A proposal is usually the first document authors generate to communicate their ideas about their proposed project. However, is a book proposal necessary for everyone? That depends.

From my point of view, as an editor who primarily works on scholarly book projects, book proposals serve two purposes. First, they are a communication device between an author and myself. Second, a proposal is one part of a packet of material that I may send out for peer review. If this material is reviewed positively, then I may be able to offer the author an advance contract. (At Illinois, an advance contract is a contract in advance of the final manuscript. It signals that we need to do another round of peer review before the project is published. While final approval of the project hinges on this review, the author will not get a second version of the contract; the process is simply stipulated in the contract terms. I will probably write a whole post about this!)

As a communication device between the author and editor, a proposal is always useful because editors get answers to the questions they most want to know: what is the project arguing? Where is the project intervening? What disciplines does it contribute to? Who is the audience? What is the structure? What is the format? How long will it take the author to complete? From a proposal, I can usually determine if a project fits with what I am looking to publish, and if all the elements the author discusses are in alignment with one another. It may also prompt questions that I can discuss with the author.

At the same time, a proposal is not the only way that authors can communicate this information. I talk with authors at conferences and via Zoom, and we often talk out these questions in real time. It is usually the second purpose of a proposal that determines if, at this point, I ask for one.

In my experience, peer review for book proposals (and usually one or two sample chapters) works best for experienced writers. On top of all the questions that we ask peer reviewers about the contents of proposals, what reviewers seem to want most of all in recommending a proposed work is proof of concept. For better or worse, most reviewers seem more comfortable recommending work by experienced writers who have proven they can write a book. As such, I usually send proposals and sample chapters out for review for second and subsequent books, or for collections edited by experienced scholars. For first books, I usually wait for a full manuscript before I query peer reviewers.

Is this an absolute? No. Do I ever send out proposals for first books? Yes. Sometimes I do this because the author has written a dissertation that they want to revise into a first book, but they are looking at making substantial changes and they want feedback from scholars before they do all that work. Sometimes I do this because the project is competitive, the proposal is in good shape, and the potential positives outweigh the potential negatives. I mostly make decisions like this in consultation with the author, the series editors (if there are any), and my own sense of the project.

Even if an author plans to start peer review with a full manuscript, a proposal can still be a useful tool. While some authors may really like talking about a potential project with an editor, they may work better when they get details down on paper, either to get feedback from an editor, or to work out the project for themselves. Below, I will go through the typical aspects of a book proposal, why these sections may be useful to complete, and what I am looking for when I read proposals. If you are looking for more resources on writing scholarly book proposals, I highly recommend The Book Proposal Book: A Guide for Scholarly Authors by Laura Portwood-Stacer.

Book Description
This is often the first component of your proposal, where you essentially introduce the book. But, much like a book’s introduction, you might want to write it last (or revise it last) in light of the other components you put together. In my experience, the best descriptions start with an interesting hook, something that grabs the reader’s attention and propels them forward. Then they include the book’s argument, its intervention and contribution, its methods, and its overall trajectory.

The argument is where things often go wrong in my readings. Descriptions will tell me that the project will show, illustrate, describe, narrate… But they often leave out what the project argues! The best advice that I have for authors is to make sure that their argument or thesis statement is near the top of their description, and make sure it is framed as an argument. If I can’t find an argument, the project often comes off as wishy-washy, or unsure of itself. If a description has an argument, I might question it, but I will likely keep reading because I want to see how the author develops it. (Likewise, I recommend against the conditional. “Will argue” is not as strong as “argues.” I want to know what your work does!)

Also in the description, authors should articulate the conversation that their work contributes to. In this space, I prefer work that has a positive focus. I would rather know what this work is doing, and who they are in conversation with, rather than who hasn’t covered this topic. I acknowledge this might be a personal preference.

I like to understand the methods of a project from the beginning, so it helps if a description includes some details on this. For some scholars, this might seem obvious; they’re a historian, and they use archives. However, it can be helpful to go a bit deeper than that. Even if you are using archives, which archives? Do they reside in a place, or did you have to organize them? Is it an archive that many have worked in, or are you the first scholar with access? If you are combining methods, it can be helpful to understand how they work together or complement each other, and if you are using unique methods for the particular project, it can be helpful to know early on why you chose those.

Writing a description will help you formulate a short pitch for your book and drill down to your main argument. If you notice discrepancies between the description and what you are really doing within the manuscript, these summaries can also help you revise or readjust.

Chapter Summaries
I think of books as little trees, where the overall book and its argument are the trunk, and each chapter and its argument is a branch. Laura Portwood-Stacer describes the book as an umbrella with an overarching argument, under which fits each chapter. No matter your metaphor, the main idea is that your book should have one main argument, and each chapter should have its own smaller argument that works underneath that. That is, chapters are not merely topical; they have a purpose and a contribution to the whole. This is the basis for a successful chapter summary. Much like a book description, if your chapter summaries don’t articulate arguments, I will have a hard time understanding your project.

Likewise, your chapter summaries should also help the reader understand the book’s overall structure and why you chose that. For a historical study with a chronological structure, this may be obvious and easy to incorporate. However, if you have an unusual structure, you might want to spend a little extra time explaining that.

Writing chapter summaries can help you find the trajectory, scope, and organization for your book. You might start out thinking you are telling a chronological story, but you realize that doesn’t track with the way you are thinking about organizing the chapters. It will also help you break down bits of your project into manageable chunks, and make sure those chunks are tied closely to the whole. If they aren’t, you might break them off into later projects or articles.

Audience and Market
This is the space where you articulate who you are writing for and who you imagine will buy your book. This can be a good place to indicate if you think the book has special potential for libraries or course adoption, and be specific about why you think so.

I sometimes see proposals that indicate “general audience” or “anyone.” This is a red flag for me, and in my experience also for my colleagues in marketing. An audience of “anyone” actually makes it difficult to market the book because the audience is too large and amorphous to target effectively. I publish primarily scholarly titles, so this can be especially problematic for books I acquire, which need to speak to specific audiences in, for example, labor history or Mormon studies.

On the flip side, I often publish inter- or multi-disciplinary books, which can have multiple audiences. However, it is helpful if an author can articulate their main audience. If you are a labor historian writing about educators in New York (see Para Power by Nick Juravich), are you primarily engaging with the historiography of labor? Or education? Or New York state? It is possible that all three audiences will be interested, and that people from each of those will buy the book. But usually you can’t write primarily for more than one or two of those, in order to have a book that is usefully constrained (and not painfully long!).

It also helps if you can articulate your association with these audiences. Do you attend their conferences? Do you engage with them on social media? Are you the editor of a journal in the field? This will also help drill down to your primary audience.

Writing about audience will help guide how you write the book. If you are writing your first book, which you plan to use to get a job or secure tenure, then you’ll realize you need to be in conversation with other scholars and use a more authoritative, expert tone. If you are a tenured professor writing your third book, or an independent scholar, then you might realize that you can write toward a larger audience because you don’t have the same kinds of constraints. This might also affect the presses you end up querying.

Comp Titles
Related to audience, these are comparable or competing titles for your book. Basically, if your book were on a bookshelf, what would be around it? If your book was on a syllabus, what else would be assigned? This is helpful because it lets the editor (and their marketing department) know who is working in the space, and who you see as working in the space.

At the same time, much like audience and market, sometimes answers can be problematically vague. Sometimes authors say their book has no comps because it is so unique. This is not true; all books have comps. You might be writing the first biography of a person, but your book is still in conversation with others: other biographies, other books about that time period or place, other books that delve into similar issues. If you can’t find any comps at all, I would worry that the topic is too narrow. 

On the other hand, mismatched comps are a problem too, such as when a proposal only includes comps published by trade presses, like Random House. This signals to me that the author and I might not have the same ideas about audience. Again, I work primarily in scholarly fields, and my books have primarily scholarly audiences. This isn’t to say that they can’t cross over to general readers with specific interests, but that is not (usually) their primary purpose.

Writing about comp titles will help you understand the other scholars and works you are in conversation with. Again, no scholarly conversation happens in a bubble. Most people are writing because they saw a hole in the literature or an article sparked an idea for further research. This also gives you an opportunity to look at the presses who published these comps, and make sure you are in line in terms of audience.

Format or Specs
You should plan to include a preliminary word count in your proposal, including frontmatter, chapters, notes, appendices, and so on (essentially all the textual material that will appear in your published book minus the index, which will come during production). We use word counts because this helps us estimate page count in our software, which helps us estimate costs. Your word count in a proposal doesn’t have to be exact, but it should be in the ballpark. If you write that your book will be 100,000 words and it is 105,000, or 95,000, that is to be expected. However, if it ends up being 50,000 words, or 200,000, that is more problematic. Start by estimating the word counts for chapters, and expand out for other material.

Include details about images, how many you plan on, and if you need color or black-and-white. It is helpful to know if your work relies on these images or if they are more illustrative in nature. Keep in mind that different presses will have different capacities for color printing, or the numbers of illustrations that they allow in general. Like longer word counts, more illustrations means more material and higher costs.

Also list a timeline for your project. If you’ve already completed the manuscript, this is helpful to know because the editor might request it. If you haven’t, it’s helpful to get a ballpark understanding of your timeline. Are you up for tenure and you need to finish this as soon as possible? Or are you planning for your sabbatical next year, during which you plan to draft the manuscript? We understand that these things can change, but having an idea in mind is helpful as editors balance the competing priorities of various authors.

Writing about format and specs early on can help you better plan the work that goes into your project. Writing is only part of that work. If you want to include 50 images in your manuscript, then you will need to plan time to track down rightsholders and obtain permission for those images, along with high resolution image files. This will also ensure that you and your editor are on the same page in terms of timeline. If you need a quick turnaround for a tenure clock, your editor will know they need to prioritize your project (or let you know that the timeline isn’t feasible). Knowing this early on is the best way to plan.

Background
A section like this can help you explain any additional information about the book. For example, if it originated as a dissertation, that is helpful to know here. You should also discuss any revisions that you have made or plan to make. If the project had any specific origins that might be useful for the editor to know, you might discuss that here too. For example, did you discover a treasure trove of documents no one has used until now? Were you able to interview a specific group that hasn’t been considered? Many times these aspects will come out in other ways throughout the proposal, but if not, this is a good place for that, as it may spark ideas for the editor and their colleagues.

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