3 Ways to Not Get Your Book Published
Today I want to share three very real stories with you. These three stories represent the 10% of our clients who finish a book proposal with me and DON’T get a book deal.
(By the way, since 2019 . . . this has only happened once, and I’ll tell you why in a sec.)
The first story is pretty simple. I collaborated with the author on a proposal in 2014 . . . and we sent it to his literary agent. But then he completely lost his shit. When the agent said something he disagreed with, he yelled at her and called her names. He apologized, of course, but he couldn’t take back the tantrum and I couldn’t, in good conscience, send the proposal to other agents. So that person . . . never got a book deal. It also inspired my rule of never promising to introduce authors to literary agents. (Because once in a while, people get a little . . . reactionary.)
The second story is about a celebrity who went through the entire proposal process with me. But when her agent was ready to send it out to publishing houses, the celebrity author decided that writing a whole book and having to promote it was too much work. So she didn’t get a book deal, despite being part of the Marvel Universe.
And the third story is something that happened more recently.
In 2020, my team and I started work on a proposal where the author had a tremendous amount of promise, but needed to invest in growing her platform. I told her that the process of writing a proposal takes six months. In that time, I said that she would need to substantially grow her email list, hire a social media manager, and basically do a ton of work to increase the amount of people she was reaching with her free content. I advised her, like I do with a lot of authors, to hire people to help her execute that work so she could keep delivering her higher-priced services to corporate clients. I also recommended that she pay for advertising on platforms like LinkedIn to grow her audience quicker because paying to build your audience tends to speed up the process of building a platform.
And this particular author did invest . . . in a rebrand of her visuals that was beautiful but did absolutely nothing to increase her audience. My team finished her proposal but I didn’t feel comfortable sending the proposal out to literary agents. I knew every agent would want her to do exactly what I had recommended to grow her audience . . . so we had a tough conversation. The author was (rightfully) pissed at me, and I decided at that moment to never again work with someone on a proposal who wasn’t ready.
You see: A lot of people in this industry — ghostwriters and collaborators like me, who work within traditional publishing as well those who help authors self-publish — will take your money when you’re not truly ready to write your book. But I don’t, and won’t, do that.
I have a 10% fail rate . . . since I’ve been in business. (I started in 2012.)
But since I introduced the rule that we won’t write a book proposal for anyone who isn’t ready, my fail rate is zero for getting clients represented by a literary agent. Out of the 11 proposals we finished last year, seven sold to publishers and four are being revised by their agents right now, before going to publishers.
Next week, I’ll talk about how people become ready to write a proposal with us, so be sure to check your inbox next Monday to get all the details. And if you want to know whether you’re personally ready, the only way to know is to take our quiz.
