Beauty in the Eye of an Entrepreneur: The inside story dealing with companies from start-ups to mega corporations with 100s of tips for running your own business is finished! The manuscript is nearly 90,000 words and contains 95 chapters and more than 100 life lessons. Now comes the hard part, getting the book published. So what does an entrepreneur do?
I went to my favorite authors websites including Steven King, John Grisham, James Patterson and Elin Hilderbrand. Only Steven King’s site had pertinent information for a fledging author. He told me to buy Writer’s Market and Guide To Literary Agents. Amazingly enough, he had links to Amazon so in one click, I had the books the next morning.
Even though more than four million books are published annually, only 500K to a million are published through traditional publishers; that is my one and only objective. Since I have never published a book before and most likely either have you, this is going to be a fascinating journey and I’m inviting you to take part in the ride.
The first thing you need to create is a query. A query is a one-page document letting the literary agent know what the book is about, who is going to buy the book and what credentials you have for writing the book. Once completed, the query is then emailed directly to the agent you are trying to hire.
In the Guide To Literary Agents, it lets you know the interests of each agent. It also lets you know if they are accepting new clients, how many clients they currently have and in some instances, don’t even bother to send unless you have a strong referral. In most instances, agents respond back in 1-3 weeks. I completed the query and picked out ten literary agents that I think would be a great fit and one in specific.
After the query is sent and if you get a positive response back, then the agent might ask for a proposal. The proposal includes the cover (I am having my designer make a few cover concepts); proposed contents; the pitch; the book; the audience; the competition; the author and chapter summaries. I am hoping the proposal is for authors that have yet completed their manuscript or perhaps have just started. Now that I have a completed manuscript, I should be able to fast-track this.
I also contacted my good friend, Barry Farber, who has authored more than 10 books. Now that I am in the publishing world, it is amazing the stories that Barry has already shared with me. It’s a whole new world indeed. From everything that I have read and been told, it could take up to two years to get published. I’m hoping for a speedier launch and I will keep you updated on my blog through the entire journey.
All is great at TNG Worldwide. We are launching more than 10 new products April 1, so please check them out at tngworldwide.com. It is hard to believe that the first quarter of 2023 is gone, time if flying by faster than ever.
I broke my personal best rating on chess.com at 1240, good enough to be in the top 90% of all players. Then again, at the end of 2022 there were 7 million players on the site, now there are more than 12 million. Chess popularity is on fire!
Once I get a literary agent signed up, I will be back in touch with the details. Stay tuned!
(Updated March 31)
I completed my research for literary agents and found 15 that fit my criteria. Of the 15, there was a #1 and a #2 pick. I selected the #1 pick and emailed the query as directed. In the book, it indicated that I should be get a response back within 1-3 weeks. I crossed my fingers.
90 minutes later, the agent responded back to me and requested the proposal. How exciting is that! I told him that I was working on the proposal and if we could get on a short phone call to discuss it. He responded back right away with his personal email address (no more query@ address!) and attached a current proposal that was accepted from one of his clients. He told me to emulate it as best as possible and to send it to him when completed. Afterwards, we would hop on a phone call.
I will have the proposal done at the end of next week and will send it off then. In the meantime, I have been introduced to two more literary agents so this is getting more exciting by the moment.
(Updated April 12)
I completed The Proposal! It was almost as much work as writing the book. The Proposal contains several sections for the literary agent to review: Author; What other’s are saying; Target audience; How I am going to promote the book; Summary chapters; Chapter listing; Competitive and complimentary books. The Proposal turned out to be 51 pages long.
I got some great quotes for the back of the book from George (OPI), Essie (essie), DYKEMA, Plante Moran, key confident at MSU, and ChatGPT.