What is an overview anyway?
And why do I need one? An overview is the most important section of your book proposal, in fact it may be the most important thing you’ll ever write. Skeptical? Try this thought experiment. Let’s say you’re an unpublished writer. You don’t know how to get your foot in the door, so you go ahead and write a few letters asking editors at various publishing houses if they’d like to see your book. Meanwhile you’ve got no book to show them, you just want to find out how they’ll react to the new kid on the block. Guess what? They all tell you the same thing: “Sorry, but we don’t accept unagented submissions.” So you write to a few literary agents asking if they’d like to see your book, and guess what? Almost the same reaction, only this time the chorus says “Sorry we don’t look at completed manuscripts, just book proposals.” The point is that the way to get your foot in the door of the publishing world isn’t to write a book, it’s to write a book proposal. But you knew that already, didn’t you
