Marketing Your Best Seller 79 favorite author, have a database of over 2 million raving fans who want to read everything you write. When you release a new book, you o昀昀er this list. Start with perhaps 200,000 copies in immediate sales at roughly $20 a copy. 吀栀at’s a gross of $4 million. Publishers will gladly give a million- dollar advance against 昀椀rst sales for those kind of results. Following the bio is the table of contents for the pro- posed book. Remember, a clear, well- organized table of contents has always been vitally important and always will be! As an extension of the table of contents, the proposal provides one- paragraph summaries of each chapter. 吀栀ere are also at least two complete chapters, written just as they would appear in the 昀椀nalized book. Which chap- ters are included? 吀栀e chapters the authors believe to be the strongest in terms of getting a publisher to buy their project. Finally, the author provides his or her analysis of the market for the book. Which highly successful books are similar to this book? (When we were writing ASK!, because the 昀椀rst chapter was a parable, we compared it with 吀栀e Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, which had sold over 150 million copies over twenty- 昀椀ve years after being mul- tiply rejected.) How can this new book connect with the same audience? Why will the book be even bigger than the biggest of the big?