A book proposal must do three things: 1. Prove that there's a market for the book. I went into my proposal assuming that my publisher had tons of data on their readers. No such luck. They looked to me to define the audience and prove that there was demand for a book about documentation.
2. Prove that you can write competently about the subject. Ultimately, the publisher isn't so much interested in the exact content, but more that they'll have a product to sell to the market you identified. (Writing a book made me cynical.) 3. Establish a vision for the book. While I don't think this is essential for getting a proposal accepted, the sooner you can establish a vision, the easier it will be to align the team toward an objective. I made my vision clear late in the process. It worked out OK, but I wish I had articulated the vision earlier in the project. As for timeline, you have to be honest with yourself about how you write. Two key questions are: * How comfortable are you churning out words? * How clean is that copy when it comes out? If you worry about every word you type, it's going to take you a long time to get your word count up. If you can churn out a lot of words, but they're not "clean", your editor will have more work to do. My key piece of advice is to love your editor. Robert clearly has a good relationship with his editor, and I had a great rapport with mine. This is crucial because he or she is your primary sounding board. She needs to understand how you write and what you need to write effectively. Amy (my editor) was especially awesome because she insulated me from whatever was going on at the publisher. She was, for the most part, the only person I spoke to. One other lesson learned: When I wrote my book, I assumed I was the talent. I'm the A-list actor showing up for my scene. There were other people behind the camera, so to speak, that were more instrumental in making the project a success. This was naive. As the author, you are the director and the publisher is the producer. I wish I'd realized this at the outset. Hope this helps! Happy to lunch with prospective authors in Savannah... -- Dan On Sun, 20 Jan 2008 11:57:15, Bruno Figueiredo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Well, I don't know about book proposals, but when I published mine I > just sent the editor a summary and table of contents and some sample > content. > > About the 8 months issue, I don't know how disciplined are you but > it seems very few time. The time you'll spend with the gathering or > design of illustrations is also something to take into consideration. > And don't forget that writing a book is not like writing a blog > entry. People will use it as reference. You have to be absolutely > sure that all that you write there is ironclad. And believe me > you'll spend a lot of time re-writing stuff that you're not > entirely happy with. > > To give you an idea I wrote my first book (350 pages) in about a year > and a half, while working. > > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > Posted from the new ixda.org > http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24623 > > > ________________________________________________________________ > *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* > February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA > Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > -- | work: eightshapes.com | book: communicatingdesign.com | blog: greenonions.com | talk: +1 (301) 801-4850 ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
