Being able to create a strong proposal is a key element in selling your novel and a skill that will serve you well throughout your entire career. My debut novel, RIVERWATCH, was sold as a manuscript, but each book I’ve written since then has been sold solely on the basis of a proposal and sample chapters. I’ve used the same format each time, from selling my sophomore work HERETIC to my most recent trilogy beginning with EYES TO SEE.
For those of you struggling to find a method that works for you, I’ve uploaded a copy of the proposal that was used to sell HERETIC to senior editor Amy Pierpont at Pocket Books back in 2003. (For the record, Amy is no longer at Pocket, but has moved on to Grand Central.) As you can see, the proposal follows the very same basic format I mentioned in my article on Novel Proposal Basics.
One thing you will note – in this instance I used a chapter outline rather than a synopsis. I did this because I knew that Pocket Books (who I was trying to sell it to) had previously required a chapter by chapter outline from me as a condition of the book’s approval, so I wanted to beat them to the punch and save myself the extra step. Had they required a synopsis, I would have simply stripped out the chapter headers and tied all the paragraphs together into a multi-page synopsis.
Download the novel proposal for Heretic.
