In the past twelve months, we’ve received somewhere around 400 nonfiction proposals and about 600 fiction queries. We said yes to nine of them. That’s a hit rate of roughly one percent, and while we’re not proud of the volume of rejections, we are proud of the books those nine yeses turned into.

What we can tell you is that most of the proposals we reject aren’t bad. They’re often well-written, on interesting subjects, by qualified people. They just don’t do the specific job a book proposal needs to do, which is to convince a publisher, in a limited number of pages, that this book needs to exist and that this writer is the person to write it.

This piece is about that job. It’s based on what we see in our actual submissions pile: what works, what doesn’t, and why. We’re going to be specific and practical, because the vague advice that floats around the internet (“be passionate!” “know your audience!”) is true but useless.

First, understand what a proposal is for

A book proposal is not a summary of your book. This is the most common misunderstanding we encounter. Writers think a proposal is a compressed version of the book itself, so they try to cram all their ideas into fifty pages. The result is dense, exhausting, and paradoxically less persuasive than a shorter, more focused document.

A proposal is a business document that answers three questions. First: what is this book, and why does it matter? Second: who will buy it, and how will they find it? Third: why are you the right person to write it? Everything in your proposal should serve one of these three questions. Everything else is excess.

For fiction, the rules are slightly different. We evaluate fiction primarily on the strength of the writing, so a query letter and sample pages carry most of the weight. But the query letter still needs to answer those same three questions, just more briefly.

The overview: your single most important page

The overview is the first section of a nonfiction proposal, and it’s the most important. We’ve acquired books based largely on a strong overview, and we’ve passed on books despite strong sample chapters because the overview didn’t land.

Your overview should be one to three pages. It should do something difficult: convey the essence of your book in a way that’s compelling to someone who knows nothing about it. Think of it as the first conversation you’d have with a stranger about your project. You wouldn’t start by explaining chapter four. You’d start by telling them what the book is about and why it matters.

The best overviews we’ve received share certain qualities. They open with a specific scene, anecdote, or piece of information that makes you lean forward. Not a gimmick, not a cliffhanger, but something concrete that demonstrates the writer’s ability to engage a reader on the first page.

David Okonkwo’s proposal for The Cartographer’s Dilemma opened with a story about a 16th-century mapmaker who deliberately introduced errors into his maps to catch plagiarists. It was a small, vivid detail that immediately established the intellectual terrain of the book and demonstrated David’s gift for finding the human story inside a technical subject.

After the hook, state your thesis clearly. What is the central argument or narrative of this book? Don’t be coy. Don’t hint. Tell us directly. We’ve seen too many overviews that dance around the central idea, building suspense as if we’re reading a thriller. We’re not. We’re reading a business document. Tell us what the book is about.

Then explain why it matters now. Why this book, at this moment? What conversation does it enter? What gap does it fill? This is where you demonstrate awareness of the landscape you’re writing into. You need to know what’s already been published on your subject and be able to articulate how your book is different.

The market section: be honest, not optimistic

The market section is where most proposals go wrong. Writers either skip it entirely (bad) or write something so optimistically vague that it’s meaningless (worse).

“This book will appeal to anyone interested in history.” That sentence describes several hundred million people and tells us nothing. Who, specifically, will buy your book? Not who might theoretically be interested in the subject, but who will actually walk into a bookstore or open Amazon and spend $28 on it?

Good market sections are specific. They identify concrete readerships. They name the publications these readers subscribe to, the podcasts they listen to, the other books they’ve bought. They demonstrate that the writer understands the actual commercial landscape, not an imagined one where everyone who’s ever Googled their topic will rush to buy their book.

We also want to see honest competitive analysis. What other books exist in your space? How is yours different? Some writers are afraid to name competitors because they think it draws unflattering comparisons. The opposite is true. Ignoring your competition makes you look either uninformed or evasive. Name the three to five most relevant books in your area and explain, specifically, what yours adds to the conversation.

When Elena Marsh proposed Still Waters, her market section was honest about the crowded memoir landscape. She named specific recent memoirs that covered adjacent territory and explained clearly what hers did differently. She wasn’t dismissive of the competition. She was respectful and precise. That honesty made us trust her judgment about everything else in the proposal.

The author bio: authority and voice

The author bio section of a proposal needs to answer two questions: why are you qualified to write this book, and can you actually write?

For nonfiction, authority matters. This doesn’t mean you need a PhD. It means you need to have a credible relationship with your subject. Maybe you’ve been a practitioner for twenty years. Maybe you’ve done extensive primary research. Maybe you have lived experience that gives you unique access to the story you’re telling. Whatever it is, make it clear.

What we don’t care about, and this might be controversial: your social media following. Or rather, we care about it less than the internet has led writers to believe. A large platform is nice to have, but it’s not a substitute for a good book. We’ve published successful books by authors with almost no online presence, and we’ve seen books from authors with huge platforms flop because the book itself wasn’t good enough.

If you have a platform, mention it. If you don’t, don’t apologize. Focus on why you’re the right writer for this subject.

The bio is also a place to demonstrate voice. Write it in the same voice you’ll use in the book. If your proposal bio is formal and stiff but your sample chapter is warm and conversational, we notice the disconnect and wonder which version is the real you.

The chapter outline: structure without tedium

Most proposals include a chapter-by-chapter outline. Most of these outlines are too long and too detailed.

Each chapter summary should be one to two paragraphs. Tell us the main idea of the chapter, the key narrative or argument, and how it connects to the chapters around it. We’re looking for a sense of the book’s architecture, not a detailed blueprint.

The outline should demonstrate that the book has a shape. This sounds obvious, but many outlines we receive are essentially lists: twelve chapters on twelve aspects of a topic, with no narrative arc, no progression, no sense of building toward something. A book needs momentum. It needs to go somewhere. Your outline should show us the trajectory.

One thing we look for specifically: does the book earn its length? If your outline describes a book that could be a long essay, we’re going to wonder why it needs to be 80,000 words. Every chapter should justify its existence. If we can read the outline and see where the padding will go, we know the manuscript will have the same problem.

Sample chapters: the proof

For nonfiction proposals, sample chapters are where the rubber meets the road. Everything else in the proposal is promise. The sample chapters are proof.

Include two to three chapters. They don’t have to be the first chapters (though including chapter one is usually a good idea). Choose the chapters that best demonstrate your ability to execute the vision described in the overview.

These chapters should be fully polished. Not first drafts. Not “rough but you’ll get the idea” versions. They should be as good as you can make them, because they’re the primary evidence we use to assess whether you can write the book you’re proposing.

The most common problem with sample chapters is that they don’t match the promise of the overview. The overview is electric, full of ideas and energy. The sample chapters are flat, buried in exposition, lacking the voice that made the overview compelling. When this happens, it usually means the writer is better at describing their book than writing it, and that’s a deal-breaker.

For fiction writers: the query letter

Fiction doesn’t typically require a full proposal. What it requires is a query letter and sample pages (usually the first fifty to one hundred pages). The query letter is doing a lot of the same work as a nonfiction overview, just in a smaller space.

A good query letter for fiction has three parts. A paragraph about the book: what it’s about, who the main characters are, what’s at stake. This should read like jacket copy, not like a book report. Convey the flavor of the book, not just the plot.

A paragraph about you: who you are, what you’ve published (if anything), why you wrote this book. Keep it short. We’re going to judge you on the pages, not the bio.

And a paragraph about context: where the book fits in the landscape, what other books it’s in conversation with. This is where comp titles go, and please choose them carefully. Two recent titles that share some quality with your book (tone, subject, structure, audience) are more useful than one classic everyone’s heard of.

Catherine Voss’s query for The Last Archive was one page. It described the novel’s premise in three sentences, named two comp titles that were well-chosen and specific, and included a brief bio that mentioned relevant (not padded) credentials. That’s all we needed. The first fifty pages did the rest.

Common mistakes, from our actual pile

Based on what we see regularly, here are mistakes you should avoid.

Starting with a rhetorical question. “Have you ever wondered why people love maps?” No. Stop. Rhetorical questions are a crutch. They create the illusion of engagement without actually engaging anyone. Start with something concrete instead.

Burying the subject. Some proposals take two pages to get to what the book is about. By that point, we’ve lost patience. Tell us what the book is about in the first paragraph. Preferably the first sentence.

Over-explaining your methodology. For academic writers crossing into trade nonfiction, this is a persistent issue. We don’t need a detailed account of your research methods. We need to see the results of your research, rendered in engaging prose.

Using jargon without realizing it. Every field has its own vocabulary, and if you’ve been immersed in your subject for years, you may not notice when you’re using terms that outsiders don’t understand. Have someone outside your field read your proposal and flag every word or phrase that doesn’t land.

Claiming your book has no competition. Every book has competition. If you think yours doesn’t, you haven’t looked hard enough. Worse, claiming uniqueness makes us wonder whether there’s simply no market for what you’re proposing.

Submitting too early. We get proposals for books that are clearly not ready. The idea is half-formed. The sample chapters are first drafts. The writer is still figuring out what the book is. We understand the impulse to send it out while you’re excited, but resist it. A premature submission is worse than a late one, because you only get one chance to make a first impression with each publisher.

What happens after you submit

We try to respond to all submissions within eight to twelve weeks. Sometimes it takes longer, especially during our busiest season (September through November). If you haven’t heard from us after twelve weeks, it’s reasonable to send a polite follow-up.

We read everything that comes in. If we pass, we try to explain why, though we can’t always be as detailed as we’d like. If we’re interested, we’ll usually ask for the full manuscript (for fiction) or a conversation about the project (for nonfiction).

A “revise and resubmit” response is not a rejection. It means we see potential but aren’t ready to commit based on what we’ve seen. Take it seriously. Address the feedback. Resubmit when you’ve done the work. Some of our best books started as revise-and-resubmits.

The emotional dimension

Writing a book proposal is an emotionally complicated act. You’re taking something personal, something you’ve invested months or years of your life in, and packaging it for commercial evaluation. It’s like writing a cover letter for a job that is also your child.

We know this. We try to be respectful of it. But we also need you to be professional, because that’s what the process requires. A proposal that reads as desperate, or angry, or defensive, works against you regardless of the quality of the underlying book.

The best proposals strike a tone of confident calm. They say: here’s what I’ve made, here’s why it matters, here’s who will read it, and here’s evidence that I can deliver. No begging. No bluster. Just clarity and competence.

If your proposal is rejected, it’s okay to feel disappointed. It’s not okay to email us arguing about the decision. We’ve had this happen, and it never changes the outcome; it just makes a future relationship unlikely.

Resources that actually help

If you want to learn more about the proposal-writing process, there are a few resources we genuinely recommend.

Jane Friedman’s blog is the single best free resource on the business side of publishing. She’s honest, specific, and current in a way that most writing advice isn’t. Her posts on query letters and proposals are worth your time.

The Art of the Book Proposal by Eric Maisel is a solid guide for nonfiction writers. It’s not flashy, but it’s practical and specific.

For fiction writers, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King is less about the query process and more about making your manuscript strong enough that the query writes itself.

And read proposals that worked. Some agents and publishers share successful proposals online. Studying them is more instructive than reading any how-to guide, because you can see what a finished, polished, successful document actually looks like.

Good luck. We mean that sincerely. The world needs more good books, and the only way to get them is for writers to take the risk of putting their work forward. We’re grateful to everyone who sends us their best work, even when the answer is no.

Written by the ScrollWorks Media editorial team. Submission guidelines are available on our contact page.