Resource: Sample Book Proposal Part A

Resource: Sample Book Proposal

7 Days To Easy-Money: Copywriting Success
by _____________
Proposal

• Words: 60,000
• Complete ms: three months.

(Your name)
E-mail: you@your_website.com
World Wide Web: http://your_website.com

Overview

7 Days To Easy Money: Copywriting Success shows writers how to set up their own copywriting services business in seven days. Its target market is writers, professional or aspiring, who want to make money from their writing skills. Melanie Rigney, editor of Writer’s Digest magazine, estimated that ten per cent of the US population aspire to write.
From the book’s Introduction:
Want to make REAL money writing?

You know you can write. Maybe you are even making money writing. But are you making enough money writing? Or is it just a hobby, costing you more in computers, postage and paper than you are earning? According to writers’ organizations, 95 per cent of writers never make enough money to quit their day job.

What about the top five per cent of writers — they are making big money, right? A small proportion of the top five per cent sure are. They are the headliners — brand name writers like Stephen King and Dean Koontz. Journeymen (and women) writers are doing OK too. They are the genre writers, writing romance, mystery and suspense, and non-fiction. Writers in this group spend a lot of time looking over their shoulder. Will their publisher accept their next book? Are they writing enough? (Gotta turn in at least two books this year.) What nasty reviews of their latest book will they find on Amazon.com today? Magazine writers may do well too if they combine magazine writing with writing books.

If you want to make real money from your writing skills, you can. And you can do it easily and quickly, in seven days. How? Start a copywriting services business.

I have made good money as a copywriter for over 25 years. It is fun, creative and lucrative.

The business writing market is invisible to most writers
Most writers are not skilled at business, and do not know how business works. They are unaware that businesses hire writers, so they pitch their work to overcrowded markets. Copywriters (business writers) write to meet the communications needs of large and small businesses. The material they write includes marketing communications, proposals, public relations material, and Website content.
If copywriting does register as a potential market, writers do not have any easy, practical guides to help them to access this market. While bookshop shelves solidly stocked with how-to guides to writing novels and magazine articles, the small amount available copywriting books are dry and dull, and make copywriting sound about as much fun as doing your own dentistry.

7 Days To Easy Money: Copywriting Success aims to correct this. The book aims at both professional and new writers. At the end of seven days, the enthusiastic new copywriter will have all the information and experience he/she needs to set up her own copywriting services business and make money.

Does the material work? Yes! I have taught this material in online and offline classes, and selling it online as an e-book. I will be including many exercises and samples: sample exercises written by my students, sample ads, sample press releases, templates, and check lists. And because the material has basis on my own 25 years of copywriting experience, I will be including lots of anecdotes and insider information.

Writers need this book
True to its “easy money” title, the book focuses on teaching the reader how to get copywriting work, not just on copywriting techniques. As far as I can tell, none of the other copywriting books now available teach copywriters how to prospect for new business. And yet, going by my experience with students and my monitoring of writers’ groups online, this information is what writers need most.
Other copywriting books just do not give the nitty-gritty of self-promotion and marketing. Writers need details and encouragement to market themselves and their services, so I will be making this book as forceful and motivating (and fun) as I can. One of my students said that until she did one of my free sample courses, she was not aware that copywriting was something she could do. Now she knows that it is.
That is the takeaway I want to give readers: you can make money, easily, from your writing skills, and you can make it very quickly, no long apprenticeship needed.

The book’s structure
Readers will find it easy to work with this book. It is set up in the form of days and weeks, with tasks and exercises for each chapter. As the reader does the exercises for each day, he/she is doing the work involved in setting up her own copywriting services business. No wasted time – he/ she is working on developing her own small business from the very first day!

Each chapter contains:
• Samples, written by my students, so that readers feel more comfortable with the work.
• Copywriting techniques for the reader to refer to as he/she begins to work as a copywriter.
• Exercises. The reader will use the exercises to build their copywriters’ portfolio.

What is not in the book
I have left out material which is widely available elsewhere, such as:
• How to set up a home business; and
• Small business technology.

 
(YOUR NAME) Background
Quick Bio
Australian author and journalist _____________ has written successfully for 25 years. She writes about business, technology, women’s issues, and creativity. Her books include: LifeTime: Better Time Management in 21 Days, Home Sweet Office: Your Home Office, Improve Your Memory in 21 Days, and Making the Internet Work for Your Business. Her feature articles have appeared in magazines like Energy for Women, The Australian Women’s Weekly, Woman’s Day, New Idea, Vogue, and many other print and online magazines.
She is also a working copywriter, writing copy for businesses ranging from international corporations to small businesses with less than five employees.

Partial list of publication credits
• Feature articles for mass market women’s magazines in Australia and the US, including The Australian Women’s Weekly, Woman’s Day, New Idea, Energy for Women, Writer’s Digest and Vogue;
• Feature articles for computer and technology magazines;
• Computer manuals;
• Content work for Web sites and Internet newsletters (her online articles number in the hundreds, find them by entering the search query “(YOUR NAME) +articles” into Google.com);
• Business books for major publishers, including many books in Prentice Hall’s WorkWise series (translated into several Asian and European languages);
• A series of romance novels for Macdonald Futura UK.

Website
At her (YOUR WEBSITE) Website: http://your_website.com/ __________ publishes three popular ezines: Creative Small Biz and Your EveryDay Write, which are free to subscribers, and Freelance Copy Write, which has paying subscribers. She also teaches writing courses via email.

Why this author for this book?
(YOUR NAME) is a writer, a business person and a teacher. She knows copywriting both from the writer’s and business owner’s points of view, and because she teaches writing, she knows how to pass her skills on to others.
She has written professionally for most of her adult life; everything from romance novels to computer manuals. She understands how writers work and think. She has also managed several successful small businesses. She first developed her copywriting skills when she managed a dog training and boarding business, and found advertising so expensive that it was vital that each ad pulled, and pulled well.
Her love of writing and fascination with the creative process also led her to teach popular writing courses at community colleges, and now online. The material in 7 Days To Easy Money: Copywriting Success has been tested by her students, and it works.

 
Competition
The following three books are 7 Days To Easy Money: Copywriting Success’s competition.

1. The Elements of Copywriting: The Essential Guide to Creating Copy That Gets the Results You Want
by Gary Blake, Robert W. Bly
Publisher: Longman; 1st edition (September 1, 1998)
ISBN: 0028626303
This is a good general reference to copywriting techniques. It is directed at small business or marketing people who want a simple copywriting guide. It is not directed at the same market (writers) as 7 Days To Easy Money: Copywriting Success, and provides no instruction on how to set up a copywriting services business.

2. Teach Yourself Copywriting
by J. Jonathan Gabay
Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Contemporary Books; 2nd edition (January 31, 2001)
ISBN: 0658012010
Another general reference to copywriting techniques, for business and marketing people. Again, it is not aimed at writers, nor does it help in setting up in business as a copywriter.

3. The Well-Fed Writer: Financial Self-Sufficiency As a Freelance Writer in Six Months or Less
by Peter Bowerman
Publisher: Fanove Publishing; (September 2000)
ISBN: 0967059844
This book comes closest to targeting the same market as 7 Days To Easy Money: Copywriting Success.
Peter Bowerman has written a useful book. His background as a marketing executive gives him a strong sales emphasis. However, because he has a sales and marketing background, and not a background as a writer, he does not cover the marketing of a copywriting services business. (He calls copywriting freelance commercial writing.)
His experience with marketing make marketing processes self-evident to him, and he tends to gloss over them. However, marketing doesn’t come naturally to many writers, as I have seen with my students. They struggle with marketing, and need instruction in basic marketing processes and concepts.

 
Who will buy 7 Days To Easy Money: Copywriting Success and why?
The strongest target group likely to buy this book is writers, whether employed or freelance, who want to diversify, and develop another income stream. Aspiring writers are also likely to buy it, seeing it as an opportunity to earn while they learn and develop their writing skills.

Additional target groups include:
• colleges which teach writing courses;
• people laid off from corporate marketing jobs – they will already have an awareness of the work done by copywriters; and
• early retirees, who want to develop an income, but don’t want or need full employment.
 
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