Crafting your non-fiction submission
A good non-fiction submission starts with a great email subject line (which is often the working title of the book). It needs to be short, pithy, memorable and relevant.
When we go through our submissions we are looking for that rare thing: someone who can fuse their expertise in an area (or a personal experience) with beautiful writing and in a way that can be contained in a book. What do I mean by that? Not all ideas are book-shaped. Some would work better as a podcast or as an academic dissertation. We work in a cultural industry - the word industry is important at this stage of the book’s life. Yes, it’s a cultural artefact but it’s also one that needs to earn its place on a publisher’s budget.
Books need to be packaged by publishers and sold by booksellers: the books need to be the right length (too long or complicated and production costs go up); they need to be categorised in bookshops, libraries and in review space. If there are no other books like yours in the market this can mean it’s groundbreaking but usually it’s a red flag that it’s falling between two stools. Finally, books need to have one coherent message or strand. It shouldn’t try and do too many things for too many people.
Try and remember the last time you recommended a book you loved to someone: how did you describe it? What is at the heart of the book? What was special about it?
When I get a great submission it usually has:
- a short concise email subject/descriptive title that gets to the heart of the project
- a greeting by name (this shows a targeted submission and that you’ve researched an agent’s list)
- a one-line elevator pitch for the book (which can include comparisons to other relevant titles)
- a longer paragraph outlining what the book is about; why you are the author to write the book; your relevant background; why this book now.
- a clear passion for and fluency in the subject
- the other documents I’ve outlined in our submissions criteria
What I do not need in a pitch:
- compliments to the agent (thank you, but it’s not necessary)
- Dear Sirs (sigh) or even skipping the greeting altogether
- a too-long or overly familiar pitch
- any negative comments about other comparable books
- submitting multiple projects (kitchen-sinking it)
- any submissions that don’t follow our guidelines: help us find you!
As an agent we are constantly learning how to better pitch a book to editors, scouts and translation rights teams - to do this we need passion for the project and practice! Practice your pitch on friends and family and make sure you’re passionate about your book. Don’t embark on a proposal unless you are willing to spend the next 3 or so years with the project.
Keep going. Keep writing.