PhD2Published

Sadly this is the last instalment of BubbleCow’s guide to writing a great academic book proposal.

Sniff, sniff!

Now, we’ve looked at pitching and writing, but what about the essential review process which forms a large part of getting your academic book in print? Well, of course, the fact is, this won’t happen until after you’ve hooked the editor with your dazzling query letter, proposal and sample chapters, but is there anything you can do at the start to help with this process?

Sure there is!  Continue Reading »

Welcome to penultimate post in the series that is: The BubbleCow Guide to Academic Book Pitching. Let’s review where we’re at.

In Part I we looked at what a book pitch needs to do and why, and did a bit of homework. Then, in Part II we learnt how to write the query or covering letter as preview of what we’ve got to offer. In Part III we focused on how to write a synopsis of the book, and in Part IV we tackled the marketing section by identifying our book’s buyers and the books that have established its market.

A guide like this can never be comprehensive, but if you’ve worked through all the tasks, you should be well on your way to writing your proposal and query letter and getting it right. Again, I can’t emphasise enough how important it is to be clear, spell everything correctly and READ THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES CAREFULLY FOR EVERY PITCH YOU MAKE AND STICK TO THEM LIKE GLUE!  Continue Reading »

This is the third instalment of BubbleCow advice on crafting academic book proposals. So far we have looked at your query letter as a sales document and examined its structure. Now we turn our attention to the tricky subject of the pitch itself and in this post, the synopsis.

Although submission guidelines will vary from publisher to publisher, with some asking you to fill out an ‘author questionnaire’ and others asking for your CV, an indication of the intended market for the book, comparable texts and proposed peer reviewers, a tricky section of the pitch they will all want to see is the synopsis of the book.

The synopsis is perhaps one of the most commonly misunderstood sections of the book proposal. Writers who can produce pages of elegant prose often go weak at the knees at the simple mention of a synopsis.  Continue Reading »