I read a number of writing-related blogs on a regular basis, both to keep up on what’s happening in the industry and to see what others are talking about. One of the blogs I read is The Book Deal: An Inside View of Publishing by editor Alan Rinzler. For those of you who might not be familiar with him, Alan has been involved in the publishing industry for more than forty years. He has edited works by writers like Robert Ludlum, Shirley McClain, and Clive Cussler, he’s been the Director of Trade Publishing for Bantam Books, Vice President and Associate Publisher of Rolling Stone Magazine, and an editor at Simon & Schuster, Holt, and Macmillan, among others. He now acts as a freelance editor and speaks to groups all across the country about writing and publishing.
A few months ago Alan began doing a series of proposal critiques on his blog. He offered to review any proposal sent to him and if he thought it was interesting he would comment about it on his blog in an audio podcast. Each proposal had to follow a certain format:
- “Hook” or overview (one page)
- Chapter outline (three pages)
- Platform (one page)
- Writing sample consisting of the first ten pages of the book
At the time, I had a proposal sitting around for a novel entitled LIONS OF JUDAH that I hadn’t been able to do too much with, though I wasn’t certain just why. I consider myself pretty good at putting together a proposal – of the fourteen novels and two novellas I’ve sold to date, all but one of them have been sold strictly on proposal – which made this one a bit more vexing than usual. It was a proposal for a novel of spiritual warfare targeted at evangelical publishers, though with a bit more action and violence than they might be used to seeing. I’d had it out to three or four editors, all of whom commented on the quality of the writing but felt it wasn’t right for their line. I had been planning on revising it, but hadn’t yet found the time. When Alan made his critique offer, I jumped at the chance, figuring I’d probably learn a thing or two after hearing how an experienced editor viewed the proposal.
For today’s post, I’m going to attach both the document that I submitted to Alan, as well as the audio file of the critique that he gave regarding it. He did an excellent job of pulling it apart and while I don’t agree with all of his remarks, I did find the exercise useful. I hope you can take something away from it as well.
