While different publishers will ask for different things in different forms, there are certainly common elements that will show up in most proposal. The proposal I’m working on is for a faculty development book, rather than a traditional dissertation-turned-monograph or a textbook, but the presses I reference below show examples of various manuscript types.s your thinking about these proposal elements, I recommend reading Rachel Toor’s excellent Chronicle article on book proposals as well.

Here are some of the main elements you will find:

• Proposed and alternative titles – What words would both summarize the theme of the book and attract readers?
• Purpose and scope – Why do you want to publish this book? Why is it important? What will it cover and why?
• Intended readers – Who will buy the book, and why? How big is this audience? Might there we secondary or tertiary audience who might be interested, such as departments and programs rather than individuals? If you writing a textbook, what types of courses might it serve?
• Statement of need – Why is this book important? What gap does it address in the literature or market? What will readers be able to do after reading your book that they can’t do without it?
• Competitors – What books are already on the market that you might be competing with? How is your book different?
• You – Why are you the one to write this book? Why would readers trust you? How does the publisher know you will be successful?
• Proposed Table of Contents – What will you cover in the book in what order? What special features might the book have (graphics, images, activities, homework questions, etc.

Most publishers will also expect a sample chapter, usually the introduction or key example of how the book will work. This allows the publisher and review to see your writing style and judge how well the text will fulfill what you promise in the proposal. Some publishers will expect to see the entire manuscript, but most would rather work with you to shape the book during the writing process.

Other pieces of information you might be asked to include are estimated word count and image or figure count, a marketing plan for how you will help to support and sell the book when published, ideas for e-books or electronic resources to accompany the print version, a timeline for how you plan to finish the book.

Here are four examples of publisher guidelines for proposals as examples. You can find guidelines on most publisher websites.

University of Chicago Press

Jossey-Bass/Wiley

Johns Hopkins University Press

Stylus Press

Once you’ve got a solid idea for a manuscript and decided that the topic really does deserve book-length treatment, you’ll want to investigate presses that might be interested in your book idea. You’ll notice this step comes before writing the official book proposal and for good reason: it’s easier to persuade an editor that you project a good fit for the publisher’s list if you know what they offer. Then you don’t waste your time pursuing presses that would not be remotely interested in the project. That might sound harsh, but really it’s just good research strategy.

So for the burnout book, I followed this process:

1. Contact presses/editor I’ve already worked with. Since the University of Chicago Press published Agile Faculty, my contract stipulated that they had the first right to refuse of my next single-authored book. I contacted my editor at Chicago with a brief summary of the burnout book idea, but they have undergone staffing and list shake-ups, so they politely declined my idea for this book, freeing me to talk to other presses. Next, I contacted an editor I’ve corresponded with before to see if his press might like the idea. He gave me some good feedback on the idea, especially because it would be a hybrid of multiple genres. He was able to say that his press may be interested in seeing a proposal if the book had a few other certain attributes.
2. Research other possible presses. Though I had one press initially interested in the book idea, I did my due diligence to explore other possible presses. I researched their lists to see if they had already published something similar and if my book might fill a gap in their list. This also helped me to pull other proposal guidelines for future reference.
3. Decide to target one press at a time. After my research, I chose to move forward with drafting the proposal for the editor at the academic press I had already communicated with. Why didn’t I target multiple presses at one time? Like journal articles, it an ethically sketchy practice to do that. Presses don’t want to waste their time and that of their reviewers if you are seeking other offers at the same time. Most academic presses are spread very thin as it is, so proposing to one press at a time, though time-consuming on your end, is just plain respectful.

Karen Kelsky’s blog, The Professor Is In, has lots of good advice as well.

Next up, I’ll talk about the different elements of a book proposal.

In this series, I’m talking you through the thought process I’m using to write a faculty development book proposal on burnout. I had the idea, but before I could write a proposal, I had to step back, to decide if the idea was actually a book – and if the calmer, less externally driven new me actually wanted to write another book, let alone one about such a sensitive topic.

Essentially, I spent those months ruminating on a few specific questions:

• Why is this idea interesting to me?
• Why would the target audience want to read this book?
• Why does it have to be a book? Could it be something else?
• Can I/do I really want to commit to a big project, especially on this particular topic?
  
• Am I the only one who can write this book?

In thinking through these questions, I was able to both logically and emotionally process the idea. I was obviously interested, and eventually passionate, because I was finding burnout to be an insidious, always-lurking possibility given the current culture of higher education. Once I talked openly about burnout, I saw that many of my peers were relieved to talk about their own experiences, that they didn’t have to be stoic with me. So, the answer to the first questions helped me decide the topic was important and relevant and had the potential to make a difference in other faculty members’ lives.

With the next set of questions – is it really a book? could it be something else? What if it was a website? A podcast? An anonymous Twitter account? A private Facebook group? After playing with and testing all of these options for a while, I decided it is a book and that the other media can support community-building around it. This is a book I want to write, not something I “should do” for whatever reason.

And lastly, I really thought about whether or not I could intellectually and emotionally write about burnout, if I was the right person for it. Was talking to other faculty about burnout going to be empowering or problematic for me? I talked through these concerns with my therapist, husband, mom, and trusted peers. One of the most useful things to come out of this thinking time was the suggestion from my coach, Katie Linder, that I didn’t have to write the book on my own, which had been a worry. Because I was imagining a hybrid genre anyway, I could invite others to share their stories and advice in their own words which would make the book far more compelling and valid to readers (more on this in a later post).

After this period of questioning, I decided that faculty need this book and I’m in a position to pull the curtain back and go public. So, that’s the mindset I took into writing the proposal.

What makes a good book proposal? Before we can answer that question, we have to take another big step back – what is a book proposal? OK, not that far back; let’s go with “what are the content elements of a persuasive proposal?”

Before even considering the different proposal sections, you must have confidence that the book you propose is unique, needed, and important in some way. Because from this confidence you must build a strong persuasive argument for editors  to even consider the proposal. In an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Rachel Toor argues,

“The important thing to remember is that a book proposal contains an invitation, a seduction, and an unromantic assessment of where you stand relative to others. You have to work to get the editor interested in you, and then outline exactly who will buy the book once you’ve written it.”

I’ve reviewed book proposals that don’t do this work, that just assume the main idea is as clear to the reviewer as it is to the author, so they miss an opportunity to really hook me and want to see a full manuscript.

So like any good writer, you must assess your writing situation and do a good rhetorical analysis that will help feed into the persuasive content in the actual proposal. Basically, you want to ask yourself 5 questions:

1. What are the main a secondary purposes the book will achieve?
2. Who is the audience for this book, and why would they care?
3. Who am I in relation to the intended readers, and why would they listen to be on this topic?
4. What content is most important to the book, and why?
5. What context – in the discipline, higher ed more broadly, etc. – might affect how people receive the manuscript?

Or if you want to get really Aristotelian about it, try this process.

Whichever rhetorical analysis strategy you choose, this preliminary step will help you remember that you have to be persuasive in your proposal, not just assume the brilliance of your idea will be obvious to everyone else.

I never imagined I would write and publish a “real” book (which old me would have considered a proper academic research book) especially when I chose not to even try to turn my dissertation into a monograph. But as I write this at the end of August 2019, I am have submitted my third book proposal, having previously written ones for Agile Faculty and a co-edited collection on innovation in undergraduate liberal education coming in Spring 2020. The proposals must have been solid because they earned me contracts with University of Chicago Press and Johns Hopkins University Press, respectively (Chicago was the 6th or 7th publisher I submitted AF, to be totally transparent).

The third book I am proposing is about burnout among faculty in higher education, an issue about which I unfortunately have first-hand knowledge. I got the idea for this book as a way of dealing with my own burnout experience. But once I found peace with it and was able to open up to others, I was shocked by how many people had their own stories or knew someone affected. Like any good academic, I did my secondary research and found mostly studies in the higher ed literature about burnout, but nothing that was an authentic, practical faculty development take on the topic. I could see a book about my experience as both a catharsis and hopefully something other faculty could connect to and not feel as alone as I did.

Having already written a single-authored text and co-written/co-edited a collection, I’m imagining this book to be a hybrid that combines my personal burnout narrative, stories from other academics, academic research, and short practical chapters by professionals who support faculty. It’s a genre-bender, so the proposal will have to be really good to make sense for the publisher to take a chance on it.

Since I’m knee-deep in the process right now, waiting patiently for feedback from the potential publisher, I thought I’d start a series of posts about the different aspects of writing a book proposal. Posting this series will also give me some time to get settled in my new role as a Faculty Teaching and Learning Specialist in the Center for Teaching and Learning at Georgia Tech.

Over the next few weeks, I cover deciding if your idea really is a book, finding possible publishers, using publisher guidelines to organize your proposal, inviting outside contributions, and revising and editing a proposal based on peer feedback. By then, I will have submitted the proposal and will hopefully have good news and reviewer feedback to share. When writing a proposal, you have to be flexible, willing to take feedback, and well-organized – some of the core characteristics of Agile Faculty members.