Literary agents want to work with authors who will help sell their books.

Explaining your sales and marketing platform is a critical part of your book proposal’s marketing plan.

5 Tips to Writing Book Marketing Plans

• Who are your target readers? Describe them.
• Numbers matter. How many people are on your mailing list? How many Facebook friends and Twitter followers do you have? How many hits does your website get?
• Have you done media in the past – even if it had nothing to do with a book? List your media appearances, and provide examples in print or on your website.
• Resources impress agents and publishers. Are you willing to invest money, personnel and time into a marketing campaign?
• Make strategic connections with organizations that share your mission and target demographic. Negotiate with them to promote your book, even something relatively simple like sending an email to their list.

If you don’t have a marketing platform, don’t give up! Start to create and build a platform, and detail your efforts in your proposal.

5 Tips to Building a Book Marketing Platform

• Educate yourself by attending a seminar on book marketing, and write about it in your proposal.
• Start your social media platform. Create Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts and start to promote your expertise.
• Create a professional author video that shows your on-camera abilities. Put the video on your website.
• Research print, radio, TV and websites that you will target for publicity. List them in your plan.
• Find one media outlet – a local newspaper, a friend’s blog – to which you can contribute a regular column. Don’t expect to be paid. Your payment will be in marketing value.

Smart Author Tip: Agents and publishers love authors who can sell books by the truck load. How can you do that? Create products to use as incentives for multiple sales. DVDs, workbooks, and teleseminars create added value to sales. Detail your plans in the marketing plan.

Marketplace comparisons are a key component of book proposals. You must give an overview of a category, provide details about five or six bestsellers in the genre, and explain how your book will fare against them. How can you get that information?

5 Ways To Do Marketplace Research for Book Proposals

• Find books yours will compete against by researching your genre’s bestseller lists in a variety of newspapers, magazines and websites.
• Research current and past sales rankings on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other booksellers.
• Mine authors’ websites and Facebook pages for information about sales, rankings, awards and other data.
• Interview book store owners or managers. Ask them what does, doesn’t, and might sell.
• At a book store, look at the copyright dates of books in your category. What books have been in the store the longest? Only books that sell stay on the shelves.

Put all of that information – data, lists, interviews – into the marketplace comparison section of your book proposal. Yes, literary agents know more about the market than you ever will. Why do you have to do this research and writing? To demonstrate your professionalism, dedication and expertise.

Smart Author Tip: What not to write: “There is no book like mine.” If you can’t find a book like yours, there might be good reason for that. Are you sure that there is an audience for it? Fine tune your marketing plan and research.

Ready to write a query letter that will dazzle a literary agent and help sell your book? Great! But, writing is not the first thing to do. It’s the last. What comes first? Research. Your first task is to gather information that will allow you to craft a personalized query letter.

5 Things To Do Before You Write A Query Letter

• Use Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors & Literary Agents, Publishers Marketplace, Publishers Weekly or other resources to find agents who represent your genre and accept unsolicited manuscripts.
• Different agents want different materials in a submission package. Make a list of what each agent wants.
• Research agents’ authors. Look at their books, websites and press clippings. What about each agent’s work fits with yours?
• Do any of the agents forbid multiple submissions? If so, you’ll have to query them one by one.
• Make sure that your book proposal (for non-fiction) or manuscript (for fiction) are completed and perfected. When an agent says, “Yes, I’m interested. Send me your materials,” you’d better be ready to do just that.

Now you’re ready to craft that query letter. What should be in it?

• Personalize the letter. Why are you querying this agent? What about the agent makes him or her right for you?
• Who are your target readers? Describe them.
• With what platform – publicity, social media, speaking engagements, mailings – will you reach readers?
• What makes you an expert? Detail your credentials.

Think of the query letter as a sales tool. Don’t ask agents to represent you. Convince them that they should.

Smart Author Tip: Explain your book from readers’ points of view. What problem are you solving for them? What are you teaching them?

Have a great idea for a non-fiction book? Great! Now, sell that idea to a literary agent. To do that, you need a comprehensive, compelling book proposal.

What goes into a book proposal?

• Short summary
• Longer, detailed overview of the book
• Chapter outline
• Detailed explanation of chapters
• 1-3 chapters
• Marketplace research
• Publicity and marketing plan

I’m going to share a secret with you that top literary agents have shared with me. The proposal is not about you. It’s about the reader. Use the book proposal to convince a literary agent that readers will buy your book. How?

5 Questions To Answer With Your Book Proposal

• Who are your target readers? Describe them.
• What problem are you solving for readers? What are you teaching them?
• With what marketing platform – publicity, social media, speaking engagements, mailings – will you reach them?
• What features and benefits will readers learn from your book that they haven’t in others?
• Can you get endorsements that will entice readers to buy the book?

Yes, it is a lot of work. But that’s what separates the manuscripts sitting in desk drawers from the books sitting on store shelves.

Smart Author Tip: Agents and publishers look for authors who can market themselves. Detail your plans for pitching print, TV, radio and bloggers. Mention specific stations, writers and websites.

How can you find the right literary agent for your book? What will make an agent want to represent you? Agents want to work with authors who exhibit professionalism, discipline, confidence in their mission and passion for it.

Got all that? Here’s what else you need for a non-fiction book.

• Book proposal
• Guides that lists literary agents
• Query letter

And you thought writing the book was the hard part! Here’s the key thing to understand about a book proposal. It’s a sales package. Agents get 100-200 proposals every week. Here’s how to make yours stand out from the pack.

5 Tips on Creating Bestselling Book Proposals

• Be clear about your mission. Why are you writing this book? Who are you trying to help? What can you teach people to do?
• Demonstrate your expertise.
• Write the summary as if it is jacket copy. What would make yours a compelling, must-read best seller that jumps off book shelves?
• What will readers learn from reading the book? How will your book change their lives? Put those features and benefits into the proposal.
• Can you help sell your book? To whom? How? Describe your audience and the marketing platform you will use to reach them.

The next step is to find agents using Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors & Literary Agents, Publishers Marketplace, Publishers Weekly, or other resource guides. Also look in the acknowledgments of bestselling books, where authors often thank their agents.

Smart Author Tip: Craft a personalized query letter. What about the agent’s clients,
books and career makes the two of you a good fit? Explain your book, its market, and your expertise.

Finding a literary agent requires time, creativity and discipline. If there were a quick formula to this, I’d give it to you. What I can do is wish you the best of luck, and tell you to keep working towards accomplishing your dreams.