You see, the editor is putting their reputation and their job at stake every time they make an offer to an author. If they sign a lot of authors whose books sell well, they will be respected and secure in their job. If they don’t, they won’t. Before the internet and Amazon, editors used to be able to invest smaller amounts of money in a lot of authors, and see who could develop an audience organically. This is because there was little competition in book publishing, so it was easy to make money. But once anyone could self-publish and everyone had access to every book ever published, the game changed. Traditional pub- lishers saw most of their easy profits siphoned away, and they were forced to scale down their publishing and focus only on the “big hit” books. What this means for you is one thing: Your book proposal must convince the editor and publisher that you have tens of thousands of people waiting to buy your book. Many authors make the mistake of trying to argue that the potential market for the book is huge. That may even be true, but that’s not how editors look at it. Without an established platform, without a confirmed set of readers ready to buy the book, the risk for a tra- ditional publisher is usually too high. I’m not just saying this. Book agent Byrd Leavell says this (he’s repped several #1 New York Times bestselling authors who have sold tens of millions of books): Publishers aren’t buying anything that doesn’t come with a built-in audience that is waiting to buy it. They don’t take risks anymore, they don’t gamble on authors, they only want sure things. I won’t even take an author out unless they have an audience that can guarantee 20k pre-sales to them. hOW TO WriTE A NONfiCTiON BOOk PrOPOSAl (WiTh TEMPlATE) · 355