The Copyeditor's Desk

Simplest answer: Write nonfiction.

Yah, I know: you want to write the Great Novel of the Western World. You want people to read your poetry.

The GNotWW has already been written, and it probably can’t find a publisher. And everyone on the planet wants people to read their poetry…but they don’t want to read anyone else’s.

Publishing is a business. Publishers buy what readers will read. Just now readers are reading nonfiction and genre novels. Precious few genre novels will ever make GNotWW; it’s difficult to get one published (though less so than “mainstream” or literary novels); and when you do, you’ll be lucky if you earn 10 grand on the thing. Ten thousand dollars for a year’s worth of work is not worth the effort. Even if you can crank one in six months, that still gives you a grandiose gross income of $20,000 a year. You can’t live on that. Well, you can, but no one in her right mind would want to.

Nonfiction works have the advantage of being marketable without the aid of an agent. If you have a subject—any subject—that’s useful or interesting to a reasonably large coterie of readers, you can find a publisher on  your own. Or you may be able to self-publish and sell enough of them to make it worth your while. One guy who realized he could write about maintaining his RV discovered he could make a ton of money by marketing a book on that subject through Amazon.com.

Yah, I know: crass. But my dears, business is crass. And publishing is a business.

You can find subjects that make you feel less whorish than some. A friend of mine, for example, a high-school teacher who took up magazine writing as a hobby, wrote a book on how to help your teenager succeed in high school. It was a subject that was right under her  nose: when you write about something related to your job, you are an expert on it. And anything you write that will help people in their lives will sell.

Later she went on to write YA novels. Not GNotWWs, but at least she can say she’s a novelist now.

So, look around you. What do you know, what do you do, what can you share that can make someone else’s life better? There’s your first subject.

My second published book (the first was a rewrite of my dissertation) was a trade book for Columbia, The Essential Feature. It simply described what I did for a living (I was writing for magazines at the time). The target audience was the kind of person who takes community college courses in feature writing out of a desire to become a writer with a capital W. It was not designed for journalism majors, but for people with a laptop on the kitchen table.

You’re listening? Target your book tightly for a specific reader. Tell that person something that matters for him or her.

Visualize the person in your mind and address that reader. Do not write for yourself. Do not write about yourself, except insofar as some experience you’ve had can demonstrably be useful for the reader. Writing is not an ego trip. It’s a business.

Next: Organize your content efficiently and intelligently. With the reader in mind, present the subject in a way he or she can understand easily and access quickly. Map out a rough table of contents before you start writing. You can always change this as you go, but it will serve as a guideline to keep you going in the right general direction from the outset.

Write tight! Get yourself a copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. Read it. Memorize it. Internalize it. Use it!!!!!

When you have a draft, revise and rewrite until you have clean copy that you feel confident actually will work for your target reader.

Edit your  manuscript. Produce clean, grammatically correct, double-spaced copy with correct spelling and consistent style throughout. Follow Chicago style for book manuscripts and Associated Press style for magazine and newspaper copy.

Find a publisher. We’re talking about books here: for periodicals, you must have a contract before you begin writing. Here’s how you find a publisher for a nonfiction book:

1. Go to the library and get a reference worked called Literary Marketplace (LMP). This book, the bible of the American book publishing industry, indexes publishers by the subjects that they publish. It also gives the names and addresses of the relevant editors.

2. Make a list of subject headings and genres relevant to the book you’re writing. For example, if you are writing a book on how to beat alcoholism, look up subjects such as “self-help,” “addiction,” “recovery,” “psychology,” and the like. If you’re writing on how to sew quilts, look up “crafts,” “interior design,” “fabric art,” and such.

3. Look up publishers that say they’re publishing in those subjects and genres. Carefully note down

a. the acquisitions editor’s name (look for titles such as “managing editor,” “nonfiction editor,” or anything that appears relevant to what you’re doing);
b. the person’s correct title;
c. the publisher’s complete address, including the zip code; and
d. the publisher’s telephone number, FAX, website URL, and e-mail address.

4. Double-check to be certain you have spelled all of these things right! The fastest way to put off an editor is to misspell his or her name. The second fastest way is to get the person’s title wrong.

5. Compile a list containing this information for ten or twelve publishers.

6. Write a proposal package (more about which below).

7. Write a cover letter to go with the proposal. Customize it for the first six publishers on your list (i.e., address it to the correct editor and adjust whatever you say in the first paragraph to target that publisher).

8. Mail out a half-dozen proposals at once. (Yah, I know: publishers hate that. Writers hate getting screwed, too.)

9. As each rejection comes in, send another proposal to the next publisher on your list. Always keep your proposal in circulation!

10. In the unlikely event that you go through the whole list without selling your book proposal, go back to the library compile a list of another dozen potential publishers, and repeat the process.

Sooner or later you will find someone who will publish your book. If you don’t, then it’s time to come up with some other subject.

What is a book proposal and how do you write it?

A nonfiction book proposal is simply a description of what you’re writing plus an argument for why it should be published. It consists of these elements:

1. a cover letter stating what the book is about, who will read it and why, what similar works are on the market, and who you are and why you are so eminently qualified to write it;

2. a table of contents;

3. a detailed outline of the book’s contents (i.e., what’s in each chapter); and

4. three sample chapters, or an introduction and two sample chapters.

As you can see, the beauty of this for the wretch who dreams of making a living as a writer is that you need not have completed the book before you present it to publishers. A proposal is just that: a proposal. Once you have a running head start on your  manuscript, you’re ready to start marketing it. If you’re even moderately successful, you should land at least a small advance that will help support you while you’re writing.

Unless you stumble upon a very hot topic, as a beginning writer you can’t expect much in the way of an advance. Once you have a couple of books in print, though, you should be able to command $10,000 or $20,000 for a salable proposal. Maybe.

If you want to earn any more than that—or sell future books to publishers—you’ll need to do most of the marketing yourself. That’s another story.

Just remember: Publishing isn’t art. Publishing is a business.

–vh

Related posts:

• Starting Out as a Freelance Editor
• Five Great Books (+ one) for Wanna-be Authors
• Manuscripts: Saving Time and Money, 1

Tags: publishing, writing

This entry was posted on Friday, December 5th, 2008 at 3:59 pm and is filed under careers, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.