20 Agents Looking for Memoirs and Narrative Nonfiction
Where to Query This Week (12.18.24) | Plus how to write a book proposal that sells
Welcome to Sub Club’s Where to Query This Week!
Today, I welcome Justine Payton to the column! Justine is working on both an anthology surrounding women's gynecological health and a memoir—she’s been in the querying trenches along with you. In her piece below, she discusses the unique advantage nonfiction writers have in publishing: the ability to sell a book before it’s fully written through a well-crafted book proposal. Here is some advice from a nonfiction writer and an editor.
How to Write a Book Proposal That Sells
There’s a magical loophole for nonfiction writers in the world of publishing, where you can sell a book before actually writing the whole damn thing. It doesn’t exist for fiction writers or poets. This loophole is reserved for only the nonfiction writers of the world, and it’s called the book proposal.
Unfortunately, book proposals can be a tricky monster to tackle. Without having finished the book, you still have to sell it as a complete and thoroughly thought-out manuscript.
Book proposals are like an elaborate sales document, and they have to check many boxes. First and foremost, they must establish your writing ability and the narrative allure of the proposed book. Then, a marketing and promotion plan, audience viability, comparative titles, and specifications around length and time to completion. In other words, you have to sell yourself as a writer, the book as an idea, and the economics of its future success all at once—and you may have only written one chapter.
I’ve written two nonfiction book proposals: one for an anthology on women’s gynecological health that I am co-editing with a colleague and one for my memoir. The general template for both remains the same, but the content differs because what I am trying to prove through the proposal is slightly different. For the anthology, I need the proposal to reveal my editorial acumen, ability to execute the logistics of securing contributors, and our vision for the reach and relevance of the collection. For the memoir, I need it to showcase my writing and the power and impact of the unique story I want to tell. The anthology proposal is around sixty-six pages; the memoir’s proposal is well over a hundred. All this to say, no one book proposal will look exactly like another. Each project is different, and each author is different, so the way in which they feel compelled to put their book idea forward will be different.
Through some of my editorial roles, I’ve had the chance to be on the other side of nonfiction book proposals, too—as a reader of them with acquisition in mind. I always look at the writing first. Do I love what this writer is doing on the line level? Am I getting that ooooh ahhhh feeling as I read their words? If it’s a yes, then I keep going. I’ll read the sample chapters all the way through to see if they feel compelling and if I can catch glimpses of common themes or a narrative arc. If I can, then I usually return to the overview—kind of like an introduction—and read through the author’s vision for the completed book and its execution. Do I trust that the writer will be able to do what they are saying? Does everything feel thought-out and cohesive? If this is a yes too, then I’ll give it a thumbs up for another read. Chances are, any submission you send out will have multiple eyes on it before it is given a final yes. Of course, if any of the above questions end in a no, that’s usually a pass for me.
As with anything we write, nonfiction book proposals take time, intensive thought, and lots and lots of editing. Even if the book isn’t written, you need to have a clear vision of what the book will be and how you will write it. Book proposals can also be a great way to secure an advance that helps support research or travel needed to complete the project, and/or to create more time to write. And as someone who does freelance work, an advance means I have to work a little less to make ends meet.
Jane Friedman offers some amazing advice on how to develop a book proposal, including a free, downloadable template that you can use (we used this exact template for our anthology proposal!).
The last thing I’ll say is that, more so than purchasing a completed work, offering based on a proposal is inherently a bit risky for editors (and even for agents, if authors are querying with it). Knowing this, do your due diligence as the author to make the book proposal as polished, convincing, and complete as possible. And know that the most important part is you: your writing, your vision, and the story you want to tell.
Justine Payton is an MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina Wilmington where she is a recipient of the Philip Gerard Graduate Fellowship and the Bernice Kert Fellowship in Creative Writing. She has been published or has work forthcoming in the Bellevue Literary Review, Terrain.org, Isele Magazine, CALYX Journal, The Masters Review, and others. She is the managing editor of ONLY POEMS, an editor for Ecotone, and a guest editor for The Masters Review and CRAFT. Currently, Justine is at work on an anthology surrounding women's gynecological health and a memoir.
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20 Agents Looking for Memoirs and Narrative Nonfiction
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