they all want to follow a leader. So if your book isn’t falling into an obvious positioning slot, then give them a bunch of examples of books just like it that have succeeded. ADVANCE PRAISE/INFLUENCER QUOTES Only use this if you have some really good quotes here. This section is perfect if you’re one of those people who have a ton of famous and noteworthy friends ready to go to bat for you, but no one in the general public knows who you are. Otherwise, you can skip this. TARGET AUDIENCES The best way to talk about target audiences is in the narrative of the Overview, or in the marketing plan. That being said, I see lots of book proposals with this in there. I don’t think it matters, but obviously some agents do. Put it in if you want, but I’ve never used it. EXAMPLES OF SUCCESSFUL BOOK PROPOSALS If you look on the internet, you will have a very hard time finding actual book proposals. I don’t know why people won’t post these, but it gets back to what I was talking about with elitism in publishing. Below are some examples of real book proposals that have actually sold to publishers. As you can see, not all of them are the same, and some even violate the rules I am giving you. Like I told you, this is a fluid thing with many “unwritten” rules, and in spaces like that, you can break those rules at times and in certain cases, but usually that doesn’t work well. To see examples and templates, go here: https://scribewriting. com/book-proposal-template/ or Google “Book Proposal Tem- plate Scribe.” 358 · ThE SCriBE METhOD