Writing a book proposal

Two kinds of people want to write health books: 1) writers interested in health, and 2) health professionals interested in writing. No matter which one you are, the process begins with the book proposal. Before you write your book, before you can attract a book agent, you need to know and show what your book is about. The important thing to know is that nonfiction books are presold. Unlike novels that you write first and then shop around, nonfiction books, about health or anything else, get sold from the book proposal.

Health books are a bit different when it comes to selling a book idea to an agent and then a publisher. That’s because you probably fall into category number 1 or number 2 — you’re either a writer interested in health, or a health professional interesting in writing. You probably are not both a health professional and a hotshot health writer. If you are, you’re one of the lucky ones, so just pass go. But in today’s health book market, most health books are created in collaboration. You may already have a collaborator in mind. If so, you can put your heads together and write a killer book proposal that highlights both your best ideas and credentials. Be careful, though, because if you pick the wrong collaborator, your proposal may get rejected. If you don’t already have a collaborator in mind, that’s okay. An agent who likes your proposal can help you find a one.

Before you write a proposal for your health book (or nutrition or fitness book), read up on what editors expect. Book proposals are expected to follow a specific format, and if you don’t know that, you proposal won’t go far. In a previous post I recommended books that will help you craft book proposals that sell. Since writers need to be readers first, here they are again, in cased you missed it:

• Thinking Like Your Editor, by Susan Fortunato and Alfred Rabiner
• Nonfiction Book Proposals Anybody can Write (Revised and Updated), by Elizabeth Lyon
• Book Proposals That Sell: 21 SECRETS TO SPEED YOUR SUCCESS, by W. Terry Whalin
• Write the Perfect Book Proposal: 10 That Sold and Why, 2nd Edition by Jeff Herman and Deborah M. Adams
• The Shortest Distance Between You and a Published Book, by Susan Page

From these books you’ll learn what goes into a great book proposal, including:

1. Your book’s contents.
2. Why you’re the right person to write the book.
3. How you will market your book.
4. Your platform (your reach or how well positioned you are to attract buyers). Book publicist Annie Jennings has some great tips on building a MEGA author platform.
5. Your book’s competition and how yours differs. This establishes potential demand for your book.

You can learn about your competition online at websites like barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com. But I suggest a trip to the bookstore as well. One piece of advice I learned from veteran book writers and publicists is to mine the acknowledgments and the book jackets. From the acknowledgments page, you can find out which agents rep the type of health books you’re interested in writing. This will help in your search for the right agent for your book.

From the book jackets, you can get inspiration for the kind of snappy, targeted copy you should include in your proposal. The book jacket copy is a consise, calculated strategy for marketing a book. Someone spent some time and expert thought into putting it together. When you read the jacket copy of similar health books to the one you want to write, see if you can identify why the copy works. Why does it make you want to read the book? Then do that in your book proposal. This may take some time. But before you can sell your book to the public, you’ll need to sell it to an agent and then a publisher. Then, once you have your book sold — with advance money in hand — writing the actual book will be that much easier.