The Book Proposal: Tips for Writing Your Outline
When considering a non-fiction book proposal, the draft outline ranks as one of the most critical sections. In my opinion there are 3 things that make for a good outline:
- Details
- Structure
- Did I mention details?
A great outline might tell me a few key things about an prospective author:
- They understand the topic of the book in a deep and detailed way and are able to communicate that understanding to readers
- They are committed to their book enough to have carefully thought it out to certain level of detail
- They are able to organize their thoughts
The more detail you can get into your draft outline the better. (read that sentence again - I am looking for details.) I almost always work with a potential author to further develop outlines for books I want to publish, but the further along you are with the first draft the faster I can get a proposal approved. Therefore its good for everyone when your proposal includes a detailed, well conceived outline. Here is a list of items I look for in a tech book outline:
- Each chapter title is “active” and accurately describes what we are doing, discovering or learning in the chapter. We should be building, creating, programming, developing, understanding etc.
- Each chapter has an estimated page count
- Each chapter has at least 2 levels of headings and should clearly be broken into main headings, and then into subheadings where possible. A third level of detail gets you bonus points.
- The outline should flow either chronologically or in increasing difficulty of topic. The flow of the book should be logical.
- Chapters are grouped logically into Parts
- Bonus if you include a short descriptive paragraph with each chapter that indicates what will be covered in the chapter and what the reader will learn
- Are series elements included? For instance, all Wrox Beginning books use 3 mandatory elements in each chapter - “Try it Out,” “How it Works,” and “Exercises.” If you are submitting a proposal for that series, I expect you to know this either because you read the series guidelines I sent you, or you are already familiar with the series through your research.
In addition, there are a few tips to pass along:
- Don’t use the Microsoft Word outline feature. I know it is technically correct, but we editors like to see things like Chapters and Parts
- Parts have more than one Chapter
- Chapters have more than 1 subheading
And last but not least, don’t forget the details.
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- 5 Ways To Get Me to Quickly Reject Your Book Proposal
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