3. Shop the book proposal around to publishers (through the agent). 4. Have a publisher make you an offer based on your proposal and pitch. 5. Negotiate and accept that offer. That seems like a lot, but in some cases, it can be easy. A book pub- lisher’s decision hinges on one simple fact: do you have an existing audience that is waiting to buy a lot of copies of your book? If you do have a big audience—people who already follow you in some form, like an email list, or social media, or something like that—most of that will be doable, if not easy. Usually publishers will need to be able to see a clear path to 25k book sales in the first month to even consider a book deal for an author. If you do not have an existing audience that is ready to buy your book, then it is nearly impossible to get a traditional book deal. The reason for this is because traditional publishers are terrible at selling and marketing books, and they now rely almost exclu- sively on authors to do this for them. 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 more than 10 million nonfiction books): Publishers aren’t buying anything that doesn’t come with a built-in audience that will 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 they can guarantee 25k pre- sales to. If you don’t have a built-in audience—people who follow you and are used to buying things from you before—then you have almost no shot at getting a deal. 318 · ThE SCriBE METhOD