Finish Your Book Proposal This Summer

Land a publisher next school year

Hi Manuscript Workers,

I hope you’re holding up ok out there. If you’ve been receiving this newsletter for a while, you’ve probably heard me mention my Book Proposal Accelerator program a few times. Today I want to share a little bit more about the program for those who are new here or those who are still weighing the decision of whether to join in the program when it starts again in June.

(If this isn’t you but is someone you know, please feel free to forward this email!)

What is the Book Proposal Accelerator?

The Book Proposal Accelerator is an online program that demystifies the academic book publishing process and helps you approach scholarly publishers with a professional package that will sell your book project to best effect.

The Accelerator is designed for scholars who feel they lack the knowledge, time, and confidence to meet their book publishing goals. It’s about giving you the tools you need, expediting the process, and helping your project meet its full potential, so you can actually feel excited about the prospect of taking it to publishers.

Here are the three main things the Accelerator offers:

• Structure and step-by-step guidance to write your book proposal from start to finish (within the first two months of the program if you want to, or you can work at your own pace over a full year)

• Empathetic support and strategic perspective as you navigate the submission, peer review, and contract process (you will have me and the rest of your cohort to check in with and seek advice from for the full year of the program, so you don’t have to go through this anxiety-provoking experience alone)

• Expert, personalized feedback on how you articulate your book’s argument, contribution, audience, and market positioning, from someone (me) who has helped hundreds of academic authors do this successfully. This isn’t generic advice — I will literally read what you have written for your proposal and help you present it more appealingly for publishers and readers. (This is why capacity for the program is limited.)

There are a bunch of other ways the Book Proposal Accelerator can help you get past the obstacles that stand between you and getting your book published, but I’ll let you read about those here if you’re interested. I especially encourage you to read the testimonials from past participants because I think they give a great sense of the different things people found valuable about the program.

How to enroll

One thing I do want to make sure you know about well in advance is how to pre-enroll. General enrollment will open on May 2nd at 9am PDT, but there are a few groups who are eligible for pre-enrollment before that. If you have previously done the Accelerator and want to do it again, or if you’ve done my Book Proposal Shortcut for Busy Scholars and want more interactive support through the Accelerator, you can get in touch with me any time before May 2 and I’ll get you signed up.

The other people I’m speaking to about pre-enrollment are institutional administrators (think department chairs and deans of research) who may want to purchase a block of spots for your faculty. I have worked out arrangements like this in past sessions of the Accelerator — and I think it’s awesome when institutions support their scholars in this way — but we do need to get the paperwork rolling in advance so that these spots can be reserved before May 2.

In the past few sessions of the Accelerator, capacity has been reached within an hour or so of general enrollment opening. So we’ll need to do some planning ahead if you (or your institution) wants to pre-enroll. You can get in touch with me any time — email me at laura@manuscriptworks.com or pass my info along to the relevant person at your institution — but the sooner the better to make sure the spots can be held for you.

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If you are already planning to do the Book Proposal Accelerator this year, I have a question for you!

I will be inviting two acquisitions editors to do guest Q&As with us in June/July, and I would like to know:

Which press’s editors would you most like to hear from?

You can reply to this email to put in a nomination (you can just name a press or two, or name specific editors). I’ll do my best to invite people based on your responses!

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Do have any questions or concerns about whether the Book Proposal Accelerator is a good fit for you at your current stage? Please get in touch! I promise no sales pitches — if the Accelerator isn’t quite right for you I will always say so honestly and point you to other resources I know of that may be a better fit.

I’ll be back with the newsletter next week. Topic: deadlines and due dates in publishing. See you then!