“Maisel inti­mately under­stands the anx­i­eties of the cre­ative process and the psy­cho­log­i­cal land­scape that artists inhabit. Strong on the psy­chol­ogy, Maisel is equally strong on the prac­ti­cal­i­ties … What Maisel does, and does bril­liantly, is explain how a book pro­posal can be not only a mar­ket­ing tool but also an essen­tial means for dis­cov­er­ing what your book is about.” – The Writer Magazine

“If Eric Maisel were to write a book on book pro­pos­als, this is exactly what it would be like. There are sev­eral excel­lent books on how to pre­pare book pro­pos­als and I have made it a prac­tice to read them as they come out. Each of these books fea­tures their authors’ impri­maturs and tends to be suited to indi­vid­ual writ­ers depend­ing on their pro­cliv­i­ties. This book is com­pre­hen­sive in all the areas of prepar­ing a book pro­posal but is par­tic­u­larly strong in the area that the major­ity of writ­ers are weak­est — think­ing their con­cept through before prepar­ing and sub­mit­ting the proposal.

“About one-third of the book is devoted to fig­ur­ing out what you want to say, how you are going to say it, and how you are going to express the book con­cept in the pro­posal. Hav­ing reviewed hun­dreds of book pro­pos­als, my opin­ion is that the aspect of not think­ing the project through is the fac­tor that accounts for most rejec­tions. There were a cou­ple of areas in which I some­what dis­agree with the author: (1) I feel that the sam­ple chap­ter should almost always be from the mid­dle of the book because using a intro­duc­tory chap­ter does not show how the writer will han­dle the meat of the book, and (2) I feel that chap­ter sum­maries should always be done in a nar­ra­tive style because excerpts don’t get to the point and bul­leted lists are basi­cally a power point approach to a sell­ing a non-power point prod­uct. Nonethe­less, the author has been pub­lished many times more than I have and what he says car­ries weight.” – Bert Krages, lit­er­ary agent

“Hav­ing already read a dozen of Maisel’s books, I came to this new vol­ume with excite­ment. I wasn’t disappointed.

“Sev­eral authors and experts have cov­ered the topic of writ­ing book pro­pos­als, but none have done it in the organic, yet sen­si­ble, way Maisel does. Draw­ing on his expe­ri­ence as both author and cre­ativ­ity coach, he walks the reader through all parts of the process, includ­ing shap­ing the idea, titling the book, cre­at­ing all aspects of the pro­posal, and under­stand­ing the agent and publisher’s expec­ta­tions. Par­tic­u­larly use­ful are his check­lists and sug­gested for­mats for keep­ing track of project and proposal.

“Any writer seri­ous about cre­at­ing a work of non-fiction should run-don’t walk!-to your near­est book out­let, get this book, and read it from cover to cover. The few hours spent will be immensely worth­while not just for writ­ing the pro­posal, but also for devis­ing the gen­eral (per­haps even spe­cific) out­line to fol­low in the actual writ­ing of the book.

“Maisel includes a tremen­dously help­ful Appen­dix: a sam­ple book pro­posal for what turned out to be his pre­vi­ous book, THE VAN GOGH BLUES, which is a mind-blowingly won­der­ful book. With his focus on help­ing authors suc­ceed and to access their cre­ativ­ity in the most prof­itable and sat­is­fac­tory ways, Maisel has made this a book no writer should miss.” – Lori L. Lake, reviewer for The Inde­pen­dent Gay Writer and the Mid­west Book Review

“This book really explains what the stages of writ­ing a book pro­posal feel like and look like. Maisel dis­cusses all the false starts, sud­den end­ings, and re-starts, the works. It is equally heart­en­ing to have some­one clearly spell out the sin­gle most impor­tant aspect of writ­ing a book (or pro­posal), that it involves repeated, con­cen­trated, hard-worked-on thought.

“As I coach peo­ple who want to write book pro­pos­als (and books) as part of what I do pro­fes­sion­ally, I can’t thank Eric Maisel enough for offer­ing such an insight­ful and truth­ful book on this topic. He has done every­one who is think­ing of writ­ing a pro­posal an enor­mous ser­vice. This book is vastly dif­fer­ent from all the exist­ing books on this sub­ject, too — no mean feat, in and of itself — con­sid­er­ing how many really good books there already are on this topic.” – Lau­rel Marshfield

 

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