They are counterintuitive. They are illogical. And they are, quite honestly, a pain in the ass to write. I know this because I’ve written more than 20 book proposals that have sold to publishers at prices ranging from $150k on the low end to $2 million on the high end—and this chapter walks you exactly how to write your own (if it makes sense for you). WHAT IS A BOOK PROPOSAL? Think of a book proposal as a business plan for your book. It has one purpose: to convince a traditional publisher to give you money to write the book. When you self-publish, you don’t need to write a book proposal. To work with a traditional publisher, you are in effect asking them to invest a lot of money into your book, and a book proposal is the document that will convince them to do that. If you write a great proposal—one that convinces the publisher that your book idea, content, and marketing plan have a serious chance of commercial success—the publisher will make a monetary offer to you as an advance against royalties, and buy the rights to publish the book (and own the book and profits as well). WHY DO PUBLISHERS WANT BOOK PROPOSALS? The most common question I get from new authors is something along the lines of, “Can’t I just write it first? Don’t they just want to see the book?” That’s a very logical question. In theory, it would make total sense to do that. But in practice, it doesn’t work like that. Submitting an already writ- ten nonfiction book as a proposal is a great way to almost guarantee you will not get a book deal. 350 · ThE SCriBE METhOD