Speaker - June 2009

write a 60-page book proposal,” cautions Horn. “Literary agents receive about a hundred book proposals a week! Agents and editors will put yours aside until they have time to look at it.”

Every word in your pitch must earn its keep, says Horn. If there is a table of contents, it must tell and sell with compelling chapter titles. If it’s clever, it just may cinch the book deal.

To increase the chances of your book idea being accepted, Horn recommends a two-page pitch that addresses the A-T-M triangle:

A (author platform). National visibility can turn even a pet into an author. Take, for example, Paris Hilton’s dog, Tinkerbell, who sealed a six-figure book deal.

t (title and topic). The title must raise eyebrows and be clever; for example:

>Be a Shortcut: The Secret Fast Track to Business Success, by Scott Halford, CSP

>I Used to Miss Him… But My Aim’s Improving: Not Your Ordinary Break-up Guide, and Better Off Wed? Fling to Ring: How to Know Which Finger to Give Him, by Alison James

> This Is Not the Life I Ordered: 50 Ways to Keep Your Head Above Water When Life Keeps Dragging You Down, by Deborah Collins Stephens, Michealene Cristini Risley, Jackie Speier and Jan Yanehiro

Horn strongly advises that you get the domain name for your book title. “For $8.95 on GoDaddy, you can create a business empire,” Horn says.

M (marketing). Horn disagrees with Woody Allen, who said that 80 percent of success in life is just “showing up.” It’s showing up first. Why are you the first to introduce a book on this topic? Why are all of the other books outdated? In your two-page pitch, show how you’re going to “zig” instead of “zag.” Why will this book break out instead of blend in?

The publisher wants to know how you plan to market your book, but don’t make promises you can’t keep. “You must be pragmatic and deliverable,” Horn says. “Who will endorse your book? List your speaking appearances. Have you ever appeared on TV? Will you market via the Web

and a search engine-optimized Web site?”

According to Horn, you can succinctly summarize your marketing strategy by stating: “The author will partner with the publisher and take entrepreneurial responsibility for promoting the book in the years following publication.”

ORVEL RAY WILSON, CSP

BOOKS: Guerrilla Marketing series

GOLDEN NUGGETS: concentrate on the marketing section, and format your proposal correctly.

When author, trainer and keynoter Orvel Ray Wilson collaborated on his first book with Jay Conrad Levinson in 1989, the “Guerrilla” name was already in place. Their book, titled Guerrilla Selling, “took off like a rocket sled,” according to Wilson. Since then, the legendary Guerrilla book series has launched the following titles: Guerrilla Selling, Guerrilla Marketing, and Guerrilla Negotiating. There are 50 titles in 41 languages, and 20 million books in print.

Wilson’s agent, Michael Larsen, takes Sam Horn’s brevity a step further. Larsen advocates a one-page proposal that grabs the publisher’s attention by answering two key questions: Why this book? Why you (as the author)?

Do you have a hook that will get you on Oprah? According to Wilson, 90 percent of the book proposal is the marketing plan, because publishers are in the business of selling books. Publishers like speakers, because they get in front of audiences and can sell books.

In the book proposal’s marketing section, Wilson also suggests using a bulleted list of active verbs that convey your enthusiasm and ability to push sales, such as: