How To Put Together A Non-Fiction Book Proposal

Author: Mary E. DeMuth

The first two books I wrote were novels. Writing non-fiction intimidated me precisely because I had no idea how to write a proposal. A very good friend, Leslie Wilson was gracious enough to lend me her proposal. From that, I've been able to pull together several proposals.

Following Leslie's example, I've included a cookbook proposal here to help jumpstart you.

A helpful book is: Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript by Jack and Glenda Neff and Don Prues.

That, coupled with the latest Writer's Handbook will help you locate your market as well as offer great writing tips.

Writing a proposal is difficult. It takes time, tenacity and more time. If you do your homework well, when the proposal sells (notice the faith I have in you!) you will have completed most of the work. Writing flows from a well-done proposal.

Please note I have given you the purest form of the proposal. Other things would need to be added to make it complete:

A cover page
A query letter
The proposal
An annotated chapter outline or synopsis
Three sample chapters

Happy proposal writing!

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Feed 'Em, Don't Weep: A Cookbook Proposal

I. Overview

"Ponder well on this point: the pleasant hours of our life are all connected by a more or less tangible link, with some memory of the table."
—Charles Pierre Monselet

My fondest memories as a parent, wife and friend happen in the dining room. Because of that, I've been passionate about creating a unique dining experience for the people I love who circle our dining table. With more than 4,000 home-cooked meals under my culinary belt, I've been able to develop many original recipes-recipes that raise everyday food to a gourmet level without the hassle. Coupled with that, I've developed a philosophy of hospitality where guests are participants and food is comforting.

Through easy to follow recipes, simple cooking tips, and stories about dinner table entertaining, Feed 'Em, Don't Weep: Cooking Like a Chef Without Crying over the Onions offers today's families recipes that really work—real food for real people.

I have been creating original recipes since 1992, adding them to the last two pages of The Giving Home Journal newsletter. I am a family lifestyle columnist for a regional newspaper and have recipes published in Bon Appetit and Women's Day.

II. About the Book

"The fact is that it takes more than ingredients and technique to cook a good meal. A good cook puts something of himself into the preparation-he cooks with enjoyment, anticipation, spontaneity, and he is willing to experiment."
—Pearl Bailey

Feed 'Em, Don't Weep answers the "What's for dinner?" question with simplicity, great ingredients and sensitivity to time-strapped consumers.

Hyperion editor-in-chief Will Schwalbe addresses this felt need in American society: "People are staying home and eating with their families as opposed to eating every meal in a restaurant... There are some great books to solve the daily problem of what to make for dinner. It's a classic and I see it working well."

The cookbook, therefore, is part cooking lessons for creating wonderful meals and part handbook for easy-going company entertaining. Think of it as a marriage between Mark Bittman (The Minimalist Cooks Dinner) and Ina Garten (Barefoot Contessa Parties!).

With a conventionally organized format, helpful sidebars offering quick recipe variations, sample menus, tip sheets, easy-to-follow directions and humorous culinary stories, Feed 'Em, Don't Weep enables readers to cook and entertain with confidence.

Who is the target audience for this book?

Feed 'Em, Don't Weep is aimed at home cooks who want to notch up their existing repertoire of recipes. It targets people who either enjoy or fear entertaining around the family table.

Why is there a need for this book?

Seven in ten American families still sit down to dinner together at least five days a week
—Survey by Kraft Foods Inc. and Yankelovich Partners, 2002

First, the home cook needs to know how to organize the kitchen and pantry to minimize food preparation time. In order to integrate hospitality into his family's life, the home cook needs to learn the importance of planning meals, shopping less and improvising.
Second, the home cook wants user-friendly, innovative recipes. This is accomplished when a cookbook author becomes a teacher, giving step-by-step instructions. "For any cookbook to succeed, it has to have a strong teaching element," advises Pam Krauss, editorial director for Clarkson Potter. Feed 'Em, Don't Weep is a cookbook written conversationally, as if the author were across the kitchen table telling a friend how to cook a pot roast.
Third, the home cook wants hospitality de-mystified. With busy schedules and neighborhoods without porches, today's cook is isolated. She most likely was not taught how to entertain. She needs someone to come alongside her, offer relevant and helpful meal preparation solutions, and expand her strict notions of hospitality garnered from Miss Manners clones ("You must always use the silver." "Soup is not a meal; it's merely a starter." "One must always impress guests with a flaming dessert.")

Feed 'Em, Don't Weep incorporates all three of these elements with candor, humor, and an engaging writing style.

Specific reader benefits include the following:

Tried and true recipes. Well-tested, original recipes served over the span of a decade helps the reader have confidence in trying something new. Because of this, Feed 'Em, Don't Weep has the potential to last years on a cook's shelf-marinara-stained pages and all.
Helpful hints. Cooking tips from how to easily chop herbs to what bread should feel like when it is properly kneaded helps the reader expand his cooking repertoire. According to Sumi Hahn, cookbook editor at Amazon.com, readers like helpful hints: "There seems to be a return to general techniques that a home cook can use."
Hospitality inspiration. Anecdotes, helpful "get ready" lists and a dose of gentle cheerleading helps the reader take an initial step toward entertaining around his dining table.
Fun and grace. Cooking should be recreational-an endeavor that includes eaters as well as preparers. This book takes some of the stuffiness out of preparing gourmet meals while helping the reader not to take herself too seriously. Cooking food is messy, but it is an adventure easily rewarded.
Interesting anecdotes. Today's cookbook connoisseur is often a cookbook reader, reading it from cover to cover like a novel. Telling stories about recipe origins or funny entertaining foibles livens up a cookbook's pages. Commenting on Joanna Lund's success as a cookbook author, John Duff, publisher of Perigree and HP Books says, "People cook from [Joanna's cookbooks] because the recipes are real, and they're made real by people. The anecdotal information is often as appealing as the recipes themselves."

Helpful features for today's cook include the following:

Helpful list boxes. "Last minute dinners you can make in twenty minutes." "Five kid-friendly desserts." "Ten herbs and spices you can't live without."
Sidebar tips that help home cooks understand common chef vernacular. "How to caramelize onions." "What is roux?" "Help! I don't know what al dente means."
Pantry solutions. An entire chapter gives readers a pragmatic approach to stocking a pantry, from organization to list making and shopping.
Recipe variations. These sidebars help the reader adapt a specific recipe to his taste.
Straightforward writing style. Since I often get asked for recipes, I've developed a sixth sense for writing in such a way that a basic cook could easily follow.
Timetables. Many cooks struggle with pulling a meal together so it is completed all at once. Timetables help minimize failure-like an overdone pot roast with still-crunchy boiled potatoes.
Piggybacking basics. The book also has an informative chapter teaching the reader how to take one meal and transform it ("piggyback" it) into another meal, thus dealing a decisive blow to leftovers. "The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for 30 years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found." Calvin Trillin

What series potential exists?

Just as How to Cook Everything™ morphed into several successful spin-offs, this book has series potential. Possible series titles include:

Feed 'Em, Don't Weep Carefree Parties
Feed 'Em, Don't Weep Family and Friends Entertaining
Feed 'Em, Don't Weep Weekend Cooking
Feed 'Em, Don't Weep Mediterranean Style (My husband and I are relocating to the Cote D'Azur next summer where I look forward to developing Mediterranean recipes.)

Alternative titles:

At Family Table
Casual Meals for Family and Friends

III. About the Market

Even in today's economic times, cookbooks are top sellers. Last year, about sixty million cookbooks were sold in North America. Even self-published Junior League cookbooks have sold over 100,000 copies. Consider the following publishing phenomenons:

Dawn J. Ranck and Phyllis Pellman Good's The Fix-it and Forget-it Cookbook: Feasting with Your Slow Cooker (Good Books, 2000) has sold over 2.5 million units, mostly through word of mouth marketing. Lee Stern, cookbook buyer for Barnes & Noble explains, "It's one of those rare books that doesn't seem to have a catalyst other than the title-which is one of the best titles of all time-and a great price."
Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book, (Twelfth Edition, Meredith, 2003) sold over 900,000 copies. It appeals to the beginning and experienced cook alike. The red and white-checkered cookbook has sold over 34 million copies since it was first published in 1930.
Joanna Lund's heartland-oriented cookbooks have sold more than three million copies during the last decade.
Jessica's Biscuit, a cookbook catalogue and online business stocking 8000 cookbook titles, produces six catalogs a year with a circulation reaching 400,000. Its weekly newsletter has 20,000 subscribers.

The potential readership for a fresh perspective on home entertaining is not merely measured by book sales, although those figures are intrinsically high. Specialty or niche magazines targeting lay chefs also indicate the marketability of such merchandise:

Bon Appetit, where two of my recipes have been featured, has a circulation of 1,283,375.
Cook's Illustrated, a step-by-step guide to the best recipes, has a circulation of 470,000.
Family Circle, Woman's Day and Better Homes and Gardens, who all have substantive recipe sections for home cooks, have a combined circulation of 16.3 million.
Although there is a large demographic of cookbook buyers, the largest segment is women from 30-50, a segment I represent.

Current publishing trends. Cookbooks are selling well even from backlists. Consider the following comments from industry insiders:

"I think the cookbook market is as vital as ever," says James Connolly, publisher of Bay/Soma Books.
Cookbook publishing "is a very resilient category. I think overall it's held up very well because it's an area that is almost a necessity for people. Everyone has to put food on the table, and they're always looking for new ways to do that." Jennifer Josephy, Broadway Books
"Virtually every [cookbook] publisher declares that the backlist is responsible for a generous percentage of revenues." Robert Dahlin, Publishers Weekly, 7/28/03.

The Cocooning trend in America after 9/11 has contributed to brisk cookbook sales, especially those aimed at home cooks:

"Home, family-nothing too exotic that you can't do fairly easily-that, in general, is what people are looking for." Jennifer Josephy, Broadway Books
"We earlier found our confidence in the kitchen, and now there's less need to be showy. What we want is to be together. [We] are looking for books by authors who are, I don't want to say spiritual, but who are somewhat reflective, because what's important to these people is the act of sitting down and sharing meals with friends and family." Ann Bramson, Publisher, Artisan Books

The Simplicity trend cannot be ignored:

"Comprehensiveness is good, but I do think that people primarily want to return to a simpler kind of cooking. In the '80s and into the '90s, we cooked much too ambitiously." Ann Bramson, Publisher, Artisan Books
"Cooking can be adventurous and still be relatively uncomplicated." Jennifer Feldman, Publisher, IDB Books
"One of the major features of books that people like is simplicity. Simplicity doesn't mean ease or quickness of preparation. It's the desire to get really, really good ingredients and to cook them in simplified ways." Nach Waxman, owner Kitchen Arts & Letters
"Simplicity is key these days. People are not really interested in investing time in very demanding recipes." Pam Krauss, editorial director for Clarkson Potter
"Simplicity sells. There's a continuing trend toward books that give great results with recipes that have just a few excellent ingredients or a simple, well-honed technique." Rux Martin, Houghton Mifflin

The potential markets for the sale of this book include:

Online booksellers like Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com
Specialty catalogs like Chef's Catalog
Web sites like Epicurious.com, GourmetSleuth.com and Cooking.com
Cookbook clubs like The Good Cook and Jessica's Biscuit
Warehouse stores like Sam's Club and Costco
Bookstores like Waldenbooks and Bookstop
Cooking stores like Sur La Table
Gourmet grocery stores like Whole Foods, Central Market and Larry's Market

IV. About the Competition

There are many well-written, useful cookbooks for the home cook that debuted in 2003. The big names include:

How to Cook Everything the Basics: Simple Recipes for New Cooks, by Mark Bittman, Wiley, 2003. This cookbook is a spin-off of the popular How to Cook Everything™ brand. It is specifically targeted toward the new cook. Other titles by Bittman this year are: How to Cook Everything Quick Cooking and How to Cook Everything Easy Weekend Cooking.
Better Homes and Gardens: More Easy Everyday Cooking, by Kay Scarlett and Katharine Gasparini, Meredith, 2003. This cookbook emphasizes minimal kitchen time and healthy recipes.
Tom's Big Dinners: Big-Time Home Cooking for Family and Friends, by Tom Douglas, Morrow Cookbooks 2003. This cookbook is written by a famous Seattle restaurateur and highlights recipes for easy home entertaining.
Pat and Betty's No-Fuss Cooking, by Patricia A. Schweitzer and Betty T. Morton, Hyperion, 2003. The Reynold's Wrap ladies share their favorite recipes.
30-Minute Cookbook: 300 Quick and Delicious Recipes for Great Family Meals, by Reader's Digest editors, Reader's Digest, 2003.

Two 2003 cookbooks resemble the scope of Feed 'Em Don't Weep:

Serving Dinner: The Menus, Recipes and Shopping Lists to Bring Your Family Back to the Table, by Leanne Ely, Ballatine, 2003. This cookbook is more focused on nutrition, as Ely is a nutritionist and it is not geared toward simplicity.
Cooking for Company: All the Recipes You Need for Simple, Elegant Entertaining at Home, by Nicole Aloni, HP Books, 2003. Although this cookbook offers hints and tips, it has only 55 recipes.

Though there are cookbooks lining bookstore shelves, and they are bringing in needed revenue for publishers and retailers, there is still a need for an author experienced in creating fabulous meals to come alongside the home cook.

V. About Promotion

Not only am I passionately dedicated to the craft of writing, but I also enjoy promoting what I've written. I understand the significance of the one-month launch window and will do everything I can to maximize that window. In addition, I will integrate promoting Feed 'Em, Don't Weep into my lifestyle, making use of several venues:

Speaking engagements

I welcome the opportunity to speak to small and large venues-whether teaching groups of cooks from my home or demonstrating techniques in a gourmet grocery store. I am comfortable speaking in any setting, intimate or large.

Requesting endorsements

I will solicit blurbs from the following individuals:

Sandra Glahn, author of several books including Sexual Intimacy in Marriage and the CBA Bestseller and Christy Award finalist Lethal Harvest. Glahn teaches Christian Journalism and The Role of Women in Ministry at Dallas Theological Seminary and is Editor-in-chief of the seminary's award-winning quarterly magazine, Kindred Spirit. Glahn has agreed to endorse Feed 'Em, Don't Weep in Kindred Spirit, circulation 30,000. Kindred Spirit reaches well-known Christian leaders throughout the world, including all graduates of DTS. She is my writing mentor and friend.
Leslie Wilson, speaker for Hearth Ministries, a women's conference ministry targeting local churches in the Dallas area. Leslie is a noted speaker at local MOPS meetings. She founded the Rockwall Christian Writer's Group, a writing group I now help co-lead.
Jan Winebrenner, author of Intimate Faith (Warner Books, 2002) and founder of the Dallas Christian Writer's Guild of which I am a member.

Writing

Since my initial foray into publishing includes six years of desktop newsletter formatting as well as several paying graphic design jobs, I will offer to come alongside the publisher's marketing team developing my own flyers, press releases, business cards with book information, bookmarks, postcards and promotional posters.

I will craft and distribute press releases to the following newspapers:

The Dallas Morning News Texas Taste Section-Dallas
Star Community Newspapers-Dallas Metroplex
(I am a weekly columnist for this conglomerate that reaches 100,000 readers.)
The Issaquah Press-a suburb of Seattle
The Seattle Times-Seattle

I intend to distribute press releases and/or short promotional pieces to the following companies:

Safeway Stores
Whole Foods Markets
Central Market
Jessica's Biscuit
The Good Cook book club
Costco Wholesalers
MOPS International
Hearts at Home Ministries

I will submit excerpts and/or articles relating to the book to the following publications:

Cook's Illustrated
The Costco Connection
Bon Appetit
Taste of Home
Woman's Day
Better Homes and Gardens
Family Circle

I will arrange book signings in the following venues:

LakePointe Church bookstore
Greenville Christian Writers' Conference
Rowlett Public Library
Dallas Christian Writer's Guild
Dallas Theological Seminary Bookstore

Making media appearances

I will arrange and solicit phone interviews with the following media outlets:

WMCA 570 & 970-New York
KFAX 1100-San Francisco
KKLA 99.5 & 1240-Los Angeles
KTLF 90.5-Colorado Springs
WFAX 1220-District of Columbia
WMCU 89.7 & 101.9-Miami
WFCJ 93.7-Dayton
KBVM 88.3-Portland
WYFH 90.7-Charleston
WVFJ 93.3-Atlanta
WETN 88.1-Wheaton College
KCBI 90.9-Dallas
KLTY 94.1-Dallas
WRXT 90.3 & 103.7-Roanoke
KBLE 1050-Seattle
KCMS 105.3-Seattle
CBN-Virginia Beach

I am equally excited to participate in a publisher's author/book signing tour, and will agree to bear partial expense in promoting my book in the United States and Western Europe.

Website promotion

I will develop and maintain a web site that promotes Feed 'Em, Don't Weep, in addition to my fiction titles and columns. The web site will be eye-catching, useful, informative, inspirational, and will give the reader opportunity to share his/her comments and stories relating to the book. The site would list speaking engagements, links to booksellers, and contact information.

Giving copies to influential people

Word of mouth sales, or buzz, is tantamount to a book's success. With this in mind, I will give away 250 copies of the book to people of influence:

All the endorsement people, media outlets and companies listed above.
Our mailing list of nearly two hundred people, including business leaders, authors, homemakers, and ministry leaders around the globe. Rux Martin, Executive Editor at Houghton Mifflin, highlights this personal aspect of selling books: "Publishers talk so much these days about cookbook authors with 'platforms,' their own restaurants, TV shows, and mailing lists, that we often forget all about the value of personal appeal. The author who can hand-sell books the old-fashioned way still counts. People are more inclined to buy a book if they can taste a recipe and get a personal connection with the author."
Kevin Bailey, Manager, Broadcast Marketing and Product Selection for FamilyLife Today Radio broadcast.
Carolyn Murray, Managing Editor for The Answer, (circulation 100,000) a publication of the Promise Network.
Daren Watkins, Editor for The Rowlett Lakeshore Times and several other local Dallas papers owned by Star Community Newspapers (circulation 100,000).
Pacific Lutheran University Scene, my alma mater
The Rowlett Public Library
The Issaquah Public Library
The Dallas County Library System

VI. About the Author

I started cooking in my early teens, fixing an entire turkey dinner complete with homemade apple pie at fourteen. During college, I worked as a Pantry Chef at Twelve Baskets Restaurant and Catering. My mom, an avid caterer, has taught me how to pull together meals and parties for small groups and large. In 1993, I won the Olive Garden's Lasagna Baking Contest. At the same time, I published The Giving Home Journal, which highlighted recipes in every issue. In 1997, KCTS Nine Cookbook published my Cream of Tomato Pasta recipe. Later, I created The Giving Home Journal Cookbook. Bon Appetit and Woman's Day published my recipes this year.

Entertaining is a lifestyle for our family. We have guests in our home nearly every week, and most every night, we sit around our dining table for dinner. Ann Bramson of Artisan Books emphasizes the cookbook author's experience as key to a cookbook's success. "I don't think the chef aspect of a book is as important as the author's knowledge and experience. It's the access to the informed years and experience of those who know."

Speaking background

I regularly teach women. I've had extensive experience in front of audiences both as a vocal performer and a speaker. In 1989, I graduated from Pacific Lutheran University with a minor in Communications. Speaking/vocal performance include:

Vocal performances/worship teams-Baccalaureate, Issaquah High School; Maranatha Coffeehouse, Tacoma, WA; Puget Sound Christian Center, Tacoma, WA; Faith Fellowship, Silverdale, WA; Sunrise Christian Fellowship, Edmonds, WA; Trinity Valley Community Church, Palestine, TX; Creekside Bible Fellowship, Rowlett, TX; LakePointe Church, Rockwall, TX; LakePointe Women's retreat, Rockwall, TX
Valedictorian speaker, Issaquah High School, 1985
MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) facilitator, 1994
Ladies Night Out Coordinator and Speaker, Faith Fellowship Church, 1994-1996
Lessons from Nehemiah, Wednesday night 8-week series, Trinity Valley Community Church, spring 2000
Survivor, Welcome to DTS. Wrote and acted in Seminary Wives in Ministry kickoff skit, Dallas Theological Seminary, August 2001
Seminary Wives in Ministry Bible study leader, 2001-2002
Eternal Perspective-Saving Room for Dessert and not just Mud Pies, Either, March 2003. "The Banquet" Women's Conference with Woman of Faith speaker Thelma Wells
You Can Write a Column, a presentation given to area elementary schools, Spring 2003
Unlocking the Mysteries of the Query Letter-And You don't even have to be Arthur Conan Doyle.
Hour-long query letter presentation given in 2003 to: Rockwall Christian Writers Group, Dallas Christian Writers Guild, Flower Mound Christian Writers, Greenville Christian Writers Conference
LakePointe Church Bible study leader: Eternal Perspective-an 11-week women's Bible study. I wrote the 60-page study, and taught it in the fall/winter of 2002; 2 Corinthians-Pots of Clay in a Porcelain Perfect World. I wrote the 35-page study, winter/spring 2003; Women's Topical Issues. I wrote 15 weekly studies, spring 2003-present

Writing background

I began my writing career by producing a subscriber-based newsletter entitled The Giving Home Journal. I followed that by writing home schooling materials for a local curriculum company and video copy for Siemens. For the next several years, I designed and edited three additional non-profit newsletters. Over the past eighteen months, I have completed two novels with a third one in progress, and am juggling three non-fiction proposals. I am a weekly family columnist for Star Community Newspapers. I have also had success with well known Christian and secular magazines.

Current projects

Crushing Stone is a women's literary fiction novel about a widow's struggle to reconnect with her children after her husband is killed in a quarry accident in 1932 Ohio. Status: finished. Proposal and manuscript with agent.
Watching The Tree Limbs is a contemporary southern novel about an abandoned child's redemption in a small East Texas town during the late 1970s. Status: finished. Proposal and manuscript with agent.
Two Peace is a contemporary chick-lit novel about two unlikely women forging a tenuous friendship. Status: first sixteen chapters complete.
Home is Where the Fridge Art is, a compilation of my humorous family columns, is complete. Proposal with agent.

Recent Freelance Successes

I've written over 75 weekly columns for Star Community Newspapers, circulation 100,000, 2002-present.
"Too Busy to Cook," Bon Appetit, July 2003.
"Java Brownies," Woman's Day, October 13, 2003.
"Past Sexual Abuse and Marriage," Marriage Partnership, slated to run Spring 2004.
"Wholehearted Devotion: Hard Lessons from King Asa," Dallas Theological Seminary's Kindred Spirit, Fall 2003.
"Today in Scripture News," and "Encouragement Cards," Discipleship Journal, Issue 134 & 135 respectively.
"Taming the Money Monster," The Answer (circulation 100,000), a division of Promise Network, Fall 2003.
"How to Alienate Agents and Influence Rejection," Writer's Information Network Informer, May/June 2003.
"Grandma Walker," The War Cry, pending publication.
"Five Hearts, One Hand," Honorable Mention for Writer's Digest 2002 Writing Contest.

Professional memberships

Co-leader, Rockwall Christian Writers Group
Faculty, The Greenville Christian Writers Conference, October 2003
Member, Dallas Christian Writers Guild
Member, Writers Information Network
Member, The Writers View

Editing and mentoring experience

Ministry Mentor, Dallas Theological Seminary's Media Arts Internship, 2003-2004
Editor of four novels
Non-profit newsletter editor for five years
Editor of several non-fiction articles, books and proposals

Educational and professional background

I graduated Magna Cum Laude from Pacific Lutheran University with a degree in English. I taught Literature and writing to both hormonal seventh graders and advance placement seniors. Since my children were born, I have opted to write from home. This year, however, I am working half to three quarter time on my freelance writing business.

In Summary

I am willing to meet with the publisher's marketing department-anything that would help this book reach more home cooks. I am a tenacious and prolific writer with a weekly column deadline and three novels slated for completion this year-all this while still cooking meals for my family every night. I never miss a deadline, am eager to refine my writing through the editorial process, and enjoy promoting my work in innovative ways.

In my interaction with many frustrated home cooks who truly desire to feed their families and show hospitality, I know Feed 'Em, Don't Weep meets a felt need in today's rushed, but cocooning, society. I look forward to its success and potential.