Most would-be authors reach this moment the same way. The idea has been with you for years. Maybe you’re a physician who keeps seeing the same thing patients never get told. Maybe you’re a scientist whose findings deserve more readers than a journal can reach. Maybe you’ve spent a career building expertise, or a lifetime nursing a passion project, and you’ve finally decided: this is the year I write the book.
So you open a new email to an agent or a publisher, and you stall. What do you send? How long should it be? What do they actually want? Do you pitch the whole manuscript, or just the idea? And why do so many good books never get past that first message?
Most authors get this part wrong, and it costs them.
Your proposal is the product
First-time authors tend to see your book proposal as paperwork you get through on the way to the real work. It isn’t.
In nonfiction especially, the proposal is what gets sold. It is an argument, built on evidence, for why a book should exist, who will buy it, why an agent should put their name on it, and why a publisher should put its money behind it. If the argument fails, the book doesn’t get a chance.
This matters to anyone who reads Popular Rationalism, because a proposal has the same structure as any claim we examine here. It states a thesis, it offers evidence, it anticipates objections, and it gets judged by skeptical readers whose job is to find the weak points. Editors and agents are those readers. They have seen thousands of proposals. They know the confident market claim that has nothing behind it, the comparable titles that don’t compare, and the author platform that turns out to be a website and some good intentions.
You can learn the parts of a proposal from any number of books and videos. What those can’t give you is judgment: a feel for how a proposal lands with the people deciding whether to take a risk on you.
Learning from someone who has sat on both sides of the table
That’s why I’m excited to announce a new IPAK-EDU course this Fall: From Idea to Book Proposal: A 12-Week Small-Group Publishing Intensive with Francesca Minerva.
Francesca has spent more than 30 years in the book business, working in nearly every part of it:
• CEO and owner of Changing Lives Press, a publishing house she has run since 2008. It has published more than 40 books, mostly nonfiction with an emphasis on health and wellness, and it is developing a fiction imprint.
• She runs FAL Enterprises, a literary agency, through which she has represented independent authors and negotiated publishing contracts with major houses.
• At McGraw-Hill, she worked in marketing, served as International Rights Manager selling foreign-language rights across Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and later worked in special sales.
• At Rodale, she was Executive Director of Special Sales, selling books through channels well beyond the bookstore shelf.
• She has worked the London and Frankfurt Book Fairs and taken part in editorial-board decisions at major publishing houses.
She has received proposals, rejected them, acquired them, and represented authors pitching them. She has also sat in rooms where experienced professionals argued over a title and still got the call wrong. Nobody can perfectly predict which book will take off.
This is the central lesson of the course: publishing is not about following a formula. It’s about learning how people inside publishing think.
What happens in the room
This is not a mass-market online course with a thousand students watching recorded lectures. It is a working group, and your own book project is the course material.
Over 12 weeks, you’ll develop your concept into a proposal that holds up. Francesca will discuss your project directly with you: what an agent will notice first, what an editor will worry about, what a sales team will ask, and how to present your idea honestly without claiming it’s right for every publisher.
Her focus is practical. What to do, what not to do, what to say, and often most important of all, how to say it.
By the end, you should have a substantially developed proposal or proposal portfolio, a clear sense of where your book fits in the marketplace, and a realistic plan for your next step, whether that’s more development or submission.
Who it’s for
The course is especially suited to:
• First-time authors
• Physicians, scientists, educators, and other subject-matter experts with a nonfiction book in them
• Health and wellness writers
• Entrepreneurs and professionals building a platform
• Writers who have started a manuscript but have no publishing strategy
• Authors who have sent out proposals before without success
No previous publishing experience is required.
If you’ve read this far thinking of the evidence-based book you’ve always meant to write, the one that could reach readers who will never open a journal article, I’d especially like you in this room. The public conversation needs more rigorous thinkers who can get published.
The details
• Format: live small-group sessions on Zoom
• When: Wednesdays at 7 PM Eastern, for 12 weeks this Fall
• Enrollment: limited to 10 participants. The small group is deliberate: Francesca can only work in depth on everyone’s project if the room stays small.
• Bonus: each participant gets two private one-hour sessions with Francesca to review and discuss their strategy, material, and progress.
• More one-on-one time: additional private sessions are available if you want more of her attention on your project.
• Payment: a one-time payment, or four monthly installments.
ONLY TEN SEATS!
When the 10 seats are filled, enrollment for this cohort closes.
IPAKEDU.online members enjoy 30% off. Join there first.
See the full course details and enroll here:
https://ipakedu.online/about-course/?id=course_76546109
Learn. Think. Apply. We look forward to seeing you there.
— James Lyons-Weiler, PhD
IPAK-EDU: Empower Yourself with Knowledge
Also open for enrollment at IPAKEDU.online:
IPAK-EDU is grateful to Popular Rationalism as this piece was originally published there and is included in this news feed with mutual agreement. Read More
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