My fifth book, Lead With Your Heart, came out on November 1, 2007. It took six months to research and write, six months to find a publisher, and one year to get published. This is typical for most books. In my case, I understood the process, so I was able to avoid the frustrations that take place over six months of proposal submission and a year of editing, proofing, cover design and approval, printing and finally publishing. Having an agent also helped. And let's begin there.
I recommend an agent. Agents have the inside track with manuscript editors and publishers at the various publishing houses. They take his/her telephone calls, whereas they don't often take calls from writers who they have not previously published. I found my agent through a referral. I called him up to discuss my project, and then I sent him my proposal. He worked with me to polish the proposal, and when we were both happy with it, the submission process began. If you cannot get a referral from another writer/author, you can find agents via a web search. Getting their attention is as difficult as getting a publisher's attention without an agent. At the end of the day, whether you get noticed and published most often is determined by the quality of your proposal.
Following is what a winning proposal looks like. I include snippets of copy from the Lead With Your Heart proposal to show you style and tenor and what an agent and a publisher expect to receive. The front matter of this proposal is 16 pages, and included with the front matter were two draft chapters. I hope this helps to get you published. (Remember: The copy is neither whole not contiguous. These are just sample snippets.)
[Book Proposal proper starts here]
Who Will Read Lead with Your Heart?
Lead with Your Heart: Sell Happiness, and You and Your Business Will Flourish, authored by Lewis Green, Founder and Managing Principal, L&G Business Solutions, is destined to become a must-read for entrepreneurs, small business owners, and managers and executives in small and mid-sized businesses throughout America. It is a business book based on a business model that changes people’s lives for the better.
What Makes This Book Different from the Hundreds of Other Business Guides?
Lead with Your Heart: Sell Happiness and You and Your Business Will Flourish combines the no-nonsense, straight-forward, easily read writing style of Lewis Green, whose previous books and writings have appeared throughout North America. It presents the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of running or managing a business, and it pulls no punches in recommending a new business model for those executives, leaders, managers and entrepreneurs looking for new ideas to grow a business profitably, but one that is centered on people instead of money.
Green offers a philosophy that great businesses—large and small—make better places to work, contribute positively to their communities and to the environment, and produce products and services that result in happy customers and clients when they embrace the law of reciprocity—giving is getting—and are people-focused, not money focused. Green calls this The Happiness Quotient™.
Here is what Green does and does not mean by “Happiness.” According to recent book reviews in The New Yorker entitled Pursuing Happiness , Jonathan Haidt, author of “The Happiness Hypothesis,” tells us that “We have been hardwired to emphasize the negative….” In the same article, Darrin McMahon, author of “Happiness: A History,” reminds us that “shit happens” and in reference to the famous phrase from the Declaration of Independence that we often quote, McMahon says that “We are pursuing happiness to this day, and it is by no means clear that it is a happy process.”
Happiness, Commitment and Hard Work
Lewis Green is a Capitalist at heart and believes capitalism works as well as any other economic system. Smart and favored people make lots of money and those not so smart and not so favored don’t. And as in most systems, the poor mostly stay poor, the middle class shrinks and the wealthy get wealthier, so it is a flawed system. But Green believes those of us who live in democracies and practice a form of capitalism can fix whatever flaws exist—if we lead with the heart and care about The Happiness Quotient.
Leading with the heart is not about being a bleeding heart, nor is it about throwing money at social problems. Instead, it is about creating and managing a powerful and profitable business by applying best practices and innovation for long-term and lasting results. If practiced and executed properly, leading with your heart and applying The Happiness Quotient creates better jobs, happier customers and employees, and better places to live.
Leading with the heart is about passion. It is about caring not only for products and services, but also for the people who create them and the people who purchase and use them. It is about creating an environment blessed by The Happiness Quotient, where business leaders invest more money in people than they do in products and services. And businesses invest in ways that improve people’s lives.
Leading with your heart is a way of running a business so that the world we live in becomes a better place, and creating that world is the business’s core purpose, its reason for being.
Contents Summarized
Chapter One poses two questions every business person should ask: Are You Sure You Want to Play in this Game? and Can We Be Trusted to Run Our Businesses? From that point on, readers discover an idea-rich guide to the essentials, including:
- The Prologue: Being a Business Built on Values
- Chapter One: Redefining Greatness
- Chapter Two: Do You Trust Your Heart Enough to Run A Successful Business?
- Chapter Three: The Keys to Building Your Business with a Heart While Practicing Smart
- Chapter Four: Build A Brand that Reaches Out to Serve People and You Develop A Brand that People Become Passionate About
- And so on to the last chapter (Note: By the time the editing process was complete, every chapter title changed as did some of the chapter contents and order.)
Who is the Target Market?
Entrepreneurs
Small business owners
Managers and executives in small and mid-sized businesses
C-level executives and managers at large businesses who want to change the way they do business
What Separates Lead With Your Heart from Other Business Books?
Business books abound and many are well-written and offer sage advice. The common thread that runs through most of them is the rehash of best practices mixed with a sprinkling of psychology about the need to be brave and bold. The focus of nearly all of these books is making money using short-term strategies and tactics. The following represent the kinds of books from which Lead With Your Heart will differentiate itself:...
Lead With Your Heart is not about short-term thinking, nor are the book’s ideas, strategies and tactics focused solely on making money. This book separates itself from the pack because it emphasizes building a business focused on people, and urges business leaders to think about how what they do impacts the world and the people who live in it.
While it includes smart business practices, the book’s angle never bends toward profits as the only key to success. Lead With Your Heart describes a new business model, one that currently exists in one form or another in a few companies, but is absent from the vast majority of businesses. For the first time in print, Green shares a formula for building a business that exists to create a better place for all to live because the business model is people-centered. He explains and offers research that supports this paradigm: when businesses care more about people than profits, they create a Brand that can become great and one that can become loved and respected in the marketplace, thereby bringing the success the business seeks.
How Will the Book be Marketed and Sold?
As a sales and marketing thought leader, a former publisher and editor, and a practicing business consultant, Lewis Green is the rare author who specializes in marketing and sales and knows how to market himself and his books.
Green promoted his previous books with book signings, workshops and lectures, TV and radio guest appearances, and marketing directly to book stores. How did he make this happen?
Green is a passionate writer and believes in his work and in his ideas. To make three books regional best sellers, he called radio and TV producers of news and daily talk shows and, through his knowledge of their audience and his passion for his subject, in every case he was invited to personally appear on TV or in the radio studio or in the instances when distance was a challenge radio hosts conducted telephone interviews. Furthermore, he called and visited with book reviewers, resulting in each of these books receiving positive reviews. He also worked diligently to get his books placed in Barnes & Noble and other such chains and never refused a book-signing opportunity, despite the pain experienced by every author at such events.
He will do so, using such hands-on techniques as:
Telemarketing
Face-to-face Meetings with People who Matter
Press Releases
Book Reviews
Direct Marketing
Networking
Testimonials
TV and Radio Appearances
Trade Show Appearances
Talks and Lectures
Biography
Lead With Your Heart is written by a hands-on practicing business person who learned his craft not in a classroom but on the rugged terrain of business competition and entrepreneurship. Each of his three businesses has succeeded, while in the corporate world he was recognized as a manager who would always deliver return on investment, using both street smarts and book smarts.
Lewis Green, Founder and Managing Principal of L&G Business Solutions, brings three decades of business management experience. L&G Business Solutions, LLC, represents his third successful business venture. Additionally, he held management positions with GTE Discovery Publications, Puget Sound Energy, and Starbucks Coffee Company.
Jacket Endorsements
The author will approach the following people for jacket testimonials:
• List names here
Testimonials:
• Lewis Green and L&G Business Solutions have always helped us identify what our long-term business goals and objectives should be. I would recommend his services to both my clients and colleagues without hesitation and look forward to working with him again in the future—Kate Terricciano, Promotion and Events Manager, General Motors
• Lewis has always provided the highest level of customer service. Through understanding the customer’s needs, Lewis has consistently been results oriented — high quality, timely and cost effective—Michael Mansbridge, Financial Planning Manager, GTE Directories Corporation.
• I worked with Lewis on a consulting proposal and had a chance to learn firsthand about his commitment to his clients' needs. His insights into solving client problems are first-rate, and he truly understands what customer service is all about—Fred Wergeles, President, Fred Wergeles & Associates LLC
• Always candid, challenging popular thought, adding a creative twist — I could count on Lewis to bring my article, presentation or suggestion alive within our Starbucks language and culture—Leslie Thornton, Vice President, Total Pay, Starbucks
• And so on.
Clients & Work Experience
• AT&T Wireless
• Advanced Technology Systems, Inc.
• Archdiocese of Seattle
• China Power & Light
• And so on.
Attach your sample chapter(s). Good luck and remember: The first step to getting published is writing. So get started.