How do I break into writing nonfiction books?
As an amateur not-particularly-successful publisher, if you’ve never published a non-fiction book before or are not already a “famous” expert in the field you’re writing about, you should write the book first, then shop it. Having an agent and an outline isn’t enough to sell a book if your potential book-buying audience don’t already know you as The Guy Who Knows Everything About That Subject. If you are an expert, but on a small scale, talk to your local university press (even small university’s often have one) – they might publish you based on an outline or query letter, if you’re that good, but they may be willing to work with you getting started, since they have the teaching resources somewhere on campus. Don’t expect an advance (that’s my assumption for why you haven’t written a book yet) unless, again, you’re already the expert that everybody’s been waiting for a book from. If you’ve never written a non-fiction book before, even if you are an expert, you probably don’t have any w
I work at a major US trade publisher. I work on both fiction and non-fiction titles. I don’t work in acquisitions, so I cannot help you get your book published at my house, but here are general guidelines: The problem with having so many ideas is that you’re not an expert about any one of them (unless somehow your ideas are all inter-related; it doesn’t really sound like that’s the case). Pick an idea that you can become an expert on. Develop a platform–a blog, a Twitter account, something where you reach out to an audience as that expert. Write a solid proposal and start shopping agents–but don’t just send the proposal out all over the place. Do a lot of research on similar books and find out who the author’s agent was. Only contact those people. Do not write the whole book. Write a few chapters, write a good outline, write a lot of marketing plans, but don’t write the whole book–non-fiction is sold by the proposal because the editor or publisher might want the book to have a certa
It’d help to learn what you mean by ‘nonfiction’ books – are you talking about something like a dog memoir, David Sedaris-like essays, a history book, creative non-fiction, or something like ‘5 minute abs’? In response to peanut_mcgillicuty’s advice – this is definitely sound advice for a particular subset of nonfiction publishing (for example, you’ve got a great new way to garden in small spaces) but feels backwards to me – while having a platform will help you to publish a book in a subject area in which you’re an expert, developing a platform with the express intent of writing a book down the road feels wrong to me unless you’re already passionate and interested in the topic – meaning first you’re interested in something and passionate about it, an expert, you blog about it, you go on talk shows, whatever – you develop a platform – then you decide, hey, this would make a great book, or somebody contacts you and says ‘hey this would make a great book.’ So yeah, the advice is spot on
Instead of an outline or completed book, concentrate your efforts on writing a killer proposal. When Mr. Adams and I first decided to try our hand at non-fiction, we spent a good month writing, re-writing and honing our proposal. We then researched publishing houses on our own (foregoing an agent) and the types of books they specialized in and sent our proposal to six or eight of them that had other books in our genre. We didn’t get a book deal, but one of the publishers passed our proposal on to a friend of his who worked for a magazine, and he contacted us to talk about writing a semi-regular column for his publication. (Our area of expertise was/is trivia, amazing little-known facts, Why Things Are, What’s the Difference, stuff like that.) Some of our material was picked up by websites like CNN.com and The Discovery Channel, which eventually got our names “out there” as the go-to folks when they ne
