet audio and video and putting narrated stories on disk in multimedia are examples of a only a few of the ways fiction writers can use cross-training to write and sell their stories, scripts, and novels online and through multimedia sources.

      For fiction writers who want practical applications of their imaginative fiction to real home-based online businesses where they can use their fiction writing techniques to run practical businesses.

      The following are the businesses described and detailed as to applying creativity in fiction writing to operation of the business with digital camcorder linked to personal computer and Internet access. Twenty five businesses will apply fiction writing techniques to a variety of practical home-based online business that shows fiction writers how to link their camcorders to their personal computers and write for the new media, either online or in multimedia formats.

      Work as an Independent Consultant Instructor Online. Or set up your own training course. Teaching Online with your Camcorder and Personal Computer? What will you teach online from home to make money?

      Chapters

      1. Writing Fiction Scripts for Computer Games

      2. Linking camcorder to PC to create and sell fiction

      3. Genres in online fiction for all ages and what market to target

      4. Jumpstart Your Online Fiction Writing Career by Creating Web-based Storyboards

      5. Writing Fiction Mini-Books

      6. Formatting and Organizing the Mini-Novels

      7. Self Promotion and Marketing Online Fiction and Mini-Novels

      8. Interviews with best-selling and popular authors

      9. Writing Time Capsules

      10. Fictional Life Stories and Confessions Online

      11. Book Packager for Intergenerational Fiction Online

      12. Writing Worlds

      13. Inspirational, Religious, and Self-Help Fiction

      14. Teaching Fiction Writing Online and Services for Fiction and Entertainment/ infotainment authors

      15. Writing Fiction About Payoffs and Moral Needs

      16. Writing Worlds

      17. How Fiction Writing Impacts Your Memory

      18. Shuffling Odd and Even Chapters in Your Novel to Create Interactive Stories with Multiple Plots

      19. Writing Cybersoaps for Internet Theater

      20. What Computer and Writing Skills are Needed

      21. Using Proverbs to Create Salable Digital Stories

      22. How to Get Paid for Auditioning Your Fiction Writing for New Media Family Entertainment Markets

      Appendices

      Chapter Outlines

      Chapters One through Twenty-Two

      Transferring your fiction writing to non-fiction businesses in the online home-based workplace.

      Chapter 1

      Writing Fiction Scripts for Computer Games

      a. Branching

      b. Platforms

      Writing alternative plots is known as branching. What’s your character going to do next? Working with the technical computer engineer. The eight platforms of interactive writing for the Web and multimedia.

      Chapter 2

      Making money online with fiction writing. The challenge and creativity of making money with your digital 8 camcorder linked to your PC and broadcasting in personal networks online from home through multimedia CDs and DVDs.

      How to start and how to run the business of finding nontraditional ways to make money online through video, audio, and the Internet for fiction writers who can apply their imagination to filling practical needs. Fiction can be used not only for entertainment, but for therapeutic and learning environments. How to use fiction to teach other subjects online or through electronic learning.

      Chapter 3

      What are the fastest and best-selling genres of Internet multicasting and digital media for the beginner in fiction writing and production? What are the genres of Internet multicasting and digital video writing and/or production?

      They include videos about very young children interacting with a grandparent— made commercial, such as a trip to the beach and home to explore objects. There are travel planning videos, family health guides on video, cooking instruction, sports guides, and videos showing how other producers make movies for cinemaniacs.

      New genres are being created all the time. There are music videos, biographies, cultural, dance, language instruction, sports and sports history, self-defense, children’s programming, animation, virtual reality and interactive multimedia, health and fitness, exercise, public domain videos of old feature films and television programs whose copyright owners failed to renew their copyrights, and the property became public domain, travel, barter, specialty market videos, how-to, training, industrial, instructional, educational, and sponsored tapes.

      Chapter 4

      Jumpstart Your Online Fiction Writing Career

      Learn how to design and use storyboards to create projects using fiction writing skills for training and creating learning materials online. We live in a time when it’s possible for a fiction writer to train for a career in teaching online with your PC and your camcorder. You can teach anything from writing to public speaking or any other subject. You can teach your craft or hobby or what you do well at home online without you, personally having to speak one word inside a classroom and without the need to travel, drive, or leave your home.

      All you have to do is bring instructional materials to your students. You can make these materials yourself at home. You need the ability to write well and to create or obtain permission to use graphics.

      If you are hired as an independent contractor called a creative consultant by a university, you will be teaching online from home a few courses every eight-week or other set time, term. You can teach via VHS tapes, your personal computer, or a combination of computer and video tapes using digital 8 tapes saved in your hard disk or on CDs and DVDs.

      Use the method that reaches your students without requiring them to buy expensive equipment. If they already have VHS machines to view your tapes, use that method. If they have digital 8 camcorders, fine, but by transferring your digital 8 tapes to a CD, most students will be able to play a CD on their own computers at home.

      Chapter 5

      Writing fiction mini-booklets. When Your Best Writing Still Isn’t Selling, Here Are The Steps To Take: Winning Strategies and Guerilla Tactics To Promote, Publish, and Sell Your Writing Fast: Here’s how to write and sell a fast-selling paperback 98-page (when published) pamphlet or booklet, the kind you see on supermarket impulse racks at the check stand. They can sell quite a number of copies, or you can sell them by mail order or online from your Web site.

      Chapter 6

      How to Format Your Mini-Fiction Booklet Manuscript

      Start your story halfway down page 3 with the title of your little book. You’ll find about six paragraphs can fit on one page. In a sweet romance story, don’t have chapter headings or a table of contents. Instead of chapter headings, you only have the title page with author’s name and dedication to the________. Fill in to whomever you dedicate the story.

      Use three asterisks (***) at the end of each part or chapter of the story instead of chapter headings. The asterisks represent the breaks in the story when the action changes instead of having chapter headings. Your story can run about an average of 23 to 26 pages before the chapter ends with the three asterisks and new action begins, for example, on page 27. Then run the action on to about page 36 and have three asterisks there.

      Chapter 7

      Self Promotion of Your Writing Before and After Publication

      A Digital Renaissance

      Where Creative Writing Meets E-Publishing

      Writers of fiction and drama, your new medium is here. You can be among the first to branch out into interactive intuitive writing on the Web.

      Now is the time to start writing for the newest media, whether it’s news, education, entertainment, or a hybrid mixture of all of the above. Today’s Web provides news and entertainment in cyberspace, as well as education, job training, and college degrees.

      Chapter 8

      Interviews with popular fiction authors and media professionals. Thirty-five authors were interviewed. Selected interviews will be published.

      Some of the authors are best-selling novelists such as John Saul and others listed in the manuscript. The range is most genres and also newspaper columnists discussing the subject of switching to fiction writing from journalism.

      What Popular Book Authors Have to Say About the New Media

      How have the new media and/or the Internet given popular or best-selling authors and columnists more visibility? For years, I have collected correspondence from best-selling or popular authors asking for quotes, comments, and opinions on how the new media changed or didn’t change the writers’ lives. I asked each author for a quote for my book. Here are the E-Mail letters to me from popular or best-selling book authors and a few columnists.

      I approached the writers at the time when the Internet first began to make its impact on society. The letters are dated from April to June of 1997, when the impact of the Internet first began to change or in some cases, not to change at all the writers’ work styles. Some authors I queried welcomed the new media and the Internet as a means of creating more communication and visibility, whereas some authors didn’t find the Internet had changed the way they make their writing visible in the media. Years later, when the Web has become a lot more popular with authors, it is seen as a way for publishers to advertise the books available of many popular authors. Some authors have Web sites where fans can write to them.

      E-Quotes From Best-Selling And/Or Popular Published Novelists And Other Published Authors Who Have Made Their Careers As Writers

      Sample from authors include John Saul, and many novelists as well as newspaper columnists on the subject of writing fiction and the Internet. Example:

      Ruth Ryan Langan, Best-Selling Novelist (45 Novels At Time Of Email Interview).

      Anne,

      Ah technology. What would we do without it? Actually, these modern advancements haven’t change my writing style at all. But they have greatly changed the ease with which I write. With the royalties from my first book sale, I invested in a computer system. The use of computer over electric typewriter cut my work by half.

      But that was just the beginning of my introduction to technological advances. My second computer system had a desk-jet printer, silent, quick, efficient.

      Printing out my chapters was now a snap. My third computer system includes a laser printer, making my work easier still.

      And this computer system is powerful enough to hook into the Internet. Now I’m able to correspond with readers the world over. And in my business that’s very valuable, since one of my publishers, Harlequin, publishes my books in over one hundred countries and over twenty foreign languages.

      Daily, visitors to my web page leave me messages, to which I can instantly respond. In the blink of an eye I can communicate with readers around the world. This certainly beats the old quill and parchment.

      Wouldn’t you agree?

      *         *         *

      John Saul, Best-Selling Novelist With Dell Of Psychological Thrillers (Novels). His novel made the #1 best seller list in Canada. And following, all 19 of his novels made the best-seller list. He also writes novels for Ballantine. His novels have been made into movies.

      To: Anne Hart

      Thanks for your interest in my work. I don’t have that much to do with the Legends Project; I came up with the concept, but the game writers are doing the major work.

      I think the interactive world is fascinating, but I’m not sure just how interactive fiction should be. Keep in mind that when someone wants to experience a story, they don’t want to write it themselves. Therefore, it’s important that an interactive story be devised by the author, not the game player.

      Hope this is helpful to you. John Saul

      *         *         *

      (I have about 35 interviews with best-selling and popular novelists, journalists, and other authors on the subject of how they feel about writing fiction and the impact and change the Internet has made on them or their writing.)

      Chapter 9

      Writing Drama or Memoirs as Time Capsules for Internet Theater.

      Most freelance writers have not been exposed to fiction on Internet radio broadcasts. Yet writing for Internet theatre is a great way to put your life story on the Internet in the form of a radio play or narrated storytelling presentation.

      Chapter 10

      Organizing Your Life Story Book From The Beginning And Turning It Into A Play For The Live Stage, A Radio Play For Audio Tape Or Internet Wave File, Monologue, Or A TV/Video/And Film Script.

      Here is how to adapt your life story, diary, memoirs, or autobiography story or book to a live play or script. This is the way you turn your story or book into a play, monologue, or script so it can be presented live on stage. It’s one alternative to writing your life story as a book when you can also turn it into a radio play or live play for the stage or a movie script for video or film. Your main character will be introduced in the first act or the first chapter in a book.

      Chapter 11

      How To Become A Fiction Digital Media Intergenerational Author’s Book Packager and Writer: The Perfect Part-Time Home-based Online Business for Literary People

      Fiction Book Packager

      How would you like to be a fiction book packager for authors who document and pre-sell the life stories of older adults? Most book packagers open home based businesses to escape the restrictions of large publishing houses. Here’s how to open a business-based home rather than a home-based business. It’s a model for the publishing business of the future. Finding alternate income is the way most small press book publishers make money. One of the best ways publishers can find alternative income is to become a book packager for the larger publishing houses. Money comes in while waiting for small press publishing income returns to arrive after book sales.

      Chapter 12

      Fiction Writers Working with Intergenerational Writing or Older Writers

      Teaching, Writing, Taping, and Working as Their Book Packager:

      STEP 1: Send students in any grade from age 9 to 17 to senior community centers, nursing homes, or senior apartment complexes activity rooms.

      STEP 2: Have each student bring a tape recorder with tape and a note pad.

      STEP3: Assign each student one or two older persons to interview with the following questions.

      1. What were the most significant turning points or events in your life?

      2. How did you survive the Wars?

      3. What were the highlights, turning points, or significant events that you experienced during the economic downturn of 1929-1939? How did you cope or solve your problems?

      Chapter 13

      Writing Digital Media Life Stories for the Inspirational or Religious Markets

      It makes no difference what religion or spirituality essence you select, but writing a life story for the religious or inspirational markets is in demand and expanding its need for sharing life story experience in the form of books, stories, or featured articles and columns.

      What the religious or inspirational markets are looking for is sharing what you’ve learned from your mistakes or experiences, how you arrived at your choices, and how you’ve grown and were transformed, gaining wisdom that everyone can share. By sharing your experiences and life story, readers will learn how you made decisions and why, what wisdom you gained from your growth or transformation, and what made it possible for you to grow and change and become a stronger and better person. The stories you’d write about would be those universal messages we all go through, such as rites of passage, dealing with the stages of life in new ways, finding alternatives, and how you handled the challenges.

      4. What did you do to solve your problems during the significant stages of your life at age 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70-plus? Or pick a year that you want to talk about.

      5. What changes in your life do you want to remember and pass on to future generations?

      6. What was the highlight of your life?

      7. How is it best to live your life after 70?

      8. What years do you remember most?

      9. What was your favorite stage of life?

      10. What would you like people to remember about you and the times you lived through?

      Chapter 14

      Teaching Fiction Writing Online and Working with Freelance Writers in the New Media. Services You Can Offer to Fiction Writers Online and on Disk.

      In recent years, new small online digital media writing, electronic publishing, and information dissemination businesses opened by persons over the age of 60 have dramatically increased. Most are home-based low capital startup firms in the service and communications sector of the computer industry, and most are involved with the Internet. Some of the businesses of older adults are Web-oriented, making it easier for non-drivers to telecommute. Some teach on the Internet or supply information.

      Many of these small businesses are being started by writers over the age of 60. In the past home-based consultancies usually were started by persons who had been in the workforce for many years and who had great experience in the field of their consulting. Many of the consultancies are formed by autodidactics, people who teach themselves the subject area by reading books on the subject because they can’t afford formal schooling, or because they don’t want to sit through exams. To get free software, a writer in the digital media can open a low-capital home-based software reviewing service. Start by calling local weekly papers, computer news magazines in your area, and some national magazines.

      Chapter 15

      Jumpstarting Your Online Writing Career in the Digital Media

      What If You Can’t Think Of Anything To Write About? Write About Peoples’ Inner Payoffs and Moral Needs

      Here’s a media statement that came my way a few years ago. Use it to stir ideas and applications so you can respond to it with a story of your own, in case you don’t have anything started yet about which to write. According to the media, when the Communists took over in China decades ago, the men were relieved that they no longer were required by law to beat their wives daily. Is this true? What source did the media have for this statement? How can you use it in your life’s story?

      Chapter 16

      Writing Worlds

      Write investigative fictional biography in the first person. According to the e-publishing, online, and digital media industries, worlds declare your story and are called the declarative method in interactive and virtual reality story development. They do not use the procedural method that gives steps in a chronological order like the ingredients listed in a cookbook or software manual guide of directions on how to do something. By defining a world, I define with my senses by thinking in three dimensions.

      Specifically, I define all colors, tastes, smells, textures, sounds, and any other ingredient. Then I let the viewer, reader, user, listener, combine your elements the way they want, not the way I want, to create a variety of combinations. They can end up making a story very different from the one you imagined. The whole concept of creating worlds is creating variation on a theme, a very sensing/perceiving experience for the mind.

      Chapter 17

      Turning Freelance Writing into Salable Work in the Digital Media

      Does Writing Your Life Story As A Novel Affect Your Memory?

      To find out, we’d have to ask the people who write their life story in their older years what it did for them, their memory, and their ability to think and feel. Making use of introverted feeling in writing a commercial or salable life story for the new media. Thinking in three dimensions for older adults is

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