The First Annual (Virtual) G+ Bloggers Conference- Cookbook Proposals 101, the role of the agent

3, 2, 1. Good morning, everyone. I'm Chef Dennis Littley, and we're here today for our second full day of sessions. This is the first annual virtual G+ Bloggers Conference, and it's been a great conference so far. If you've missed any of the sessions, please do go back and check the YouTube videos. You're really going to— there's a wealth of information. We have had so many wonderful presenters over the course of yesterday. That it's really, really gonna love those sessions. So today is Cookbook Proposals 101, and it's the role of the agent in all of this. And we're very fortunate today to have Sally Eckes with us of the Lisa Eckes Group. Hi Sally, thanks for coming.

Hi everyone.

Excited to have you here. And today we also have Cindy Kirschner in, and she's gonna be asking some questions as we go live.

Hi.

We're also expecting another guest or two, so you never know who will pop in to ask some questions as we get started. Please remember, if you have questions, you can ask them as we go along. We have a comment tracker in here working, so we'll see them as they come up, and we'll get to them as soon as we can. If it's something that we're going to cover later, we might tell you, we might wait on your question, but type them in the comment bar and we will get to them. So I'm going to kick it up, hand it over to Sally and let her start. Good morning, and let's go.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks so much for having me here, Dennis. I'm really excited to talk to everyone. I'm going to do a very basic, um, in-depth dive over what goes into writing a cookbook proposal, and I'm going to run through very clearly each part of the proposal and also what an agent does. So I'm going to open up my screen share. I have some slides, but I'm also going to take questions throughout, so feel free to ask questions as I as I go through. I'm just gonna do that. Okay, so a little overview about our agency. We, uh, you can see I share the same last name with the Lisa Eckes Group. I often call Lisa my mom boss because I work for my mom, and we're a full-service culinary agency We were founded in PR 31 years ago, and now we have grown into 4 divisions. So we have a— we still do PR consulting and we do PR for food product groups. We also do media training services. Lisa founded the first culinary media training program. We also do talent and endorsement representation and literary agenting, which is what I'm going to talk to you about today. I've been with the agency for a little over 4 years. Originally, my background is in mental health. I went to school for counseling, and I often joke that I use that training every day with our authors because writing a book can be a really wonderful but oftentimes a bit anxious experience. So I'm going to go through how an agent can help you with that too. Our agency represents culinary nonfiction, so that's food narrative, health and wellness, special diets, and a lot of single-subject cookbooks as well. And so over the next hour, if you guys have questions as I go along, feel free to ask. And I'm also going to give these slides out on Twitter if you follow me @sallyeckes. I'd be happy to tweet them out to you. I also have proposal guidelines on our website, lisaeckes.com, where you're going to be able to find a lot of this information and other, other great info as well. So this is a funny— let me just make sure I can pull this up. This is a funny slide that I found courtesy of Itchy Barracuda, and I often say when I'm out at like cocktail parties or my friends ask me what I do, it's kind of hard to explain exactly what a literary agent does. So I often say that it's a less glorified Jerry Maguire of the food industry, because I am saying show me the money, but the money is like a really small fraction of of pro football, unfortunately. So what do— what does an agent do? Primarily, agents— oops, did the screen share click off? Can you still see it?

I know it clicked off. You might have to share it again.

Can you see it?

No.

Hold on just a second.

There you go.

I got it.

Great.

So publishers rely on agents to act as gatekeepers, and we vet submissions. And oftentimes editors will know that they're going to get a higher quality proposal when, when it's coming from an agent, because agents look at industry trends and we try to identify what's going to be a great sell now, but also what's going to be a hot topic 2 years from now when the book would potentially come out. And competition is really fierce, and so publishers will often only review a proposal if it has agent representation. There are exceptions to this, but oftentimes it primarily, primarily gets attention when you have agent representation. So boiled down into basic terms, an agent will represent you, and there are a lot of different kinds of agents. Today I'm going to talk about what a literary agent does, but there's also talent agents, spokesperson agents, speaking agents, and other kinds of representation as well. Agents work on a commission. Literary agents earn 15% off the top for the life of a project, so that includes advance and royalties. And an agent is really— it's not only necessary to get your work noticed by having an agent, but also to make sure you're getting your book published under the best possible terms. Not everyone should or needs or necessarily wants an agent, but as I run through some of these key responsibilities, try to think, is this what you're looking for? And that will help answer the question as to whether or not you need an agent. So generally speaking, an agent is going to look at industry trends and approach the most appropriate publishers for your work. So that means if you're going to work on a single subject vegan cookbook, we would know to submit it to the publishers like Da Capo or The Experiment that oftentimes publish single subject vegan cookbooks. Before pitching you though, agents will consult with you on the readiness of your proposal and they'll work with you, giving you some feedback to make sure that the proposal is in final form and it's in the best shape possible before they pitch it. Agents will create a plan and a timeline for submissions to make sure that they're pitching at the most appropriate time. Meaning if your book is supposed to— if you want your book to be published in the fall and it takes about a year for delivery and a year for shooting the book, when should you pitch the project? They're also going to talk about how long it might take you to deliver and make sure that they're not pitching a project, you know, 6 months before you're ready to really dive in. Agents will work with you promptly and reliably throughout— oftentimes it's throughout the whole publishing process, although every agency is a little bit different. They'll keep you informed on any feedback that you get on your proposal. So there's exclusive submissions and also multiple submissions, meaning if an— if your agent knows this one house is perfect for your project, they may submit it exclusively as a gesture and indication that that's the best fit for your book. Or it could be a multiple submission, whereas the agent will send it out to 6 or 8 or 10 houses. And as feedback comes in on the proposal, your agent will keep you informed as to what editors are saying. Oftentimes too— I see there's a question, I'll get to it in just a minute. Oftentimes I say feedback is my nicer word for rejections, because sometimes we get a lot of feedback on our proposals. Is there any sort of sign-on cost to work with an agent, Deka? Asked that question, and that's a great question. No, there should be no fees or cost to signing with an agent. And again, literary agents work on a commission, so I may work for 6 months to a year on selling, on finalizing a proposal, pitching it, and negotiating a deal. And as your agent, we only see the money when, when the author's paid. So it can be a big investment in time and effort, but before there's any sort of financial return. Your agent will also, aside from the pitching process, they're going to negotiate your publishing contract. So they'll work with you and they'll work to make sure the contract reflects the best possible terms and conditions that your work could be published under. And this includes, and I'm going to run down a really long general list just to give you a sense of what an agent works on in the contract, your advance, your payout, meaning is it paid in halves, is it paid in thirds, some publishers even pay in, in quarters. They're going to work to negotiate all the possible rights, royalties, your option, meaning your publisher is going to want an option to review your next book as well, copyrights, the style and the format of the book. They're going to talk about promotion as well, though some publishers are more committed to publicity than others, and oftentimes it's really important to keep in mind that it's not just about the upfront money, the advance and the payout, because there's other things to keep in mind too that an agent will help with, like subsidiary rights sales, international rights, what kind of discount do you get as an author for buying the book, and yes, you should get one, and electronic rights, which is a really big hot topic these days and probably only going to become increasingly important. So really your agent is going to help educate you on all these different splits and contract terms. I could really do a whole other presentation on contracts, but hopefully this gives you a general sense of what your agent will educate you on and what, what you can ask about too, if you decide to not work with an agent. It also really comes down to finding the right fit because you're going to work with your agent for quite some time, or hopefully that's the intent. You're going to, sign on, do one book, and then hopefully future books with that agent. And so you want to make sure you find an agent that you communicate best with. We communicate a lot through phone and through email. Some people communicate through conference calls. I mean, there's a million different ways, but you want to make sure you can find the right fit in your agent. Honesty and trust is really essential because your agent is working in your best interest, and so you really need to trust that they, that that they know what, what you want and you have clear communication about what your best interest is. And again, not everyone necessarily wants or needs an agent. And so it really should be making a decision that you wanna work with an agent. And then when you find someone that you think you wanna work with, I'll talk a little bit about how to, how to approach that agent here. So there's a number of different ways to, to find an agent. Oftentimes looking in the acknowledgments section in the books that you love is a great way to start because you can see who has this person thanked and what— or your colleagues, who do they work with that they might recommend. There's also some links up here that are really great places you can search by category. You can search for what, what agents represent, and you want to approach an agent primarily first through a query letter. So a query letter can just be a really simple, uh, this is who I am, this is what the project is, and oftentimes there'll be suggestions and recommendations on a specific agent's website on how to, how to approach them. The other thing with query letters is you want to make sure they're, they're personalized. It's really important to have you know, Dear Sally or Dear Miss Eckes. That's a great way to, to get somebody's attention. And I can't tell you how many query letters we get addressed to other people, which can just show a tough, um, it, you know, it's a, it's a lack of detail-orientedness. Um, a less traditional way to, to pitch to an agent or find an agent this past, um, Oh, somebody just joined in. This past March we did a contest called Sign Me Sal. It was a Twitter contest. And— oh, hi. So we did a contest called Sign Me Sal, and it was a Twitter contest where we did an open call for concepts through Twitter. And people pitched to us, and we modeled it off of March Madness. So each round mirrored a different part of the proposal. And ultimately in the end, we signed somebody. I have her little I have a little picture up here because she was in her local newspaper. And this was a completely less traditional way to find an agent, but you know, again, I think our primary motivation was to look to social media since, you know, we're doing this Google Hangout. There's definitely this movement towards alternative ways of business and conferencing and pitching, so we had great success, and I'm actually shopping around her proposal right now, which is really fun. But primarily you want to start with a query letter and then follow it up with a proposal if the agent asks for it. And I see there's a question from, from Jason here. What makes you attractive to an agent so you can move forward with your project? Does one need to have a huge following to attract an agent? I have heard that unless you have X number of page views, an agent will not even consider you. So Jason, that's a really great question. The dreaded P word of platform. Really, it all depends. I think there's certain agents that may not look at you depending on the size of your platform and how many page views you get. Ultimately, I think if you have a creative pitch and a unique concept and a clear point of differentiation, and you can accomplish that clear pitch in a query letter and then subsequently in a really solid proposal, a good agent will look at you. Platform is very important because more and more publishers are relying on on authors to sell the book. But, you know, we— I can really only speak to what our agency does, but we do look at all pitches. We review all proposals, and even if you have a small platform, you know, maybe we'll say it's not right right now, here are some suggestions to build it, please come back because you have a great concept. If you want some general guidelines in terms of actual numbers and page views and what agents are looking for, I think 30 to 40 unique visitors a month is kind of the bar that's been set for people to tap in and to pay serious attention. That being said, we do represent authors that have a smaller platform than that. So I hope that sort of answered your question. There's another question here from Adam. How often do agents approach potential clients? So that's a great question as well, Adam, because I would say when I started 4 years ago, our traditional process— and again, I can only speak to our process— but the way we did things in-house here is we waited for full proposals to come in, we would review them, and then decide whether or not it was somebody that we were interested in signing. And with, I think, the combination of social media and blogs and alternative ways of getting your work out there, we've now started approaching, approaching clients that we want to work with and said, you know, hey, I found this article, have you ever thought of building it out into a book? Or I love your blog, have you ever thought of doing a book? And more and more I'm reading about deals where agents are approaching talent and cultivating a project. I have a book that's coming out, it's on pre-sale right now, it's from a vegan blog, it's called Bake and Destroy, not Bake and Destroy, but Bakeanddestroy.com, and I approached Natalie Slater, I saw she was partnering— she puts on this fabulous Sugar Slam event, which is like a pro wrestling combined baking competition. And she did this post and a contest, and one of our other vegan authors, Alison Kramer, was providing a book for a prize. And, you know, I love cross-client mogination, as I like to call that, and supporting one another. And I saw— I stumbled upon Natalie's site, and I fell in love with it, and I approached her to do a book announcement. It's coming out about a year and a half later. So I do think that more and more agents are approaching clients, and it really is probably agent— agency specific as to how often. But I would say now about 30% of our projects are cultivated by us going out and finding the talent. Uh, okay, any other questions before I move on? These are great questions, by the way. So this is some things to say and things not to say. I hear all three of these things quite often. Everyone tells me I should write a cookbook. So going back to how to snag an agent's attention, you should really only write a cookbook, I think, if you have a unique point of differentiation and a voice to add to the, to the crowded shelf, because the cookbook shelf is getting more and more crowded by the day. And really what's most important, instead of saying everyone tells me I should write a book, is ask yourself why you want to write a book. And if you have a really good answer for that, that's what I want to hear as an agent. Why do you want to write a book? The last person I signed, I was actually drawn to because I heard her talk during a presentation and she said she wasn't sure if she wanted to write a book even though everyone told her that she should. And I thought to myself that when and if she does decide, that's somebody that I want to work with because it'll be really intentional and she's gonna go into it from a business standpoint, which I think is essential. People also oftentimes say there hasn't ever been a book like this out there, and I hear this all the time, and I'll get to this part of the proposal, the competition section, in a minute. But basically, there are a lot of books on, you know, your concept out there. What's different is the way you're gonna do it and that's what I want to know about. Oftentimes when I'm reading a proposal, I'll go to the competition section first just to see, you know, does this person know what else is out there, and are they really gonna differentiate themselves from those books? I also see Adam followed up his question in that he was approached by an agent and that it seems strange. I, you know, I do think that sometimes it does catch people off guard because it's a little less traditional, but I would say it's happening more and more. I would also say that oftentimes authors or bloggers are approached directly by publishers, and that's happening more and more as well, kind of bypassing agents. And again, having an agent isn't right for everybody, but there's a reason publishers are approaching you directly, and it's often because they want to use your content and have you write a book under mostly fair terms. But I would often say to have either an agent or a lawyer look over contracts that they're proposing before you agree to anything, because more and more talent is being approached directly, and you just want to make sure that you have an extra set of eyes that's used to the industry standard taking a look at it. The last point here on the slide, things to say and things not to say. Everyone will want to buy this book, it will sell itself. I feel sad sometimes when I have to burst people's bubbles, but not everyone will want to buy your book, and most people may not even know it exists. You're really going to have to be a champion for your book. You— it's going to be up to you, the author, to promote the book. Oftentimes publishers will support your title for about a 3-month window, and support could be anything from a blog tour to a full-blown book tour, although I will say that full-blown book tours are very few and far between. There's only a handful of publishers that are still doing that, and it's on a very rare basis. So it's really up to you to get your book out there, get it noticed, and that's why the promotion section of the proposal is so crucial. When I read promotions sections that are kind of cookie-cutter and they say, "I'd be willing to go out wherever my publisher wants to send me to do signings and to do demos," what I really hear is, "I'm looking for the publisher to drive promotion," rather than, "Here are the outlets that I have to promote this book and sell it." And that's really what's attractive to an agent, and subsequently what's really attractive to a publisher. Okay, any other questions on this before I move on?

Does it help to work with brands? Do agents look at who you've worked with in the past that way?

That's a really good question. If you have brand relationships in place, you would want to include them in the promotion section of your proposal. It could be, you know, this is a brand that I've partnered with and they have a really great presence on social media and they've agreed to promote the book, you know, X number of times when the book comes out. But if you are working on a, say, gluten-free baking book and you want to approach Bob's Red Mill but you have no direct ties to them, it may not necessarily be worth including it unless you have a direct connection because proposals really need to reflect accurate, real relationships that you have in place. You could say, you know, in the next 3 months I intend to pitch to X product companies so that by the time the book comes out I have these relationships in place. But for the most part, if you're already working with them, include it, and if you're not yet, kind of decide how realistic is that partnership and, you know, is this something I can rely on for promotion? Because again, when your book comes out, it's going to be up to you. A couple things to say when you're pitching to agents, you want to make sure that you kind of explain and show that you have realistic expectations, both financially but also within the working relationship. You want to make sure again that it's the right fit with an agent, and you're not just pitching yourself to any agent, you're pitching yourself to the agent that you really want to work with. Also, if you know you want to work with a specific agent, I would send that one a query letter and start there and give them a chance to respond. If you do follow up, you know, once or twice and they don't respond, it would be fair to maybe send your query letter to other agents. But if you know you really want to work with someone, submit your proposal exclusively as an indication of your interest. If you don't know who you want to work with, you certainly could send out more than one query letter to multiple agents. You also want to make sure right up front in the query letter and then in the proposal you do say what your point of differentiation is, or your POD, your P-O-D. And also show that you're willing to collaborate, because working with an agent is a collaboration, and then subsequently working with a publisher is definitely a collaboration. And again, ask yourself, why do you want to write a book? And make sure that the answer is something worth investing in for a long period of time. OK, so I'm going to run through each of these parts of a proposal in a little bit more depth so that we can really get down to the nitty-gritty of what goes into a proposal. But before I do that, a proposal is not this crazy, mystical document. It's really just a Word document. So try not to be too intimidated. There's no specific length of the proposal. There's no specific length of time that it should take you to write the proposal. I have authors that— have worked on a proposal in 2 weeks, and I have authors that have done a proposal in 2 years. There's really no length of time that it should take you. It's ready when it's ready. And write not rushed is our motto here. Also, don't overdesign the proposal. Again, just a Word document. It's just an electronic packet of information. You want to make it really easy for agents and editors to click through and find the information that they need. And if you overdesign it, it could show that, you know, here I have this vision for the proposal, and the process of writing a book and looking through the designs that the publisher works on for your book, it is a process. And if you overdesign your proposal, it's hard to also see that in the same collaborative light that I think agents and publishers want to see. So how are proposals used before we jump into the nitty-gritty of these 10 parts? So you, an author, are looking for representation. So you submit a proposal to an agency, the agency reviews it, and then if they're interested, you have a conversation, you see if it's the right fit, and then you would sign your agency contract with them. Not all agents work with contracts, although we do, and I, and I would assume most do. You work with the agent to fine-tune the proposal. You submit to a list of publishers that you think it should go to, or again, like I mentioned earlier, an exclusive submission. Then the proposal goes from the editor that you've— that your agent has sent it to. If the editor likes it, they may get a couple other reads in-house. So it'll go around, and if the people who read it in-house— it could be one person depending on the house, or five people— If everybody is, is into it, then it'll go to an editorial meeting. And editorial meetings may happen once a week or once a month. It all depends on the publishing house. And so you want the proposal to answer as many questions as possible, because if you're sending it to a publisher that has that editorial meeting or that acquisitions meeting once a month and they have questions, and then that editor goes back to your agent to ask them, you may have to wait a whole other month until that house can make a decision on your book. And if it's out with other houses that are interested, but you really want to hear from this one, the timing can get a little iffy. So ultimately, answer as many questions as possible in the proposal and keep in mind that it may be passed around. And then if it passes the editorial meeting, it will also quite possibly be circulated to sales and marketing, and you really want to make sure that sales and marketing is on board with your book as well, because if you have one champion cheerleader editor that's really going to bat for your book, it can feel really good. But we all know publishing is in a state of flux, and maybe that person leaves, or maybe that publisher is acquired by another publisher. You wanna make sure that sales and marketing and the people that are gonna put that book on the shelf are really behind your book. So I see there's a question from Kim. Do you have an example of a fabulous query letter? You know, that's a good question. I don't have one offhand. And I'm sure there's some good examples online. If you follow up with me after, I can also send you one. I can dig one up somewhere. I also would say that a really fabulous query letter is really unique, and so it's going to depend on your pitch. And generally speaking, a query letter would just be, you know, dear so-and-so— make it personalized— and then a quick pitch of who you are in a really unique way. And that would be a hard example to give because I don't necessarily know what the concept is you're pitching, but I can give you general templates or you can certainly find them online. Just follow up with me after. Okay, so I'm going to jump in. The title page. This includes the title of your book, the subtitle, your name, your address and your contact information. And then upon signing with an agent, it's going to include your agent's contact information. The table of contents, or the TOC, and this is for the proposal itself. So this includes just a list of each section of the proposal and then corresponding page numbers. And that's really helpful for agents and then also editors to just be able to flip through. Like I said earlier, I always go to the competition section first. Next up is the overview, and this basically just answers the question, my book is about this and this is why I'm writing it. This is a great opportunity to introduce your POD, or your point of differentiation. I'm really obsessed with PODs. I talk about them all day long. My colleagues are always hearing me say POD. Your point of differentiation is your unique selling point. It's the core, it's the hook, it's what makes your gluten-free baking book different than every other gluten-free baking book, or your vegan cookbook different than every other vegan cookbook. Next is your bio. That includes any press, your background, your credentials. Have you published other books? And if so, include their sales numbers, even if they're not impressive, because editors are gonna ask, agents are gonna ask, and if you answer that question right up front, at least they don't have to come back to you with that question. You also wanna mention when those books were written. You can include TV clips in here if you have a demo reel, and definitely all of your social media numbers. You can put your social media numbers in your promotion plan as well. The more places that you can put your impressive platform, the better. Also, a headshot is a really nice addition in your bio, and you wanna hotlink everything. You wanna link to all of your press, your background, your demo reel, all that information. Next up, markets for the book. Again, this is a great place to put your POD. Why will the readers buy your book? Who will buy your book. Maybe you're a blogger and it's your blog audience. Maybe you have a regular byline in a local newspaper. You wanna talk about who's gonna buy your book and why. And again, your POD can be infused here. And then your promotion plan. So do you have a built-in audience? How are you looking to promote it? If you have a blog and you have X number of unique hits a month, that's a great way to do it. I will also say to, to the question I mentioned earlier, the size of your platform— you know, publishers, I'd say a year to a year and a half ago, were in a scramble to sign as many people with these massive platforms. And now that those books are coming out, they're selling well, but the 100 unique hits a month is not necessarily translating into book sales. So publishers are looking for a more engaged, smaller platform, because that's, that's the loyal audience that's gonna buy your book. It's not just about how many people are stopping by every, every month. So getting back to the promotion plan, you can include in here places that you speak or you demo at, you teach. You want to put your social media numbers in here, and you want to show ultimately that you're going to be a marketing partner with your publisher. So talk about special events that you want to do, or giveaways, contests, promotional ideas. The more creative, the better. The Twitter contest that we ran when we got to the promotional plan, there were some really creative ideas. And, you know, we talked about everything as a staff here, and it was just really fun to see how creative people got. And I say that the crazier, you know, keeping in mind that you want this to translate into sales, but if you can come up with some really crazy promotion ideas that you think you're going to drive sales, that will also really help you stand out to an agent and also to your publisher. And then next is the competition section. And this, like I said, is what I turn to first in the proposal because most likely there is another book, at least one other book on your concept that's already been published. So I want to know that you know what it is and that you know how your book is going to be different. And any agent is going to want to know what your point of differentiation is, and a competition section is a really great, great place to do it. You also want to keep in mind that when you, when you pitch to agents and you include your proposal and you include books in a competition section, try to see if that agent has represented any of those books before. And if they have, you want to show how you're going to fit and add to that genre alongside the author that they currently represent. Oftentimes when we're reviewing proposals or potential new authors here, I say, you know, is this going to complement and add to my roster of authors in my vegetarian cooking roster, or is this something that maybe would be better suited for another agent that could give them undivided attention and really make them stand out? You know, we represent a handful of gluten-free authors, we represent a handful of vegan authors, we represent a handful of general cooking authors, and they each have their unique voice. And you want to have an agent that really understands your point of differentiation, and you're going to add to their current roster that falls into whatever category it is that you're pitching. Then you want to include in the proposal the table of contents for the book itself. And this is a chapter-by-chapter outline of the proposed book. So you could include any sidebars in here, fact boxes, and you want to include a fairly complete recipe list. Everybody understands that the final recipe list may change, but basically what you want to show is that you have a balanced recipe list.. And the table of contents can be a really great skeleton for the book itself. So if you do a good job diving into the table of contents in the proposal, you can go back to it when you're actually writing the book and kind of turn it inside out and build the flesh of the book around the bones that you delivered in the table of contents. You can think of it as a guide or a map. It's really, it's a great, it's a great place for authors to turn back to when they get writer's block or they get stuck and say, oh yeah, I forgot I proposed these these 5 recipes and I was really excited about them. Because it may be, you know, 6 months to 9 months later that you're actually working on them. And this may seem obvious, but definitely propose the book that you actually want to write, because that's the book that the publisher is buying, and so you want to make sure that you're proposing a book that you're excited about writing, because it's a very long process. Next up are the chapter summaries, and this is a really brief but thorough description of each chapter, just a paragraph or so.. And you can also include the forward in here, acknowledgements, and anyone you think might blurb the book potentially, although that could also go in the promotion section as well. Generally speaking too, you know, you don't necessarily have to go in this order. A complete proposal should reflect all of these parts, but it can be put together in any way that flows best for you guys. And then lastly is a complete sample chapter, and this includes tested recipes. And this is an essential part of the proposal. I sometimes get proposals to review that say, "Hey, I haven't done the sample chapter yet, but here's what I've got so far." That's fine if we're cultivating a relationship and we're potentially going to work together. But if you're blindly submitting a proposal for us to consider, we definitely want to see a complete sample chapter. Because I really want to see how you're going to show me the concept rather than just tell me, like the other parts of the proposal. Other tips for proposals are to spell check everything. And make sure again that all the recipes work. Page numbers are really great so people can flip through. And again, keep it simple. You don't have to overdesign it. To that same, in that same breath though, if you do have a specific photographer that you want to work with or that you have a really specific vision for the book, you could include a little vision paragraph that says this is what I want my book to look like potentially, or eminate these kinds of, these kinds of qualities from this list of books that I really admire. You could also pitch a photographer if you know you want to work with somebody, although that also could be a whole other presentation because photography budgets and how that process is broken down is really unique to each publisher. Any questions on the nitty-gritty of what goes into a proposal?

Sally, how often do bloggers take their own photos anymore? For their cookbooks?

So many bloggers want to take their own photos for their cookbooks, and it really depends on the quality of photos and the publisher. A lot of publishers recognize that there are some very talented bloggers out there from a photography standpoint, but to that same point, um, not all bloggers have book-quality images. And so I would say if you're known for photography in addition to your recipes on the blog that may be something that your publisher would look for, but the majority— I would say, well, it's hard to say the majority, but many, many bloggers who author books end up having their photos shot by a professional. Just the process of food styling and doing a photo shoot for a cookbook can be very different and quite labor-intensive beyond, you know, a photo with every recipe, which, which does bring its challenges, and there's certainly some some really talented blogger-photographer combos out there. But maybe I would say it's about 50/50. I see a couple other questions here from Adam. I just have to scroll down for a minute to see it. What percentage of authors make their entire living from writing books? I've always heard that the number is few. Do you have any anecdotal information to pass along regarding this? That is an excellent question to lead into our next slide, which is a very brief standalone— a book is a brand extension, it is not a retirement plan. I really wish for the sake of our agency, all agents and all of the authors out there, that all authors could make an entire living writing books, but it's, it's a really small percentage. The big books and the big newsworthy stories that we hear about are the exceptions, and they're few and far between. For the most part, people who are authoring cookbooks specifically, you know, it's, it's a part of their brand extension. It's a, it's a love, it's a passion, and they have something to add to the marketplace, but it's definitely not, it's not a retirement plan, and they're not making their entire living off of, off of writing a book. It's— I've heard other agents describe it as one slice of the pizza is the book process, and you should have other other pieces of pizza in the pie for the whole, the whole picture. I also see a question from Jason: How much does a person's personality influence your decision to represent them? Personally, it influences me a lot because we are a very hands-on agency, and so we work collaboratively. We also can be fairly hands-off if that's what an author is looking for, but it is a long-term relationship, and, you know, I don't just date anybody, and I don't just go out to dinner with anybody, and I don't just agent anybody. I really want it to be the right fit. And I want somebody— humor goes a long way with our agency. Every agency is a little bit different. But generally speaking, for us, I have the great pleasure, and one of the reasons I love my job, is that I get to work with people that I absolutely love working with. And I think they're fantastic. And their personality is something that really clicks with me. And I want my personality to click with them too. It's definitely a two-way street. You don't just want to work with an agent because they want to work with you. You want to work with them because you like them, because you're going to call them when you hate your cover or when you love your cover, which are the calls I prefer getting more. But personality does make a difference. From Jason again, how tight should the writing for the book be? Do you look for a level of— glue words, or are you looking for more stylized writing? I think that the writing should emanate your personality, and if you can accomplish the nitty-gritty logistics of a proposal while getting your personality through, and you have quality writing— and quality is, you know, kind of determined by each person, but you know, you need to be a good writer, but a good writer can accomplish the nitty-gritty of a proposal, their personality, and their point of differentiation all at one time. From Grace, if you've already worked with a publisher and written your first cookbook, is it more difficult to get a book deal with different publishers? Well, that's a good question as well. You will probably have an option in your contract in that your current publisher would want to see your next work, although it doesn't necessarily mean you have to work with them. And if you don't have an option, you could pitch yourself to other publishers or your agent could. And we have authors that have done their first or second, third books with one publisher and then for one reason or another they decide they want to work with somebody else, or the publisher decides, you know, we've launched this author but it's time to see them grow to a larger house. So I would say that seasoned cookbook authors have published with more than one publisher before. Oh, Adam, keep your day job. That's, yes, unfortunately I do think that's the case. And I was actually going to go into a case study and then open it up for for questions towards the end, because I do think ultimately the elephant in the room is what's the money and what are people looking for, what are advances these days. And this, I'll give you a case study that talks about platform, it touches upon numbers as well. So the best deal that I ever negotiated also turned out to be the worst and the one that I learned the most from. It happened to be a blog to book deal and Blog-to-book deals are about a third of what we do in our agency now, and I represent our bloggers in-house. And at the time, it was the blog-to-book dream, except the Julia Julia film rights. And really, the offer was, was there, the platform was there, the publisher's commitment to the promotion of the book was also there, which is pretty rare. The blogger had an established blog, meaning I think it was more than 4 years old at the time. They had over 25,000 Facebook fans. So when we're talking about numbers and platform, we're, we're getting up there. 30,000 Twitter followers and over 1 million, um, and, uh, 1.5 million unique hits a month. The topic and the concept were on trend, but it was also going to stand the test of time. So the details of this case study are that I cultivated the relationship with the personalities clicked. They signed the agency contract, we finalized the proposal, I pitched the proposal, and I held an auction for it, meaning I had more than 3 houses that made offers. And then I sold the book for 6 figures. And as we began negotiating the contract, at the last hour it fell apart. And it fell apart because originally the client had agreed to create a lot of fresh content for the book. And this is something that I wanted to mention as kind of Cookbook Proposals 101. No matter what your platform is, whether you're a blogger or you're compiling recipes from, you know, articles that you've written, you wanna say very clearly in the proposal that you will have 90% new content. And there are exceptions to this rule. There are compilation cookbooks and there are really big platform people that, that can get away with more recycled content, but for the most part, you wanna be prepared to create 90% new content. So the contract kind of fell apart because even though I got the publisher to agree to 20% recycled content, ultimately the author decided it wasn't quite right. And so what I learned from this is that it's not all about the money, even though I already knew that. What matters most is the project, the author, the relationship and trust with your agent, and communication. This goes back to the question about personality. And really, it has to be the right fit and you have to communicate throughout the whole process. So where do you go from here? Where did I go from here from this case study? You want to think about the book as an extension of your brand. And a cookbook proposal is going to clearly show how and why you are different and why your book is an extension of your brand. You always want to ask yourself why you want to write a book, and it should be for love and it shouldn't be for money. And depending on who the publisher is that's looking to acquire your book, you want to talk to them and make sure, you know, once you find the right fit with your agent and then the agent finds this interest from editors, talk to the editors that are interested in publishing you and make sure that's the right fit too. The case study is an exception. It's not the rule. Six-figure books are few and far between. You want to know what a typical advance is. I'm sure it's really hard to say. Every— I've heard other agents, and Lisa says this often, that every topic kind of finds its ceiling, meaning, you know, if you had 3 offers on a book, they'll all kind of come in around the same, around the same initial offer. Each topic just kind of finds its ceiling. It could be A $10,000 advance, it could be a $30,000 advance, it could be $130,000. Although again, that the last is the exception for sure. And many factors go into determining an advance. Are you a first-time author? Platform for sure. What's your concept, your point of differentiation? And what is this author gonna bring to the table? Is this a one-off book? Is this their only book? Are there future books? Again, the book is a brand extension. It's, it's not a retirement plan, unfortunately. So your agent's role in all of this is going to be as your cheerleader, as your advocate. They're going to be your friend, and trust is really, really essential. Oftentimes the agent is going to be the most consistent relationship that you have because you partner with them. And, you know, to Grace's question about finding more than one publisher, your agent's gonna be with you through that process, but you may switch publishers, you may switch, um, you know, you may switch jobs, you may switch newspapers, you may switch, uh, where you're photographing for regularly, and your agent can be with you to guide you through all of that. And editors may come and go, but ultimately I think finding— doing some research about what you're looking for in an agent, certainly attending sessions like this, and then there are other great conferences out there too, Finding some good, you know, shop around, find somebody that's the right fit for you because it's gonna be a long-term relationship. And then lastly, I'll just end with this slide because there are some great resources on here. Diane Jacob is a wonderful, wonderful resource, as is Jane Friedman. Jane often posts great resources for authors, and Diane has a fabulous blog and website, and then her newsletter comes out, I think, 4 times a year, and it's just a roundup of fabulous information, as well as some other organizations and websites up here. So are there other questions that we could cover? I'm just gonna turn off this screen share here. Thank you for indulging in my slides. I know it can be kind of boring to look at those, but it is a lot of information, and most of it is available on the website as well.

I had one as far as how you set up the actual proposal to the agent.

Sure.

You'd like that better— that would be more like a Word doc with the, you said, hot links as opposed to like a PDF kind of thing or something that incorporates visual?

Yeah, you could include— it could be a PDF for sure. Sometimes when I'm reviewing a proposal I like to make notes on it and sometimes I do that online on my computer and sometimes I'll print it out and do it in hard copy. And if it's a PDF it's harder to do that. But you could certainly send it out as a PDF, and then once you sign with an agent and the proposal is finalized, they would probably convert it to a PDF to send around. But you can hotlink into a PDF, so that's fine too.

Thanks. Sure.

Another one from Jason: How does one find a current or upcoming trend? It's important to be current. Do you have any tips for finding the pulse of the writing market? Well, I ask myself that question every day because that's also my job, just like it is the author's. I look at trend reports, I look at, certainly I think Google+ and what's being searched for and what's happening on Google is a great place to start, and the book writing process can, you know, most of the time publishers are looking for the author to deliver between 9 to 12 months, and then it takes for many publishers a whole other year for that book to come out, so when you're looking at trends, You want to think, you know, okay, this is hot right now, but is it also going to be hot 2 years from now? And most of the time, a book that's on trend may not sell so well. What you want to find is something that goes beyond just, just a trend and is something that people are really talking about that may begin as a trend but really becomes a movement that'll be around in 2 years when your book comes out. And I didn't quite answer your question of where to find those answers because I think that's the question that we're all asking. But having conversations with other food professionals and attending conferences like this, I think, is a really good place to start.

Good question. I have a question for you.

Sure.

I have— I've always toyed with the thought of writing a book, but it's, again, it's a time thing.

Mm-hmm.

And the book I would want to write would be more of a story with recipes in it. Oh, sure. Is that ever an interesting topic for people? It is.

I think the writing has to be above and beyond other food writing, frankly, and platform plays an enormous role when it comes to food narrative with recipes. You can get away with having a small platform if your concept is on trend or it's something that's really timely, but— and I know I shouldn't use the word trend very much— but when it comes to narrative-heavy or text-heavy food writing, you— that's where the platform is really important because it's hard for a publisher to get on board with a book that just has some recipes. Just, it's harder to market, and so the writing really has to soar and the author needs to have avenues to sell the book. But certainly pioneering the beginning of Google+ Hangouts could be a great story.

One other question: Would you ever advise anyone to have the book pretty much almost complete before doing this process? Since it seems like it takes a long time.

You certainly could. There's pros and cons of that. The upside is that you can deliver right away, and if you find a publisher that has a hole on their list and they're looking to fill it, that could be great. But on the flip side, the publisher— you're gonna find an editor that'll work with you a bit too, and as you get going through the editorial process, the book may become something a little bit different. And so you want to have a partner with that. And if the book is done and you find a publisher that has a gap on their pub season, meaning, you know, they have their list of fall books but they are missing one and they want to fill it in, it can be harder for another author to fill that because they need to take time to write the book. But in the same breath, you want a publisher to be really excited about your book. You don't want it to just be a filler. So having the book done can be great because it can get out earlier, but at the same time, is it really going to have the attention that you want it to and that the book deserves?

Good point. Thank you. Grace, I know you joined us. I don't know if you're unmuted, if you have any other questions down there that you'd like to ask. Did you unmute yourself?

Hi.

Hi, Dennis Littley. Hi, Sally. I was just curious, when you were discussing the sample chapter, and having the recipes ready to go. Is there a special format to follow for that recipe writing? Like, I know when I did mine, my first draft, when the recipes came back, it was like all these different colors, and I was like, oh, there's a lot of changes. So is there a format that's best to be followed?

That's a really good question. So when you write the proposal, you can write the recipe however you typically write recipes. I mean, the ingredients should go in the same order that they're used in the recipe. I mean, there's general recipe writing principles to use, but when you're writing recipes for, for your book itself, your publisher will send you style guides. So as you get writing, you can write in the style of that publishing house. For the most part, the publishing houses reflect similar writing styles, but there are certainly differences and intricacies between each house, and so that's why they have in-house style guides. It's a great question. Are there other questions out there? I know we have about 7 minutes.

I was wondering, once you set up your proposal, what you think is a very unique idea, and I found when I've done articles that was unique when I gave it to the magazine, by the time it came out similar things have popped up, will that kill a book deal?

You know, I think that again, it really just all comes down to your, your take and your point of differentiation. I actually, there's been some chatter of, you know, this book has really, you know, X book is coming out on the marketplace and oh, I just discovered that there's two others that are coming out the same season or maybe a season later. I often tell our authors and other authors too, nobody is gonna do the book the way you're gonna do it. So if you have a clear point of differentiation, that clear point of differentiation will be there when that other article pops or when that other book comes out. And the more you can just keep to your hook and what makes you unique, that's, that's where your sweet spot's gonna be. Another question from Grace: when you speak about promotion budget, how much should an author set aside for promotion? Well, it really all depends on how you intend to spend the money. Is it First of all, many authors can't afford to set aside a budget. Others will decide, you know, I'm taking 3 trips in the next year, you know, I'm going to visit my parents or my husband's parents, so I'm going to plan a book event around that, or I'm going to plan a demo around that. You can kind of piggyback on things that are already planned. There's really no set budget. I mean, it's what you can afford to do, and Also, my main advice would be just to choose to spend money on the things that will actually lead to book sales. As much fun as it sounds to do a book signing, what it really often ends up at, I mean, I've heard many authors joke that it's really just pointing people to the bathroom in the bookstore, because it's hard for the bookstore to get the word out that you're coming in, and bookstores are few and far between. I absolutely recommend supporting local independent booksellers, But do an event that will lead to sales. Is it a demo at the farmer's market? Is it carrying around a case of books in the back of your car so that when you meet somebody and they're really compelled and interested in what you do, you say, "Hey, I happen to have a book with me. Are you interested?" There's a lot of ways to get your book out there, and if you can set aside for promotion, maybe it's paid ad, maybe it's a paid blog tour, or it's a way to advertise the book on, on other bloggers' sites or other bookseller sites that have great traffic. You want to spend the money where it'll actually lead to sales, because that's, that's ultimately what your publisher wants to see, and that's ultimately where you'll see a return on the investment.

We have a question earlier from Carolyn Hurley. I see—

oh sure—

can you talk about bound books compared to ebooks? I see so many people self-publishing ebooks recently.

Yeah, I could— I mean, that's a whole other presentation too. It really comes down to what kind of book you want and what your goals are in publishing. Many people still want to hold that physical book, both the author and their fans and the market that they're tapping into. But if you have a strong avenue for promotion and marketing online and your book is out, ebook publishing happens a lot faster, so that may be part of the equation too. If you— if it's done and you want to get it out and you don't care if it's bound or not, ebook publishing is a great way to go. But self-publishing and ebook publishing are also two different things. And so self-publishing, there's some, some really great options out there. And when I started, which was again just, you know, in the, in the past 5 years, there was still this kind of stigma around self-publishing and it was just starting to change. But now There's been some really awesome, fantastic self-published books out there that then have launched, launched into traditional books. But with self-publishing, you pay for the services, and so as an author, you have to be prepared to do that as well. There's a great company out in California called Greenleaf Publishing, and they're a nice middle ground because you do pay for their services, but they provide you with traditional design and editorial services of a traditional publisher. So that's kind of a middle road. And the key with self-publishing too is distribution. If you don't have a traditional publisher who's going to publish your bound book and have relationships with distributors, you have to be ready to single-handedly distribute your self-published book in booksellers and retail locations.

Good point.

Okay, great presentation. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me, and these questions were wonderful. And again, The proposal guidelines are on our website, LisaEckes.com, and I did see that some people mentioned they were going to follow me on Twitter @SallyEckes. I'd be happy to continue to answer questions there, send you sample query letters, and just stay in touch. It was a really wonderful experience to be a part of this Google+ conference.

Great. Thank you so much for coming. You know, we're making history today, so I'm happy to have you with us as we do this. Grace, thanks for coming by, and Cindy, thank you so much for stopping by. I actually have a longer break before the next one. We're coming back at 2:30, and our 2:30 one is— I'm trying to remember— it is the Hangout Helper. It's anything you want to know about Hangouts. If you want to know how to use Hangouts more, Ronnie Bincer will be with us at 2:30. They've really changed the game, and I think they're going to keep evolving with the chats and Hangout chats and video chats and all the different things we, we call them now. And Ronnie is really the authority on that subject. So Sally, thanks so much for bringing us your cookbook proposals and how to work with an agent. I know I always hear my friends saying online, you know, they're gonna write a book but they don't know what to do. So you've given us a lot of food for thought on that.

Well, thank you.

And I'm Chef Dennis Littley, and this is the first annual virtual bloggers conference on Google+. And thank you so much for joining us for this session, and I will see you in a little while.

Thank you.