When I last left you in this series, I had narrowly avoided talking about my genitals with a real live literary agent, who had told me that I needed to make a book proposal for my memoir project. She’d given me the name of a friend who helps authors put proposals together. As soon as I left her presence, I found the friend’s website.
Her friend’s book proposal coaching process was a cool $1000. I wanted to lay on the swirling carpet of the convention center and weep. From my online research, I’d kind of already expected that I’d be required to create a book proposal as part of the query process of finding an agent, but it seemed very intimidating. It has a synopsis, an about the author section, a chapter overview, and sample chapters. You have to talk about who your audience is and find books that are comparable to your to help the agent see where your book is situated in the market. It is a marketing document.
Now, I can write, if I do say so myself. And I think my book is good, but selling myself? No thanks.
After the expo, I went home and found a book proposal template online. I worked slowly on the document, hemming and hawing about it. I would write one sentence at a time and then emerge from my writing desk to bitch about it to Alex. Is this what they want? Did I include the right stuff? Did I pick the right comps? What do I include in my author bio?
I wasn’t feeling confident.
In a moment of weakness, I turned to A.I., the publishing industry’s enemy #1. I dumped the whole enchilada in Chat GPT and asked it for a critique.
I KNOW. I KNOW. On any given day, if you asked me my stance on artificial intelligence, it would be a firm negative. But the internet built this book proposal thing up like if I had a period out of place, I was going to get laughed out of every inbox between Virginia and California. I was petrified that I didn’t know what I was doing and petrified that would mean that my book would languish with the other millions of books that never see the light of day.
So, I got scared and I, a human writer, asked a fucking robot to give me feedback.
Truthfully, A.I.’s advice was mostly stupid. It didn’t like the gritty, gory details I used in my intro about the sumo class–the sweat, the damp pits, the moist skin-to-skin contact. It kept prompting me to say what my book isn’t instead of what is.
I plodded along, not copying and pasting, but tweaking my proposal based on its suggestions.
The closer I got to being finished, the more defeated I felt.
And then, I was listening to a book-publishing podcast and one of the literary agent hosts was talking about using A.I. during the query process. She said plainly, “I don’t want to work on projects that A.I. has touched, even in the query or proposal. I want to work with writers who trust their voice through the whole process.”
The sentiment struck me right in the chest.
I trust my voice.
Even if it’s about stupid marketing.
I went home and immediately went back to my original version, finding a few examples of successful book proposals and another helpful proposal template. I dove right back in, emboldened by this new realization. My finished proposal is 42 pages, so long it needed a table of contents.
I am proud of it.
It might not be perfect,
but
it is mine.
(My ‘Getting Published‘ series is a peek behind the scenes of what writers have to do to get published (well, I’m not published yet. Hopefully, I will get published). You can follow along by subscribing to my blog!)
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