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W. Terry Whalin: How to Write Book Proposals That Sell · The Daily Writer

• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Rider.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Each weekday, we bring you a short lesson that helps you live out the four practices of a great writer: creativity, consistency, courage, and connection.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Here on the weekend edition, we take a deeper dive into those topics through conversations with writers and teaching that helps us apply what we're learning.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: For more, you can visit us at dailyriderlife.com.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hey friends, today I am thrilled to dive into a topic that is often ignored among writers, but it's critical to get right if you want to be successful, and particularly if you want to be successful at selling more books.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: My guest is Terry Whalen, a former literary agent and acquisitions editor at Morgan James Publishing.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's written more than 60 books for traditional publishers, and several of his books have sold over a hundred thousand copies.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're not familiar with book sales, numbers, and that sort of stuff, that's a lot of books.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Terry has also written for more than 50 magazines.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: He's written two proposals that received six-figure advances from publishers.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: As a frustrated editor in 2004, Terry wrote Book Proposals That Sell 21 Secrets to Speed Your Success, which has over 130 five-star reviews on Amazon and has helped a lot of authors.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And now the revised edition of that book just came out, and we're going to talk about that here on this episode.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Terry's also authored an innovative training for writers called Write a Book Proposal, and he's an active member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and he lives near Denver, Colorado.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as I mentioned, we're going to be talking about book proposals today.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in this conversation, Terry answers all of your burning questions about that topic, including what is a book proposal and why is it important?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: What does an acquisitions editor do within a publishing company?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And why do self-published authors need a proposal?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: As well as six or seven other questions, which I didn't have time to list off right here.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: But this is a great conversation and this is an important topic.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one thing that I'm that I want to mention is if you are an independently published author, meaning you self-publish, it may be easy for you to think, I don't need to worry about book proposals because only people who want a traditional publishing arrangement need a book proposal.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: But trust me, you do because going through the book proposal process really helps you to fine-tune who is your audience, what's your marketing plan, and all those kinds of things that are so critical for your book success.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So even if you don't plan on using a publisher, make sure and check out this interview.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's really, really great.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Terry shares a lot of great tips.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, before we get into the interview, I want to mention make sure to download Terry's free book proposal checklist at bookproposals that sell dot com.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's get to the conversation with Terry Whalen.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Terry, welcome to the Daily Rider Podcast.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is a pleasure and an honor and a privilege to have you here.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks for making time to do this uh interview.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, Kent.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: I always love to uh talk about books any chance that I get.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I appreciate the opportunity.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you are the ideal person to talk about book proposals because not only do you have lots of experience over the years in the publishing and writing industry, you literally wrote the book on book proposals.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like literally, literally.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: So you are indeed the expert here.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: So uh let me start out with this question.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I want to jump into what a book proposal is in just a minute.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: But before I do that, can you talk for a second about what is the first step that most people take to write a book and why is that actually backwards?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, most people uh sit down with their computer or a typewriter, or a lot of people even use pen and paper anymore, from what I hear from a lot of my writer friends, and uh just start writing to write their book.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the problem with that is that you you really just do it kind of haphazard.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: You don't really have a plan as far as where you're going with that and who your audience is and why you're doing it, and how you're gonna market the book, and just all those kinds of business questions that that really are built into a book proposal.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's why people do it, do it backwards.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: They they write their book and then they turn around and look to see how they're gonna get it published and what they're gonna do with it.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of a kind of a backwards approach, honestly.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, not not for fiction, particularly, because I mean, for fiction, you have to write the whole story and have a have a really great manuscript and have a beginning, middle, and end, and all that kind of thing that really holds holds people's attention, but you still need a plan, even if you write fiction.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: How do you how do you talk with authors when when they give you pushback on these kinds of businessy types of things related to the book?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of people think of a book as I just want to creatively express myself, I want to write this book to share a story, or I feel uh, you know, from a spiritual standpoint, God's calling me to write a book.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if they give you pushback on these kinds of business-y type of things, how do you address that with them?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, a lot of people don't realize, um, Kent, that there are over 4,500 new books that come out every day.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that insane?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it is insane.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, my friend Penny Sanseveri, uh, who's a uh book marketing expert in in San Diego, I I was sitting at a workshop in San Francisco where she said that.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now I didn't call her out at the workshop, but I I went up to her afterwards, I said, Man, Penny, 4,500 books a day, new books a day.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a lot of books.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Where'd you get that number?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it turns out she got that from uh books in print.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it would include the self-published, the traditional books, everything out there, but it's still a huge volume of stuff that's going out into the market every day.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: So writers have to have a plan.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, sure, self-publishing is big, you know, 1.6 million books were self-published last year.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: But what people don't realize is that on average, those self-published books sell somewhere between 100 and 200 copies during the lifetime of the book.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, that's that's not too many books.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little discouraging.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you uh if you really want to get granular about it, when you start dividing the time that you actually spend creating the book versus the money that you make on the book, it's you know, you're making probably like two cents an hour or something if you want to look at it from that standpoint.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: So it pays to have a plan for sure.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: It does, it does, and uh that would be true whether you're gonna self-publish or whether you're gonna go to a traditional house or what whatever you're gonna do here.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's dive into the topic of book proposals.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: For those who are not familiar with this concept of a proposal, what is a book a book proposal and why is it so important?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's it's really important because uh literary agents and publishers look at that proposal to decide if uh they're gonna offer you a book contract or not.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: And if if you're gonna contract with an agent who's gonna turn and shop it to to publishers or whether you're gonna get a publishing contract from a from a publisher.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's the business document that contains all kinds of information, which never appears in your manuscript.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: So um a book proposal needs to needs to tell us who who's the audience, who's gonna buy this.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's not everybody, but it there's a specific audience that's gonna buy your book, and maybe uh a first, second, and third audience that are gonna buy your book.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and it helps it helps publishers make make those kinds of decisions about which which books to publish and which which to not.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone is going to self-publish a book, should they still put together a book proposal, even though they're not submitting it to a publisher or an agent?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is there still value in them going through that process, even when they're self-publishing?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because um, even if you're going to self-publish, you still need to uh identify your market, uh, have a plan, have a realistic marketing plan, which is all part of your proposal.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: You need to understand your competition.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the line that a lot of authors use is that my my book is unique, there is no competition.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, right, that's not true.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Every every book is gonna compete in the marketplace.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you use that line that my book is unique, there's no competition, you know, the agent or the editor is gonna just kind of roll their eyes.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: They know that that's not true out there, and so you you really haven't done your work.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, as even if you're you're self-published, you're gonna compete with something.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to know what that competition is.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: So whenever you put together a proposal, and I know we could do gosh, a whole series of podcasts on all the nuances of what goes in a proposal and so forth.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you cover all that in your book, which uh obviously we're gonna point people to that as well.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: The first person that that is going to go to after it goes to an agent is is probably the acquisitions editor out of publisher.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is that correct?
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, those those are usually the the people that are gonna see it first.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And what is an acquis acquisitions editor and what is their role within the book publishing company?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it varies a little differently from publisher to publisher, but uh I've worked at three different different publishers as an acquisitions editor.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: So generally, an acquisitions editor is a um a hunter and a scout.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: So you're uh looking for the uh the books that that publishing house is gonna publish.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: So you're uh you're contacting agents and authors and uh sifting through, seeing if it's a it's gonna be a good fit because you understand what the publisher is is looking for.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you're you're looking for those things, and then you have to pitch pitch that book internally to see if uh your colleagues are gonna agree with you, dude, that indeed they should publish this book.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: And um it was real eye-opening for me um Kent years ago.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: I I'd written over 50 books, and then I became an acquisition senator inside a publishing house.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I had never I had never seen this process internally about how publishers make make decisions about which books they're going to publish and which books they're gonna reject.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it was real eye-opening to me to have to uh and a bit intimidating sometimes to go into a room full of jaded publishing executives and try to pitch your little book uh to them to get a get a contract from an author, because the one person that's not in the room when all that happens is the author.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Your only way of getting in that room is through your pitch or through your proposal or telling something to that editor that's gonna go in and represent you.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: And those meetings can really be brutal.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I remember the uh chief operating officer of uh the public first publisher that I was working with, there'd be a whole room full of full of people in this room and with their little books and their tabs for different books we were gonna pitch and everything.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: And uh when I'd get to some books, he would look up and he'd say, uh, we could sell two of those books, Terry.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: One to you and one to me and one to somebody else.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and you talk about a deal killer.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was just gonna nobody wanted to publish two books.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're looking, we're looking to publish thousands of books with this book.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so um that was a total wipe for that book.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, well, okay, everybody, let's flip the tab, we're going on to the next book.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's all that book got when that whenever that happened.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Then what is it exactly that that acquisitions editors are are looking for?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Are they basically looking for something they can sell to their would it be the publication board or whatever decision-making group that that is at that company?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: They're looking for something that is really going to sell itself in a way because it's so compelling.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: They've done their market research, it's written well, it's enticing, and all those kinds of things.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Is that really what an acquisitions editor is looking for?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a it's a combination of uh of understanding what that publisher publishes, for one thing.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so every publisher has their own niche and own types of books that they publish, but also understanding the the value that that author is going to bring to the to the table uh through their audience or their their people that love them and their tribe type thing, but also understanding the importance of of the book and the way that book is going to get out there and do some do some good in the world.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's kind of a combination of understanding all that and uh, you know, like my wife, my wife usually says to me, you know, uh, you only get one chance to make a good first impression.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's so true.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: So and so basically with your proposal, you're really trying to put your your best foot forward so that you can hook that person and hook everybody else into it.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, sometimes I'd pitched a title, you know, and everybody goes, oh, that's a good one, let's do that.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's all we needed to do, you know, for the for that book.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, other times it's it's uh a forward by somebody or some endorsements that that's with it.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, authors just don't put a lot of enough energy and effort into this plan that they're making to to hook the people.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so I wrote uh book proposals at sell originally in 2004 just as a frustrated editor, because it's like, how can I get better submissions, you know, from writers?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: How can I help writers actually get book contracts from agents and publishers?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's why I put this together in the first place.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: What are the parts of proposals that tend to be uh how should I phrase this?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: What are the parts of a book proposal that authors tend to mess up the worst?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Would it be things like the competition in the marketplace?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Would it be things like the marketing plan?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Would it be uh the writing itself?
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like what are some of the biggest areas that authors really need to pay attention to with the book proposal to make sure it's super good?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, the the competition is a is a big area.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh when I worked at Howard Books, which was a part of Simon Ashuster, we couldn't even fill out our internal documents, for example, if we didn't have the competitive titles.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: So those have to be those have to be in there.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um a lot of authors don't put much work into the title of the book.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: They figure, oh, the publisher is gonna come up with the title.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, don't delegate that to the publisher because what I've found through the years is if I come up with a really good title and I pitch that title or some alternative titles, that title is gonna be the title of the book.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: So don't just say come forthcoming or whatever that people put on there that's that's generic.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Come up with a really good, catchy title and check it out.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, make sure that that it's gonna work.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the writing is really gonna be the key to the storytelling.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, I remember a lot of my members of my publication board would often uh skip all the front part of the proposal and go back to the writing and look at that first to see if if it really grabbed their attention, if if they thought it was a book we should publish.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a combination of all those things and the and the marketing plan, the personal marketing plan has to be appropriate as well.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I I mean I talk to authors all the time, and I talk, I called, talked to one author, I asked him what kind of ideas he had for marketing.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: He said, you know, he said, I have a really cute granddaughter.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think we ought to do television commercials.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it was all I could do to not laugh at this guy on the phone because uh just think about it.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, how many television commercials do you see about books out there?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now yeah, very few.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, James Patterson can do it, but he's a billionaire, folks.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so he can they can definitely put James Patterson on and have commercials, but for the rest of us, we're not gonna be doing TV commercials, that's just yeah, that's true.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, so come up with realistic marketing ideas that you can actually achieve.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, so for example, um, you know, postcards are cheap, for example.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: So, so if you told a publisher that if if they printed X amount of postcards, let's say several thousand postcards, then you would actually put stamps on those postcards and mail those postcards away, or you would go by bookstores and they could use them as bag stuffers.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, those are those are practical ideas that when people read that, you go, yeah, the author's really gonna do something here.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna do something, the author's gonna do something.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: We can sell books here doing that.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think that that's really fascinating because a lot of authors, particularly when they want to go through a traditional publisher, I think they believe much of the time that the publisher is going to come up with a great title, the publisher is gonna do pretty much all the marketing, that their job is is basically to deliver a good solid book to the publisher, and the publisher is gonna take the ball all the rest of the way down the field for you know for uh a touchdown.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: When is is it actually the case where the author has to really make it easy for the publisher to say yes?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: So when you think through all those things like a great title, a great marketing plan, your willingness to put your boots on the ground and do a do a lot of marketing work, does that make it easier for the publisher to then say yes because they realize the author is committed, they're serious, they they are aligned with the publisher in terms of really helping this book succeed?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it does, Kent.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, my my personal revelation about this uh came uh when I was years ago when I was a literary agent, I had a little literary agency, and I got invited to uh Mark Victor Hanson was putting on this event out in Los Angeles uh called Mega Book Marketing University, you know, the co-author for the Chicken Soup for the Soul Books.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh I was I went out there as an agent.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: I took pitches from authors.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: There were like 400 people at this event, and we had our old notebooks and we were listening to speakers and everything.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it was during that event that I kind of woke up.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, at that point in my life, I'd written about 50 books for traditional publishers.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've written two proposals that got six-figure advances, for example.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I my books were beautiful, they were in bookstores, but I was receiving negative royalty statements.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, my books never earn back their advance.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's something that a lot of public people never talk about, but uh I would say 90% of nonfiction books never earn back their advance, which is which shows really that you know it's just a few people in the a few bestsellers in each publishing house that are really carrying the uh carrying the load for the for the okay.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it it showed me as an author, I was I wasn't doing anything back then to really promote my book.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I had a uh Terry Whalen.com website, but uh social media didn't exist back then.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have a newsletter, I didn't have a blog, I didn't have any way of really reaching my readers out there.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: And Jack Canfield was one of the speakers at this uh at this meeting, and Jack has written this book called The Success Principles.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: And great book.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you read that book, uh, the very first success principle is that I will take a hundred percent responsibility for my own success.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now, none of us want to take a hundred percent responsibility.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: We'd love for our publisher or agent or publicist or somebody other than us to take that responsibility, but I made a decision back then that I was going to do whatever I could to promote my books.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so I've taken that stance here since 2007.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I do have a blog and I have a newsletter and I give away stuff on my website and just all kinds of things that I'm doing to try to.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Engage people and engage my engage my readers.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that that makes me a different kind of author than the typical author that's out there.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that marketing component seems to be the critical thing between a book's success and a and a book that's not successful.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because you can you can have a great book, but if nobody reads it, then it's not it's probably not worth much.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's like that old thing if a tree falls in the forest, does it actually make a noise if nobody's there to hear it?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I always think if if you write a great book but nobody reads it, does it matter if the book exists or not?
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that marketing component really can be um it's such an important facet of this.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what is the mindset shift that that you think authors need to make in order to write a great book proposal?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess what I'm asking is in your experience, what is the difference between authors who succeed at this and authors who don't succeed at this?
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Is it writing ability?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Is it is it marketing ability?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Is it self-confidence?
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: What is what is really the game-changing mindset shift that authors need to have with all this whole process?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's it's a combination of things.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I do think it's a it's a it's a mindset and a and a shift that they have to make, but they also have to have the writing ability.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: So um, and you know, I I always encourage people to write for magazines because um I've I've done a lot of print magazine work over the years, and they're shorter than books, and you can reach a lot more people with them than books, and you can learn a lot about your craft and how to how to write a good good piece, just writing short articles for magazines.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I always encourage people to do that that kind of thing in this process, but yeah, it's it's a combination of all those things that that have to work for that book to get out there and and really succeed in the marketplace.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I I usually say that you know publishing is is being in the right place at the right time with the right person, with the right stuff.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I understand lots of rights have to line up for that.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: But we have to be out there as as authors, and if we're not pitching our stuff, then nobody's gonna catch it and nobody's gonna pick it up and use it.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a really clear sense where you you have to not just create good and helpful stuff, but you have to believe in it enough to actually market it.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of authors really recoil at that idea of promoting themselves because they don't want to be that guy or that girl who's always on social media or always sending out email stuff, constantly promoting their own stuff and being kind of pushy about it.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: But there is that sense in which, if you believe in your message, you should want to get the word out, shouldn't you?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you if you believe you have something helpful for people, shouldn't you want to promote that because you believe that you're improving people's lives?
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you should.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: And really, uh, I would you know sort of flip it.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: People need to really emphasize not themselves in this process, says really the benefits that that person is going to gain by reading your steps.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: So then you're not really promoting yourself, you're promoting the benefits for your readers in that in that process.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's one of the keys out there, I think, to to make it make it a work.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't matter whether you however you publish, that you still need still need that process.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I mean, back to Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield, I mean, they got rejected over 140 times, you know, for chicken before they finally found a little publisher in Florida that was gonna publish their book.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: And they told their publisher that they were gonna sell a million books in the first year.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the publisher laughed at them.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: They'd never sold a million copies of anything at that point.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: They just thought that was ridiculous.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it took them a year and a half to do that.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: But they got up every day and they decided they were gonna follow the rule, what they called the rule of five.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: They were gonna do five things every day to promote their book.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: They were gonna appear on a television show or a radio show or write a magazine article or a guest blog post or a podcast or uh do social media or whatever they were gonna do, but they were gonna do something consistently over and over until it caught fire out there.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, chicken soup for the soul now is one of the best-selling series in the English language.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know how many books are in that series by any chance?
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't, I don't have any clue, but it's it's got to be well over a hundred, isn't it?
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: I would say, oh yeah, they're well, they're well over a hundred.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: They've um, you know, the brand still keeps going.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: There, I still keep seeing um, you know, they're still making new editions, all that kind of thing.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, it it's amazing.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: We went to a um, so here where I live outside of St.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Louis, every year our library district has a huge book sale.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just hundreds of thousands of books they're wanting to kind of clean out of the library system.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: And every year I go, and in the the not, I guess it's the inspirational section or whatever it is, I always see all these chicken suit for the soul books, you know, because and there's so many of them.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember looking at those, this has just been a couple months ago, and thinking, I'm just blown away at the empire that these guys have built with this one simple idea, but then expanding it into all these different areas and for these very specific audiences.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the most brilliant thing I've ever seen.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the books are really good, and they don't have to write them, it's all you know, reader submitted, I guess, which is genius if you can get other people to write the content for you and then do a whole series.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's pretty smart, smart business thinking.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: But they but they totally got rejected, you know.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: Short stories don't sell, right?
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they heard they heard all that and they just kept going until they finally found somebody that would would publish it and get it out there for them.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: I I love the the uh the attitude of that that we're just gonna do it until it works, we're not gonna quit, we're not gonna stop.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so many writers, we just we just have this tendency sometimes to quit before before we really find success with something.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it happens over and over where you know you send it out a couple of times and you get rejected, and I say, Well, I guess nobody wanted this.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, these guys didn't do it a couple of times, they did it over 140 times.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: I know it's insane.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a real commitment that, but whenever they got rejected, uh they would use the word next to each other, and that's what they would say, because which is a hopeful word, you know, it's like, well, this one didn't work, where's the next one?
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, right.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what people have to do is they have to believe in their stuff enough that they keep at it and keep marketing it because you, as the author, are the one that's the most passionate about your material.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: So if you give up and you stop marketing or telling people about your stuff, um no wonder it's not gonna sell.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Terry, this has been an absolute blast.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: I I love this conversation because I've never had anybody on, I don't think, on the podcast talking specifically about book proposals.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this is such a critical element of success, whether we're self-publishing or going the traditional route or or somewhere in between.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Where can people find more find out more about you, your writing, your books, and particularly your your brand new book, How to Write Book Proposals That Sell?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, I um I'm on Twitter.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh people uh say that I'm one of the most uh accessible people in publishing because I have my email address right in my Twitter profile.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I have uh over 190,000 followers on on Twitter.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good way to get a hold of me.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I um for the they can always go to terrywayland.com, t-y-w-h-a-l-in.com, or they could uh look at my blog, uh uh the writing life uh that that's out there.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: I have over 1500 entries in my blog that are that are searchable.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a there's a lot of material that I have out there.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh book proposals that sell is is the way that they can get get this book, book proposals that sell dot com.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you'll you'll see when you go over there that I have not just uh not just Amazon.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, sure, they can buy the book on Amazon, but they can buy it uh at their independent bookstore at BarnesandNobles.com or Books a Million or they can get it directly from me, any any number of ways that they can they can buy the book.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: But if they go to book proposals at sell.com, uh there'll be a little pop-up box that's that's there where they can get a free book proposal checklist from me.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: And um, sure, you get on my email list if you do that, but that's what we do to uh our audience.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: Wonderful, thank you so much.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I really appreciate that.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I just realized a minute ago I misspoke the title of your book.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: I said how to write book proposals that sell.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's actually the title of this podcast episode uh when it airs.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, the title of the book is Book Proposals That Sell.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: I love the cover, by the way, with a dollar sign there.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's really cool.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: So kudos to your your uh book cover designer.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: They did a great job.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's uh that's what they did with the uh first edition of my book.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is the uh revised edition, and uh I uh publishing has changed a lot since 2004, since I since I wrote that book in the first place.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I was I'm very grateful to have the opportunity to get get this new edition out to a new generation of writers.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh uh before I wrap this up, okay.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take a little side road here because I'm generally curious about this.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I am uh speaking with actually a ghostwriting client who wants me to update uh a book that they came out with about 15 years ago.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we were talking about kind of what to call this book.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in your experience in the publishing world, since this is a um uh another edition of your book, how do publishers determine whether to call a book a second edition, an updated edition, a revised edition, expanded, whatever it might be?
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any kind of system that publishers go through to determine what to actually refer to another edition of the book as?
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, I think it would uh one of the one of the keys would be what kind of sales record that first book had.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: So that's good.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: If it didn't have a good track record at all, then I think your options are more wide open.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: You could you could retitle it, put a new cover on it.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: It could be all like come out like a brand new book.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: My book proposals at sell has has been out since 2005.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: I have over you know 130 five-star reviews for the book.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's a uh sort of an established brand, is what I'd say.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's why why we made it a revised edition.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: So revised the language of revised, uh, does that psychologically connect with people in a different way than saying something is updated or a second edition?
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's something about saying revised that psychologically and marketing-wise is better than other terms.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I believe so.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I mean, I my subtitle is uh 21 secrets to speed your success.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: And for example, in my in my first edition, one of my secrets was uh always include an SASE.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's a self-addressed stamped envelope.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: Back then we did nothing electronically.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: You had to mail it, physically mail it to the publisher.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: And to get a response, because no publisher is going to invest thousands of dollars returning submissions, you had to put an SASE in there.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, in today's world, uh we submit everything electronically, but you have to have permission from that editor in order to actually send something as an attachment, because okay, attachments have viruses and bugs and all kinds of things that are there to them.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't just click idly click things out there unless you have permission from that person to that they've they've had they've gotten your permission to send it to you.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that whole chapter you can imagine got completely reworked in my mind.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right, I can imagine.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: That makes a lot of sense.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: I I was genuinely curious about that.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, and you are the man when it comes to this stuff, so I appreciate your insights.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Terry, this has been an absolute blast, and uh I appreciate making time to be on the show today.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I would love to have you back sometime, and we'll continue the conversation around related topics with books and proposals and marketing and publishing and all the million topics that we're so into as authors.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate this.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic, Ken.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate the opportunity and uh anything I can do to help you, just let me know.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate it.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, I hope you enjoyed that conversation.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: I learned a ton in this episode, as I always do, because I love to have awesome guests and I always uh learn from them.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes I tell people that the only reason I do a podcast is to get free coaching from people.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm being a little facetious with that statement, but it's kind of true because I love to have guests who know a lot more than I do, and I can learn a ton from them.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: And this is certainly one of those conversations.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: I would say my biggest takeaway from today's conversation with Terry is we've got to think like a business person if we're writers.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of writers just kind of they just kind of float through life a little bit, and they just think in terms of expressing their creativity, and maybe they'll write a book someday, and maybe they won't, and maybe someday I'll magically get a publishing deal or something like that.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth is that you have to think like a business person.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: You need to think strategically, you need to think about your goals, you need to think about how you can craft books that appeal to readers, you need to think about your marketing.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I know for a lot of writers that stuff does not sound pleasant because they just want to do the creative part.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I also want you to consider this that thinking like a business person is creative.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, my goodness, think about all the products that you use in your everyday life.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh right in front of me is uh is a huge uh a huge flat screen TV I'm using for my computer monitor.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: I've got some cool computer speakers.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a um MacBook Pro A bot earlier this year that's one of the M1 chip models.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: Those are these are all creative products, but they were also products that were designed with business decisions in mind.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: They were designed to appeal to consumers like me and like you.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: And just like all the stuff that we buy in our everyday lives, all the products that we buy, we have to think about our books in a business sense as well.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope that this conversation helps you to think about how you can position your book, about how you can write a proposal that doesn't just describe what your book is, but that actually sells your book, even if you're a self-published author.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I cannot stress enough, this is a vital process that you go through.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to encourage you not just to take Terry's advice, but to also get his book, which again is called Book Proposals That Sell.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's great.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a quick read, it's not a super long book, but it is absolutely packed with tons of good info on uh creating a book proposal that sells.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, as I mentioned at the beginning, you can get his free book proposal checklist at book proposals that sell.com.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I want to give a big shout out to Terry for taking the time to be a guest on this episode.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hope you enjoyed it, and I'll see you in the next episode.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: I want to take a moment to let you know about our daily writer membership community.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the very best ways to develop better habits and impact more people's lives with your writing is to spend time around other successful writers.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're tired of feeling isolated and chasing success on your own, then I know you're gonna love the daily writer community.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: For years, I searched for the kind of writing community that I would want to join, but I can never find what I wanted, so I created my own.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the features include weekly writing sprints, monthly community calls, book discussions, calls with guest experts, and much more.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: For more info, you can visit dailywriterlife.comslash community.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, and I'll see you tomorrow.