How to write a book proposal

And some news: I'm teaching a writing course!

When I first started working on my book, Karachi Vice, I had no idea where to start. Publishing is an opaque world, and despite having been a journalist for the best part of a decade by then, I didn’t really know how to put a book proposal together or who to send it to. The foundations of writing a book of narrative nonfiction are much the same as writing a standalone piece – a clear story with narrative drivers or a thesis about the world - but I was unsure about how to scale up what I was doing, and what precise components a book proposal needed to include. In the years since publishing my book, it’s something that friends and colleagues have asked me about at different points, and since many of the readers of this newsletter are interested in writing in one way or another, I thought I’d share my advice.

A book proposal is, for obvious reasons, much longer than a pitch for a long-form magazine article. A book is typically 80,000 – 100,000 words, so we’re talking ten times longer (or more) than a long-form article. When it comes to the proposal itself, there is no hard and fast rule for how long it should be – but a ballpark figure might be around 15,000 words. You’ll need to do some pre-reporting and heavy background research; the editor will want to know whether there is enough material there to sustain a whole book, and to get a sense of your style and tone. The purpose of the proposal is to explain the idea, the structure and the material as clearly as you can while also making it read compellingly.

There is no rigid format for a book proposal, and length and style might vary depending on the idea, but there are some elements which are generally useful to include:

• Overview: Include an overview that sets up the background, summarises the ground the book will cover and explains briefly a) how you'll do it and b) why you think people will want to read it or why it fills a gap in the market. You don't need to go into the market point in too much detail: the aim is to show an awareness of which other books exist on similar terrain so that agents or publishers know you've thought about who might want to read it and why. (As opposed to thinking only about why you want to write it). This overview should be written in a way that aims to draw the reader in and sell the book – like an extended pitch – rather than in a flat, factual style. Length can really vary – it might be several pages, or a few paragraphs. There aren't any set rules.

• Biography: Write a page or so about yourself – basic biographical information, and why you're the best person to tell the story. If your own biography is particularly relevant to the idea, then you might want to use this section to talk about how you’ll approach the book, rather than placing it in the overview. Again: no set rules.

• Chapter breakdown: In my view this is the hardest part. You need to outline how you will structure the book and what would go into each chapter. This is extremely difficult when you haven't done all the research yet! This is where pre-reporting comes into play. While no-one would expect you to have done all the research for the book at this stage, you do need to have enough to write a convincing chapter breakdown, which requires having a clear idea of the different elements of the story. Each chapter needs a summary of a paragraph or so, saying what the content will be. Try to write these summaries in an engaging way, remembering that throughout this proposal, you want to give a flavour of what the book will be. You might even think of them as mini-pitches.

• When you are writing the chapter breakdown, bear in mind that you're not going to be bound to this structure when it comes to writing the actual book. The purpose of this section is that editors need to know that the story can be sustained over the length of a book and that you've got some sense of how to corral the material. To give you an example, when I wrote my proposal, I knew I wanted to write about five people in Karachi. I had interviewed two at length, and met one briefly, but I hadn’t identified the other two yet. I had an idea of who I wanted to write about, or at least which types of stories I wanted, but I had to use some placeholder characters for the purposes of the proposal – people I’d read about elsewhere but hadn’t actually met myself – who were then replaced in the actual book.

• Sample chapter: Here you need to write through one full chapter from the book, so that editors can see your writing style and approach. It can be from anywhere (no need for it to be the first chapter), so choose whichever chapter you have the most material on. This chapter is crucial, as a way to showcase your writing style, the material, and the approach you will take. As well as the sample chapter, I think it can be useful to include a prologue (if you're going to have one in the book) as that allows you to set the scene and tone.

In terms of process, most book deals (though not all) are negotiated by agents. If you don’t have an agent already, you might well use the proposal to approach an agent. The agent will then, most likely, work with you on finessing it, before they send it out to publishers on your behalf. The book can change significantly once it's sold. 

If you found this useful, you might be interested to hear that I’m soon to be teaching a course in literary long-form journalism with Granta’s new Writers’ Workshop. It starts in October and will be a six-month course, taught mostly asynchronously online, during which we’ll cover the fundamentals of coming up with an idea, pitching, research and reporting, structure, and writing techniques. At the end of the course, students will have a 10,000 word piece of nonfiction to pitch, or use as the starting point for a book proposal. You can find more information and sign up here.

I’m currently deep within the process of writing the course materials, which has been an interesting exercise. I’ve been enjoying delving back into some long-form writing that I love, and finding the best examples of certain tricks of the trade in action - conveying lots of information with a light-touch, writing compelling and vivid character studies or descriptions of place. I’ve also been thinking a lot about the kind of practical advice I would find useful. So if you do decide to sign up, expect more of the kind of tips you found in this email, along with lots of reading, practical exercises, Q&As with guest writers, and more.

Reading/listening

• This Sunday Times magazine story about the trad wife influencer Hannah Neeleman is a compelling and actually very sad read. (It’s paywalled: archive link here).

• I am horribly dependent on my phone, and while I think I would go insane on a silent retreat, I really enjoyed reading Rachel Connolly’s FT essay about how one such retreat helped her reset her relationship with tech.

• This New Yorker piece about Trump’s vice-presidential pick JD Vance and his strange relationship to the politics of the family is eye-opening.

As always, if you know someone who might find this useful, please forward it on - or share on social media, it all helps! Thanks for reading and I’ll be back in a couple of weeks.