My New Book Proposal Program

The Book Proposal Shortcut for Busy Scholars

Hi Manuscript Workers!

In my last newsletter, I shared that my new program, the Book Proposal Shortcut for Busy Scholars is now open for enrollment. In this edition I want to share a little bit more about this program, in the hope of helping you decide whether it’s right for you at your current stage. (If you know it’s not right for you at the moment, no worries — enrollment will be closing in about a week and I’ll stop talking about it in the newsletter after that!)

If you subscribe to this newsletter or otherwise found your way to this post, I’m guessing that you might be working on a scholarly book. You know that you need to write and submit a book proposal in order to get closer to your goal of publishing said book, but you may not know where to start. Or you may have started on a proposal but found yourself stuck, due to lack of knowledge, motivation, or confidence.

Book proposals are weirdly mysterious documents. Most everyone has to write one in order to get a book published, but there are few opportunities to see one unless you work in publishing yourself. Even if you're able to find examples to emulate, you might feel adrift because you don't understand exactly what the purpose of the proposal is or who's going to be reading it with what expectations. You're willing to do the work, but you want to be sure you're doing the right work to get you closer to your goal.

On top of that, you probably have a million other things on your plate. You may have classes to teach, research to conduct, service to perform, a family to support, and other life stuff that pulls you away from figuring out what a book proposal is supposed to look like, let alone having the time to sit and write it.

Enter the Book Proposal Shortcut for Busy Scholars. My aim with this program is to quickly bring you up to speed on scholarly publishing and the role of the book proposal within it and to give you the structure you need to produce an outstanding proposal efficiently and effectively.

The program breaks up the process of crafting a scholarly book proposal into 12 modules. The modules are short and sweet—they're meant to give you the essential knowledge you need along with practical instructions on how to write the components you need to write.

In each module I also share some bonus tips on how to make each part of your proposal stand out from the crowd. I've helped hundreds of scholars with their book proposals, so I know the frequent sticking points where people undercut their own chances of success. You'll learn all the little tweaks that will make you feel ultra confident that editors will view your proposal as professional and polished.

You can sprint through the modules and complete a prospectus in a couple of weeks. Or you can dip in for one module at a time over the course of a semester or summer. The program is self-paced and non-interactive, so you have total freedom to work through it on your own timeline.

You’ll complete the program with a prospectus draft that you can feel good about discussing with acquisitions editors at your dream presses (Module 1 of the program will help you figure out which presses those are if you don't know yet). The proposal submission is just the first step in the process of getting your book published, but it's a necessary step and the Shortcut program will get you fully ready to take it.

Enrollment is open until August 31st, 2021. The enrollment fee is discounted at $30 off for the pilot launch, with an extra $50 discount if you don’t have institutional funding to support professional development like this. I plan to reopen enrollment next January at the regular price.

If you know someone who might be interested in the Book Proposal Shortcut for Busy Scholars, please feel free to pass this newsletter along. I appreciate your help spreading the word!