You have a few hundred posts, a folder of half-finished drafts and an inbox of questions from readers. That is raw material, and it is genuinely valuable. What you do not yet have is a proposal — and editors do not buy archives. They buy books, and they need to see the book clearly before a word of it is written. The proposal is a shorter job than a first draft, and most of the thinking behind it has already happened in public. The trick is knowing which parts to keep.
Begin with an audit, not a manuscript
Before you write a single sentence of pitch, get your archive into a spreadsheet. One row per post: title, date, word count, the question it answers, and whether it still reads well. That last column matters. Some posts age badly, and you would rather find out now than halfway through a chapter.
Then group the rows into themes. Most writers find three to five that keep reappearing. A theme that shows up in eight or ten posts is a chapter. A theme that shows up once is an anecdote — useful, but not a spine.
While you are there, read your comments and your reader emails. The questions people ask repeatedly are the questions your book should answer. That is free market research, and it is more reliable than guessing.
From posts to a single argument
Blogs are additive. Books are cumulative. Each post can stand alone; a book has to build, chapter on chapter, towards something. If you cannot state that something in one sentence, the proposal will feel vague and so will the book.
This book shows [reader] how to [do the thing], so that they can [get the result], even if [the obstacle they expect].
Fill that in properly. If it takes three sentences, you have three book ideas competing with each other. Pick one and park the others.
The sections UK publishers expect
Houses differ, and every editor has a format they prefer, so check the submissions page before you send anything. But most commissioning editors want roughly the same document: fifteen to twenty-five pages covering the following.
- Overview — one page on what the book is, who it is for and why it matters now.
- Audience and market — who buys it, where they already shop for books like yours, and how you know.
- Comparable titles — three to six real books, with publisher and year, and a line on how yours differs.
- Chapter outline — a solid paragraph per chapter, with approximate word counts.
- Sample material — usually one or two chapters, written as chapters rather than pasted posts.
- About the author — your credentials, your platform and any writing you have published.
- Marketing and promotion — what you will realistically do to help the book find readers.
- Practical details — total length, delivery date, illustrations, anything unusual about the project.
Comparable titles, handled honestly
Do not claim that nothing like your book exists. That tells an editor you have not looked, and they will find four comparable titles in ten minutes. Name the books, say what they do well, then say plainly what gap yours fills. Confidence and honesty read as competence.
The overview does most of the work
Some editors read nothing else before deciding whether to keep reading. Keep it to a page, in plain sentences. No rhetorical questions, no opening with a dictionary definition, no throat-clearing about how long you have wanted to write this. State the promise, state the reader, state why you are the person to deliver it.
Repurposing posts without sounding like a blog
Your posts are evidence, examples and case studies. They are rarely chapters as they stand. A workable process:
- Choose the six to ten strongest posts behind each chapter heading.
- Cut the warm-up. Most posts spend two paragraphs clearing their throat before the point arrives.
- Write transitions. Blog readers forgave the gaps because they read the earlier post; book readers will not.
- Strip the repetition. You have probably explained the same concept five times, slightly differently, because new readers kept arriving.
- Update everything. Check facts, replace dated examples, and rewrite anything that only made sense in the week it was published.
- Add what a book needs and a blog never did: context, depth, the worked example you never had room for.
Expect a substantial amount of genuinely new writing — introductions, conclusions and the connective tissue that holds chapters together. Repurposing is a head start, not a shortcut.
Platform, in plain numbers
This section makes writers nervous, and it need not. Editors want to know that some readers already trust you. Give real figures for your mailing list, your traffic, your speaking, your courses, anything that shows a route to readers. Do not round up. If your numbers are modest, lead with engagement and specificity: a list of two thousand people who open every email is a better asset than a vague claim about social reach. Say what you will actually do at publication — newsletters, events, podcasts, your existing audience — rather than promising a bestseller.
Mistakes that stall a proposal
Pasting posts in as chapters and calling them a sample. Sending the same document to every publisher without adjusting the comparable titles. Describing the book as being for "anyone who wants to improve their life". Leaving out the word count and delivery date, which suggests you have not thought about the practicalities. And writing the proposal in the chatty, second-person voice of a blog when the sample needs to show you can hold a reader for forty pages.
Many trade publishers prefer proposals to arrive through a literary agent; others accept direct submissions from writers with a track record. Check each publisher's guidelines, and check them twice.
What to do in the next fortnight
Spend two evenings on the spreadsheet and one on the single-sentence promise. Draft the overview next — it is the hardest page and the one that shapes everything else. Then take your two strongest chapters, rewrite them from the posts, and read them aloud; anything that sounds like a blog post gets another pass.
Before you send it anywhere, give the overview and a sample chapter to three people who match your intended reader. Ask one question: where did you get bored, and where did you get confused? Fix those two things and you will be sending out a proposal that reads less like a writer's hope and more like a book an editor can already see on a shelf.
Photo: theglassdesk / Pixabay
