Today on her blog, literary agent Rachelle Gardner posted the elements of a book proposal, at least how their agency wants to see them. While different agencies vary slightly, the elements Rachelle posted are pretty much universal. Every agent wants to see this information in a proposal before they will consider your book or send it on to an editor.
What troubles me most about the proposal is this statement, which she says is needed in both non-fiction and fiction proposals.
Author marketing: This is where you’ll talk about your platform. How are YOU able to reach your target audience to market your book? This is NOT the place for expressing your “willingness” to participate in marketing, or your “great ideas” for marketing. This is the place to tell what you’ve already done, what contacts you already have, and what plans you’ve already made to help market your book. A list of speaking engagements already booked is great; radio or television programs you’re scheduled to appear on or have in the past; a newsletter you’re already sending out regularly; a blog that gets an impressive number of daily hits. Include specific blog stats (monthly unique visitors, monthly pageviews), number of Twitter followers and number of Facebook fans/friends.
This is what bugs me most about trying to be published through a regular, royalty paying print publisher. “Speaking engagements already booked”? Really? What am I supposed to say? “I have this great book, and if it is every accepted by a publisher, it will be in bookstores in 24 months.” The audience would laugh me off the stage. Same thing for radio, double-same for television.
I just don’t get this idea that you must have a speaking platform in order to get a book published. Who will book someone to speak if they don’t have a book published? If I were scheduling speakers for some meeting, say a quarterly men’s meeting at a large church, if I had the choice to book a published author to speak or a wannabe author, which one would I choose? The published author, of course. Who in their right mind wants to spend an evening listening to someone who so far hasn’t been able to get published? This seems exactly backwards to me.
But maybe it’s possible with those civic clubs that meet weekly—the Kiwanis, Lions, Civitians, and probably half a dozen others. They need so many speakers that maybe they will take about anyone. But when I call the volunteer with the organization and ask to speak before the club, what do I say? “I’m trying to get published, but have to have speaking engagements lined up before any publisher will even talk with me. Want me to speak to your group?”
Now obviously, that’s not how I should go about it. For my book Documenting America, I should say something like, “May I speak to your club on a unique way to study USA history? It’s this….” If the concept is compelling, maybe the Kiwanis club will schedule me. There’s 17 Kiwanis clubs in our two county area, and probably five times that number for all the civic clubs put together. Is it possible I could speak to them all about a book not published?
I’m struggling with this.
She’s doing two things: weeding out less than committed authors and getting committed ones to do some of her work (well, her company’s work) for her. Gives her control of the situation as well. The author who can manage his own promotion only needs half of her expertise. Don’t struggle with it; recognize it for the power game it is. It’s a tough business.
Maybe, Gary. She responded to me, saying “nobody is saying you should be a speaker. For some non-fiction topics, it’s a no-brainer to be a speaker. For others, and for fiction, it often doesn’t make sense. You have to decide if you’re a speaker or not.
“That said, plenty of people have speaking careers before they’re published authors. They’re on the “motivational speaking” circuit or on the “inspirational speaking” circuit or perhaps, like you said, they speak at churches and retreats. Lots of people have expertise on a topic prior to writing books.”
So that’s a backing-off of sorts. Possibly her original post should have said, “If you have speaking engagements already booked put it in the proposal, but if you don’t don’t sweat it.”
I don’t know. It still seems to me that people are less likely to come out for an unpublished speaker than a published one. Therefore people are less likely to book unpublished speakers than published ones.