9: Big News . . . We Have a Book Deal!! Behind the Proposal Process

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Hi, I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of the book Turn what's Working for you into what's Next, which comes out with Portfolio Penguin in September of 2016.

In this podcast I talk with peak performers to reverse engineer their most successful career. Pivots interview experts on what it takes to be agile in a rapidly evolving economy and open the kimono on what happens behind the scenes of my book and business. You can learn to capitalize on risk, fear and uncertainty as the doorways of opportunity. My promise is that you will leave every episode with practical tips, tools and tactics. For show notes from this episode, visit jennyblake Me Podcast.

If change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Today's call is about the behind the scenes process of getting a book deal and two book deals does not an expert make. That is my caveat. First and foremost, however, I was so grateful to have so much wonderful feedback from everybody who wrote to say congratulations and I thought that if I can peel back the curtain just a little bit and make the book writing or book selling process even the tiniest bit less intimidating for you, that that would be a success. So I'm going to share as much as I possibly can, take it all with a grain of salt. If anything I say doesn't resonate with you, by all means, ditch it. Before we jump in, I also want to say that in the month of November I'm going to be doing a little writing accountability group kind of modeled after NaNoWriMo, the national November Writers Month Novel Writing Month. But I'm going to do mine more. For those of us who are bloggers, it will be really light accountability with one or two calls just to cheer everybody on. So if you don't listen to the end of this call, keep an eye on the blog because I'll put out instructions for how to join for just a really light accountability group. My hope is to encourage all of us to write just a little bit every day for one month. Okay, before we jump in, in today's call, I'M going to talk about the process of getting a literary agent, writing a proposal, pitching that proposal to publishers. I'll also answer a few questions like why didn't I self publish? And how do I get organized? I may also split the call into two parts. So part two would be about organizing, writing, and just tackling the whole process once you do know for sure that you're going to write and publish a book. Thank you again to everybody who responded to my announcement with such great questions and words of encouragement and people who said, I'm going to buy your book even if it doesn't come out until 2016. I can't wait. Those are the kind of comments that motivate me so much, and I feel so very lucky to have such an amazing community of readers and friends. And this may sound cheesy, I know I've said it before, but nothing that I do would be possible without you, without those of you who are here listening to this call and giving me feedback and sticking around to hear what I have to say. So me getting a book deal with Portfolio Penguin for, for the Pivot Method is as much a credit to you as it is to me. If you weren't here reading and listening and commenting, there would be nothing for me to sell to Portfolio Penguin. So it really is a team effort.

All right, well, let's jump in. First, one of my favorite quotes that I heard from one of my earliest book mentors, Michael Larson. He wrote a book called how to Write a Book Proposal. And he said, it is not a question anymore of if you're going to get published, but when and how. I really love that because it's true now. We have so many options. He told me that back in 2010, and this is even more true now, today than it ever has been, that if you want to write a book, you absolutely can. If you want to publish that book, you absolutely can. It's not a question of if, but when and how. I'll come back to the question of why I don't want to self publish. But first, let me tell you a little bit. Colleen and Melissa both asked, who is your agent? How did you find her? And then, what is that relationship like? I thought I was going to self publish my first book, Life After College. I started writing it in 2008. I was on a roll. I thought, okay, by spring of 2009, graduation season, I'm going to self publish, get this book out there and be done. Instead, what happened was I hit total and complete book block. I had 80% of a draft. And then I couldn't even open the word file for six months. I felt completely dejected, like I was watching my dream die on the vine. And I didn't know why I felt so blocked around it until I attended a National Speakers association meeting. I thought, well, if my dream of being an author is on hold and is completely frustrating me, I can at least act as if I'm a professional speaker. I went to this meeting and lo and behold, I sat at the same table as Michael Larson, who I mentioned earlier. He gave me his copy of how to Write a Book Proposal, which is the book that he had written. And I thought, if that's not a sign from the universe to get back on the horse in terms of my book, I don't know what is. I would be crazy not to do something with this. It was at that point that I realized, oh, I don't want to self publish. I got really, really stuck at the thought of having to hire my own editor, hire a designer, come up with a cover image, figure out how to publish, print and distribute the book. That all just stopped me completely in my tracks. And when I really thought about it, I realized that I was just afraid. I was afraid of rejection. I didn't know how to pitch to traditional publishers. I didn't think they would want to hear from me, and I didn't feel confident that I could get a deal. Mostly it all felt like it was in a big black box. It seemed so far away and inaccessible to me, that entire process. Very, very cloudy, like San Francisco on a foggy day. The, the buildings are in there, but you can't see anything. Not to mention the fact that I was out here in California and I felt like that whole publishing world, they're off on the east coast somewhere. I don't know anybody out there. How do I get my foot in the door the first. So once I realized that I was originally just said I would self publish more out of fear and not understanding the traditional process, that's when I got that really nervous feeling like, oh, you know, maybe it is time to write a book proposal and just try. If I get rejected from every publishing house, fine, then I will self publish, But I'll at least know that I tried and that I didn't hold myself back out of fear. And so I used that book, how to Write a Book Proposal. And I also bought the other book that Michael Larson wrote called how to Find a Literary Agent.

The proposal is a big task. It is like a 40 or 50 page business plan. Though maybe if you're more succinct than me, you can get it shorter. I don't think length is certainly the driving goal. It's more like, how can you communicate to potential publishers? Think of, think of publishers like venture capitalists, but for ideas for the book writing world. They really, what they want to see is a business plan. Who are you? Why this book? Why are you the one to write it? Why now? That's really what you answer in the beginning. In the executive summary, I literally will put headings for each of those questions I just asked and answer them. And then there's a whole section on platform and marketing. How far is your reach? Who is in your audience? How can you demonstrate that this is going to be a good investment for that publishing house? How can you show partnerships, bulk sales, fellow authors or people, prominent people who have said that they will endorse the book? There is a lot of legwork that happens as far as the relationship side of things, even right up front in the proposal. You'll also write things like book jacket copy. Who thinks that, you know, who knows what their book jacket should say before you've even written the book? But it's part of the proposal, or at least it has been for me. And so, you know, these things, they feel a little bit laborious, like, why do I have to do all this? But in the end, it's very helpful. It's very helpful to have an idea of a marketing plan and the book jacket description and the approximate length, the approximate delivery timeline. The final piece of the proposal is an outline of the book and one or two sample chapters. And that takes quite a bit of time as well, if you can imagine. You haven't written this book yet. You have the general concept, but now it's time to outline it. That's a lot of thinking that goes into an outline. And it's not just a list that goes from 1 to 12 for each chapter. Typically the outline includes about half a page description for each chapter or part and ideally some sample text for each chapter or sample part. So the outline is pretty in depth. And then the sample chapter is just a full blown draft of one or two chapters of the book. And you can see that by the time you've done this whole process, my packet, I think my proposal itself was 45 pages. And then the sample chapter was about 10,000 words, which is long and about 30 pages. This is double spaced times New Roman.

At that point, it kind of chips away at the fear of what will I write? What do I have to say, I mean, you have to have so much figured out by the time you're getting ready to even sell the proposal that.

For me, it built my confidence in the book just because it forced me to find some clarity. Of course, all of those things can change later on, but it's good. That's a really strong foundation. So going back to finding an agent, back in the life after college days, I came up with a proposal. But the other helpful thing was to have a query email. And I sent the query email cold to a bunch of agents. I sent it to 10 and I was surprised about half did want to set up a call with me. So five or so. And some, just like with the book deal itself, some agents will say no for the same reason that others say yes. Even back with life after college, some of them told me, there's no hook here. Your audience doesn't buy books, your platform isn't big enough. But then there were other agents that were really excited to talk with me. And so don't think of it as you're trying to do backflips just to find an agent who will take pity on you and take you under their wing. You're really looking for a mutually beneficial relationship. Agents are looking for great authors as much as you are looking for them. And Tara Moore, I just saw her at a conference, she just came out with a book called Playing Big. She gave some great advice, which is that if you already have a substantial platform, maybe you don't send the formal query email to an agent, but rather ask them to just set up a 30 minute call. You know, hey, I'm considering turning my platform into a book. I would love to get your feedback and thoughts. And that way. She said they didn't respond to her as though it was a formal request, a formal submission, you know, dear Tara, thank you for submitting your proposal at this time, I regretfully decline. She said it was so much easier to have informal conversations. And then the agents felt like, oh, maybe they kind of felt like they had discovered her. So that's a more casual way to go about it, I think. Good, if you have some extra leverage from already having a sizable platform. In my case, I didn't. So I wanted to have everything really built up. And so I have the query email. And the query email was a few short paragraphs, very succinct, lots of bullets, bold little headings. It was, my agent's name is Sarah. So let's say in the beginning it would say, hi, Sarah, I see that you've done books like X, Y and Z. Here's a little bit about me, a little bit about the book. If you're interested in learning more, I can send a proposal upon request. Thanks, I look forward to hearing from you. Now. How I actually found Sarah was that I was almost getting ready to sign with an agent who I had found there were about three that I was deciding between. He sent me his contract. My dad said, oh, you know, you should run this by our family friend who's a lawyer before signing. My uncle is a very well known musician. He founded the Kronos Quartet. And so he has a lawyer that he's worked with over the years for something like 30 years. Well, okay. So we sent this contract to Bob, the lawyer, and Bob said, you know, I don't love this contract. There are some clauses in here that are really not standard. I don't love it. Would you be open to me sending this proposal to my friend who's a literary agent in New York? That friend turned out to be Sarah. She was interested. We had a call right away and the rest is history. So even though I followed the traditional process, in the end my agent did come from a connection, but I would have never known that we had that connection if I hadn't kind of followed the normal steps of the process.

Then once you do have an agent, they will really work with you to revise and craft the proposal. Some of you who have been reading my website, especially the new one, Jennyblake me, know that it's been a very long, winding road for me since Life After College. Life After College came out in March of 2011. And I've never. I don't have kids, but I kind of make the same joke that parents make, which is you sort of have to forget the first book ever happened in order to want to write a second one. Because it is just. It is a really long, grueling, trying process at times.

So 2011, the book came out in 2013, I thought, okay, maybe I'll give this a shot again. Again. And so I drafted a proposal. I was at the time, I thought, I'll call it the pivot year. That year of your life where you don't know what the hell is going on.

Sarah read my proposal and she just kind of said, no, I couldn't sell this tomorrow if I tried. It's not, it's not there yet. Your idea isn't clear enough. You don't sound confident. Revise and get. Come back to me. Well, it turned out I needed to. I needed to Live some more. I so glad for that feedback because it was nowhere near ready. It was nowhere near what it is now. My life continued to change so much every single month from that time in 2013 to the point where finally then in about May of 2014, 14, I thought okay, now it's, now it's really becoming clearer. I revised the proposal again and at that point it still needed work, but we could, it was something to work with I knew wouldn't have to wait another year. The idea was now more solid. And so Sarah and I revised the proposal and sample chapter. I hired an outside editor, Heather, who reads the Jenny Blake website newsletter. And yeah, we just kind of went back and forth for a few rounds and then got the proposal ready to go.

That took, like I said, a couple months. Once the proposal is ready, then it's a little different. So in my case because I had had a first publisher, they had first right of refusal. That means that they get to look at the proposal first and make an offer first if they would like. Otherwise they have a month to make that decision though it's not binding otherwise I could then shop it around. So we sent it to my first publisher. They said no, wasn't a fit. And I agree this next book is a little more business and career oriented than the publisher running press was really a fit for. So it was time to shop it around. This is where things happen very, very quickly. So by the time we knew what Sarah does is she makes a list of top houses and you just never know. As I said earlier, you never know. You don't. We didn't know what they were going to say. I, this whole time though I have had a good feeling. I have felt like I know that I'm on to something. The last time that I had publisher meetings was 2010. I still had a full time job at Google. My newsletter subscribers, the list size was 500 and I didn't, I hadn't been running my own business or anything this time around. Oh boy, different story this time around. I eat, live, breathe, sleep, books, publishing, marketing business, all of it. And so I did feel more confident going in and I felt very confident in the idea more because every time I would mention it to someone their eyes would light up and they would say oh, I need that book or oh, I just went through a pivot or oh, I'm about to go through that. And so I felt good. And my policy with pitching to publishers is I don't get upset until the fat lady sings. So I don't care until every single last publisher says no, then I can react and figure out plan B. And I would just like with the first time around with life after college. I was perfectly happy to self publish this next time if the publisher said no. But alas, we started shopping it around and there was a lot of interest. Again, some said, no, this isn't a fit for us. Some said, we don't do. We don't really like the business career angle only if you're willing to make these tweaks then yes. Some said, sorry, we have a book that's way too similar that we're already working on and some were really interested. So again it's outside feedback. Isn't the end all be all because this, it just, it's so different how everyone will react just like the first time around. Some thought, wow, her platform is fantastic. Some thought it's too small. And so it's really again about finding a good fit. The publishers who were interested, we set up in person meetings and you should have seen me going into those. I was so nervous. I wore the same dress to every single meeting because I just didn't want to have to think about what to wear. So I had a special dress for the occasion. The way it works is these meetings last, I would say up to an hour. And it's typically a team from the publisher. Maybe it's an editor, a president of a division if you're lucky, there's a publicist, a PR person and it's kind of like a job interview. It's like tell us about the book, why you, what's your marketing plan? What are your thoughts on xyz? Do you have any questions for us? And I could ask things like what's your vision for the book? Do you think it would be hardcover or paperback? What timing. Do you think that something like this should come out? And it's a two way conversation to see if there's a fit. Those meetings happened over the course of two weeks. They don't drag on because if you think about it, this is a period of trying to really generate interest and do that quickly. What you don't want is for the proposal to just sit on someone's desk and fade away. So it's really about here it is, who's interested? And then Sarah put out a call for bids on my birthday and I, I could not sleep that those two weeks I could hardly function. I had a crazy neck spasm that I knew was a somatic response to how big this opportunity was. And it's not that I was upset or stressed in a negative way, but I just felt the gravity of what was happening and that this could be such an enormous change in my life and such a huge step in my next direction. So I remember one night I went to bed at 7 or 8pm, slept for 11 hours because I think my system, my body was just thinking, oh, it was just so big. And I was so nervous at points that I just, it would come to the end of the night and I just didn't want to torture myself with thinking about it. So I would just go to bed. So anyway, Sarah put the call out for bids, and that's really exciting. To have more than one is really an honor. And it means that there's more room for negotiation or for choice, really, with life after college. 27 publishers said no one said yes. So whatever deal that they want to make, that's the deal we took. And in this time, it was really nice. And like I said, I felt so grateful that everyone who we met with was so smart, had such an incredible vision for the book. And I would have been incredibly lucky to end up at any of the houses that we met with. In the end, we went with Portfolio Penguin, and they just, they're a great fit. They saw the vision of the book from the very beginning. They were so enthusiastic. We met with Adrienne, the president, and Natalie, who will be my editor. And they've published tons of new media authors like me, Seth Godin, Richard Branson, Pam Slim, the recent book Girl Boss by Sophia Amorosa. It just felt like they. This is what they do. Business career, kind of business, entrepreneurship. It was really exciting to me. So that's really. That's how it went down. And now the official contract process can take time. So I've already moved into getting organized around writing and I will meet with my editor soon to discuss next steps. So to those who asked, how do you work with your agent? What's the agent's role? In my case, she's really the deal maker. And thank goodness for that.

I would not be a good negotiator in these situations. And the agent is also the advocate for the book the whole way through. When there's, if ever there's a discrepancy between what the publisher wants and what the author wants, the agent can be a good intermediary.

Dan asked. So he said he's been working on a nonfiction book and has been crafting a manuscript and working with an editor. And they've been discussing a few editorial phases of shaping and polishing prior to submitting to agents or publishers. And he said, is this overkill? I've had other people ask too, do you think you should write the book first? Or how much massaging should I do on the book before I try and get an agent or a book deal? With life after college, I had written 80% of the book and I think that was a bonus in the proposal. I said 80% written I can deliver in three months a draft. This time around I didn't. I don't like pressure. I don't work well under deadlines or at least I prefer not to have them. I guess I can effectively meet them. I was the girl in college that read every page of every book and assignment like weeks in advance. Of course, I mean anyone that knows me knows I had a spreadsheet for that. But it made me nervous this time around to pitch a book without having it written. And I had a lot of content that I've been collecting in the last three years, some of it public, some not. This time around I decided I would not write the whole book first partly because I'm self employed now I actually need the advance in order to put some of my business activities on hold or slow them down in order to focus on writing the book. So this time I actually felt like.

I would like that money. I didn't know how much it would be, if it would be enough to pay for two weeks time off or two or three months. Thankfully it is at least the latter. And I but with life after college I had a full time job at Google so I didn't need the money as much as I kind of felt like I needed it now because I kind of had a full schedule with coaching and speaking and so to write the book now I will slow things down for the next few months and I will also say that during the publisher meetings it felt good and very different to look them in the eyes and say I am betting the next five to 10 years of my career on this book. I want to sell this as much as you do. I am going to do every single thing I can to sell this book. Not just during the launch window, but for the Long Tail. And I meant it. And those of you listening know I don't sell sell a lot of products on my blog. I do not consider myself an online marketer. That was a very, very tough realization for me in 2012 and 2013 because I felt like I should be and I should be trying to sell a lot of things a lot of the time. But I didn't like it. So I did. For me, I would rather have you all hanging out and reading and not feel pressure for me to sell or you to buy and then sell things like SPE or consulting or this book. In any case, the point is that I'm really serious about creating this book and making a business out of it. And so.

That'S. I was willing to wait basically. And so now I will write the book. My draft is due in April, so for massaging I would say like how much you should massage. I would say it's up to you. What I found with life after college and it may be very different this time around. Not sure is that the editing and direction of the book, you as the author really do get to drive it. I don't think that it's the quality of your prose that's going to get the book deal. It's the business plan. It is showing your reach and your plan for marketing. And I think they want to see that you're a good communicator and a good writer. But in none of the meetings did, did the people who I was meeting with say like talk to us about your writing style or you know, your writing. No one rejected it because oh, your writing isn't up to par or things like that. I think they. And you know, my sample chapter was not perfect. At a certain point I just thought I gotta ship this thing and I could edit this forever but. And all the ideas weren't even clear to me yet. So anyway, I think they want to see a certain threshold, but it's not a huge focus. And I would say you could reach a point of diminishing returns of editing actual manuscript if you're waiting on that to then pitch. I would really focus on getting the proposal clean and coming up with some really creative marketing ideas. And we'll talk about that in the next round. In the next call recording that I'm going to do okay. Bruce and Laura both asked, why not self publish? I'm going to paraphrase what they said, but they basically said why are you going for traditional big house publishing over the millennial, young whippersnapper, tech savvy, entrepreneurial route of self publishing. And I've even had people say, look, Tim Ferriss published through Amazon and James Altucher published himself and look how much money they made and their books did great. And a lot of people have said why would you. Publishing is a dying industry. Why would you do that? There is not a bone in my body that wanted to self publish.

I would as I Said I would gladly do it and make that work if that was clear that that was the only way for me 100%. I have nothing against it for other people. For me personally, the thought of having to pay and own every single step, like I said, paying for my own editors all the way through, hiring my own designer for the COVID paying for printing and distribution, trying to figure out how to get this book out there. And again, it goes back to being the online marketer thing of selling lots of copies to lots of people. It's not necessarily my strength. For those of you who care to know, my combined list size is maybe 12,000 who are subscribed between Jenny Blake and Life After College. Some of my friends have 80,000, 180,000. That's different. When you write to that size list and say, hey, I have a book. And if 1% convert, wham, bam. Now that's not to say if my book could have gone viral or people liked it and passed it along to a friend. But the point is that for me, self publishing felt.

Shackles on. As Martha Beck would say, it felt like a lot of work.

Because I'm running my own business. I don't have a lot of extra cash just like sitting around for me to fund this. And I personally, I didn't want to do Kickstarter crowdfunding. I feel like, who doesn't want to write a book? I don't want to ask you to pay for my project. And I, I hope I'm not offending anyone who's done crowdfunding, but for something like a book, I just feel like, write your damn book.

Write it and sell it after. But I don't know. Seth Godin's done that with a lot of success because he gives really cool bonuses. And so I take it back. You can do really cool things with the bonuses that people can indicate their support for the project. And if that funds it, yay for everyone. It's just not really for me. I want to save up all that marketing and like, hey, will you support this project for when the book is released? Not too many times leading up to it. Also, I love traditional publishers. You've seen, if you read my site, you've seen my bookshelf, my color coded library of glee. I love books. Authors are my heroes. I used to hang out in San Francisco's Green Apple Bookstore as a kid and dog ear the pages because I read so fast. I didn't want to buy the books. And I just.

It has a lot of reverence for me. I love These traditional publishers and it's very iconic to me. It's one of the things I love about New York and I love that I work with a team and that this is their core business creating beautiful books and helping put them in bookstores. I love bookstores and I am excited that they can help me with the COVID and they can help with the marketing and especially with a bigger house now like Portfolio Penguin, they have a lot of muscle and can help me get coverage and can help send out hundreds of advanced copies to hopefully some of you listening and bloggers and media people. And I'm thrilled to be part of that team. And if traditional publishing changes a lot by the time my next book is coming out or they don't want to work with me again, okay, I'm always willing to revisit. But for now I wouldn't have it any other way and I feel very blessed. And I will also say that I love the gatekeeper aspect. Bring it on. I said during one of my meetings I said make me work for.

Was to one of the editors at the traditional house. I was saying I don't understand why people say the kind of issue the gatekeeper aspect. And in a lot of ways in my life I like going against the grain and being different but in this way and kind of like going, you know, just not having to buy in always to the status quo. But with this I like that I had to work my ass off. I like that it took me a year to get a proposal that was worth selling. I'm so glad I had to work so hard to get it because I it feels just very exciting. And I think that the final reason.

What I love my core business that I really that lights me up is speaking public speaking and consulting with companies for those events. Having a traditional publisher really makes a huge difference and they if I self published I'm sure I could still get those opportunities. But having a traditional publisher does open a lot of doors and it's a nice credential for what I want to do. So because I don't want to be a full time Internet marketer type.

For me I want and need the credibility and the name attached because it means that other kind of well known organizations or conferences or technology companies also want to see that brand value, that brand kind of connection. So it's helpful for me to that way as well.

Now don't get me wrong, I am there's pressure to sell it but I try and think of that as fun and not too scary and we'll talk More about that in a second recording. Okay.

I'm just looking through the questions to see if there are any more. For part one.

I think that Mitch had asked a question, what to do first, whom to contact, various stages. The other thing I would say, if you happen to have author friends, you could always reach out to them and say, and send them your query email about you, about your platform, about the book, and say, hey, would you mind forwarding this to your agent to see if he or she is interested? If so, happy to send my full proposal. That way you're not putting pressure on your friend to make the connection. You're letting the agent be the decider with no pressure to even respond to you directly. Sometimes I think that can be a nice softer approach, but if you don't know any authors or agents, don't feel bad. Like I said, they want to find good talent as much as you would want to find them. So that at that point it's kind of a numbers game. You just, there are directories you can search online and you just look for agents who kind of work in your category and start submitting. The other way you can find agents and editors is reading the acknowledgments at the back of your favorite books. They will often thank their agents and editors. So if there are books related to yours, that can be a good way to see who works in your category.

All right. Hopefully that covers many of your questions. If you have more, of course, send them my way. In part two, I'm going to talk about organizing a book which is a massive behemoth mountain of a task writing and how I'm tackling the writing process and gremlin taming. Because what would a book be without plenty of gremlins to go along with it? As I mentioned at the start, stay tuned on the blog as well for my little November Writing Accountability Group spreadsheet tracker thing. That should be a lot of fun. And thank you again to all of you for listening, for reading, for sending me such great questions. I really appreciate it and I hope to make you proud with this book. And I, more than that, I hope that it's. I hope that it's helpful for you and the only way that it will be is to, for us to keep having this two way dialogue. So I really cannot thank you enough and I look forward to staying in touch throughout the entire process. All right, stay tuned for part two. Coming right up. Bye.

Foreign.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast to learn more and get in touch visit Jennyblake Me where I blog about systems at the intersection of mind, body and business. Or find me on Twitter ennyblake. And remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.