Writing a Proposal and Sample Chapter also has other advantages.
Sometimes the publisher may like your ideas, but not your approach to writing the book.
Obviously, publishers feel more comfortable about suggesting you make basic changes in your book when you've only written a few pages, instead of an entire manuscript.
Even when no publisher makes an immediate offer on your book, an intelligent reading of the rejection letters may provide you with valuable clues about how to re-slant or reframe the material so that it will sell on subsequent submissions.
Two chances at success.
This system gives you two chances at the brass ring.
Publishers are always willing to look at a revised book Proposal.
Although few outside the publishing industry know it, many major bestsellers only became bestsellers the second time around.
The first time they were submitted, these books were rejected by all the major publishers.
But their savvy authors paid careful attention to the critiques they received, and made extensive revisions with them in mind.
Naturally, the publishers now found those same books irresistible, because the authors' Proposals had been redesigned to reflect exactly the kind of book the publisher wanted.
Helps publishers plan publishing schedules.
Publishers find this system works in their favor, too.
It offers them a chance to contribute their suggestions for strengthening your manuscript during its formative stages.
It also allows them to plan what books they will be publishing over the next few years.
Meanwhile, the six months or a year you spend writing your book after the publisher has contracted it will give its staff sufficient time to develop effective marketing and promotion plans.
Those plans must be in place three to six months prior to publication.
That is the lead time needed for the publisher's marketing division to sell your book to stores, as well as for print and electronic media to schedule reviews of it and interviews with you.
Helps you plan the best strategy for writing your book.
Writing a Proposal for your book has a final advantage.
It gives you the opportunity, and framework, for focusing in depth on almost every element of your book before you actually start writing the book itself.
In creating the major parts of a Proposal, you will learn how to: * Precisely define your theme and audience * Create a "bestseller title" * Give your book irresistible reader (and sales) appeal * Develop a bestselling style * Find the best structure for your book, and the individual chapters and subsections * Present yourself as an expert whom publishers and the media will clamor to present.