Blog-To-Book: You are a science blogger but you want to publish a pop-sci book?
This session is moderated by Tom Levenson and Dave Munger:
A number of bloggers have signed book deals recently. But how does one get such a deal? How should one adjust one’s blogging in order to become attractive to agents? Who to contact? How to write a proposal? How to write the book? And once it’s published, how to promote it online? We’ll ask some writers who are also bloggers, and some bloggers who snagged book deals, to share the secrets of getting a book published. Share your experiences as well.
Dave has published several college textbooks, but is now working on his first popular science book inspired by his blog Cognitive Daily (both co-authored with Greta Munger). He’ll talk about his experiences trying to sell the book idea to agents and publishers, and how both his book plans and his blog have changed over the years as he has worked to create a book — and hopefully, how other bloggers can learn from his mistakes.
Tom is a science writer turned blogger, not quite but sort of the inverted image of Dave. He has three insufficiently popular popular books about science out so far, and one more in progress, due next summer — all completed or well under way before beginning to blog. He will talk (very briefly) about some of his bigger follies in the construction of books out of their component parts — and how those errors bear on the traps waiting bloggers trying to make similar leaps from short and fast to long and painfully slow.
Then we’ll open the session up to general discussion, based on the interests of the group. Some possible topics:
- What makes a book-worthy idea?
- How is the audience for a book similar/different from a blog audience?
- What goes into a book proposal?
- How do I get an agent?
- How do I get a publisher?
- How much of my blog should I put into my book?
- How much of my book should I put into my blog?
- How bad is the impact of the recession on the book industry?
- What is (or will, or should be) the impact of blogging/technology on the book industry?
- Should I even be writing a book?
Discuss:
(From TL): BTW For those that are interested, I’ve posted a copy of my most recent book proposal to the Wiki. It’s a tad long (on the order of 6,000 words) to append here, so it sits on a separate page: A Sample Book Proposal: Newton and the Counterfeiter
It’s instructive, (if it is) on a couple of fronts. First, it was a successful proposal, in the sense that (a) it sold readily and (b) the editors who bought it saw it as an easy proposal for their colleagues in the house to get and accept. (That’s an important subtlety in the book-selling process. Your idea has to please both an acquiring editor and some form of an editorial board within the house, at least in most cases.)
Second, reading this proposal now, more than three years after it was written, and close to year after submitting my manuscript, I am struck both by how much the book tracked the proposal and how much it deviated from it. The emphasis, and even some of the basic claims about Newton shifted quite a bit. This evolution always happens (at least in my experience) and always surprises.
For those that are interested in tracking that process in this case, Newton and the Counterfeiter is coming out this June in the US and in August in the UK, publishing disasters permitting.
