Karma and Book Proposals

I’ve started sending pitch letters out to my target literary agents, most of whom are so inundated that they take a while to reply. So I’m in waiting mode at the moment. That does leave me free to get back to my first love, reading. I’ve got a nice stack of selections, including a brand spanking new memoir I listed in the Competitive Titles section of my book proposal: Wendy Burden’s Dead End Gene Pool, about growing up as a Vanderbilt heiress.

Writing a nonfiction book proposal is in essence preparing a business plan for your book idea. I’m used to doing competitive analyses as part of my freelance work for investment bank clients, so I enjoyed doing that section of my book proposal. The idea is to research the field and list a number of recent titles similar to your book, along with a brief description of each (and the ways your proposed book differs). It’s actually a good thing if there are current bestsellers or notable books in your field, because this shows an established market.

So that’s (in brief) the business side of book proposals. What I’m doing now is working on what I’ll call the Karmic side. I decided I should support every author I listed in my pitch letters or book proposal by buying his or her books. This means that, to my delight, in addition to picking up Wendy Burden’s memoir, I’m reading Southern humorist Celia Rivenbark’s essays for the first time. (How did I not discover her before?!)  The chapter titles in her second book, We’re Just Like You, Only Prettier, made me laugh aloud, to wit: "SUVs Eat the Ozone? Hey, We All Gotta Eat Something and I Got Twenty-Seven Cup Holders." 

Of course, were I to use similar titles, they would be along the lines of, “I’m Glad You Can Sleep on the Crowded Blue Line Train, but Can You Please Not Drool On My Shoulder?” Followed closely by, “And Here’s Some Deodorant. You May Keep It. Really, My Treat.”)