A Personal Blog
Writing
Want to Help Research?
Apr 25th
I’m wondering if anyone has a passion for research, as well as one for blogging. I need someone who can help look up facts, quotes, etc. Obviously you’ll get full credit in the book. I’m just feeling rather swamped and would love a little help. Drop me an email if you’re interested!
Who Should Write the Forward to My Book?
Apr 21st
Interesting question.
The basic rule of forwards is “get the most high profile person in your target market possible”. But, for a business book on blogging, who would that be?
Shel and Robert have nailed Tom Peters, which is very cool.
How about Bob Lutz? Rupert Murdoch?
Who would be a great person to headline this book? Does anyone have any contacts who would be perfect for this? I’d really love to see this news spread around and get some real community feedback on this.
My Book Proposal
Apr 19th
In recent weeks, I’ve helped numerous author and potential author friends by sending them my proposal for my upcoming book. Not because I feel that mine is ideal or anything. More like because the “where to start” question is a big one. In fact, the proposal has helped 2 other authors land deals. Obviously I can take very little credit for that, since a good proposal is like a good resume: it only helps what is already there shine through.
I’ve decided to make my proposal publicly available in order to help anyone who may need it. I won’t say it’s perfect. I won’t even say it’s better than the one you’ve written. Yes, I spent about 20 hours on it. And, yes, it’s now out of date. If you are looking for a structure for a proposal, though, there are many worse examples available.
Here is the proposal. Please use and distribute wisely (always attribute when you distribute).
Once again, I can’t make any warranties about this. Ultimately, getting a book published is more work than I’d ever imagined. Doing the proposal right is a pain in the ass. Having to do several is even worse. And even after you’ve gotten someone to pick up your book, it is still hundreds of hours of work to finish it.
If you really want to write a book, count the cost. Hopefully seeing this fully done proposal will help both with writing yours and realizing that even after you’ve gotten through this, you haven’t even finished 1% of the work necessary to write your book.
Good luck in your travels. And feel free to improve on this if you’d like. I’m happy to update it periodically based on comments from readers, authors, editors, publishers and agents.
