Nonfiction Book Proposal is a 4-week class, which includes a mixture of lectures and book proposal assignments. It’s for beginners or anyone who wants a refresher. Farther down, you can view a syllabus for this course.
Perhaps you’re near completion of a nonfiction book. Or perhaps you’ve just hatched an idea or begun roughing out a draft. Before you proceed further, you should know…
Most nonfiction books are sold to publishing houses on the basis of a proposal—a 20 to 40-page document that pitches the book’s content and marketability and is supplemented by sample chapters. Agents and editors don’t want to see the finished book. They want to see the proposal.
Here you will learn everything you need to know about nonfiction book proposals and, to focus your concept, you’ll write (and refine) your book’s catalogue copy—a brief description that reveals the book’s essence. All under the guidance of an established literary agent.
Notes:
- This course deals with all kinds of nonfiction books. (Memoirs, however, are sometimes sold with proposals, and sometimes sold after the complete work is written. Often it’s best to write the complete memoir, but this course can help you discern the scope and marketability of your memoir.)
- After this course, you can get one-on-one help through Nonfiction Book Proposal Doctoring.
- You might also consider How to Get Published, but Nonfiction Book Proposal is a good place to start for nonfiction writers.
This course gives you a firm grounding in the basics of creating a nonfiction book proposal, and helps you focus a concept for a nonfiction book. Course components:
- Lectures
- Writing and receiving feedback on catalogue copy for your book (each student presenting work two times)
Syllabus
- Week 1
- Focusing Your Idea: Defining your book. What is a book proposal? Catalogue copy—angle, credentials, excitement. Catalogue copy analyzed. Titles.
- Week 2
- Anatomy of a Proposal: Analysis of the parts of a book proposal—Overview, Market, Competition, Promotion, Author, Details, Chapter Outline, Sample Chapters. (Complete book proposals are given to students.)
- Week 3
- Creating Your Proposal: Advice on handling the parts of a book proposal—Overview, Market, Competition, Promotion, Author, Details, Chapter Outline, Sample Chapters.
- Week 4
- The Submission Process: The steps from idea to publication. Understanding publishing houses, editors, and agents. Should you approach agents or editors first? Researching the right agents and editors for your book. What to send, how to send it. Query letters. Response. Rejection. Contracts. Self-publishing.
Note: Content may vary among individual classes.
About
- The Online classes bring students from all over the globe to Gotham—New York City’s most famous writing school.
- The Online classes happen asynchronously—not in “real time.” You can participate in class any time, day or night, but the classes advance week-by-week, and certain things should be accomplished within that week-long session.
- You can take an Online writing class from anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection. The majority of our Online students are located in the U.S. but we also draw students from practically every country in the world.
- Tech support will be available.
- Aside from the convenience of time and location, you have a record of everything that transpires in class, which you can print out and keep for future reference. (The material is text and image, not video.)
