The quick version of this part of the non-fiction book journey is 'do your research'. I have a friend who runs a small publishing house that specialises in certain kinds of memoir and self-help. Every week, she receives novels, and non-fiction proposals that are way outside her scope. This does not make her happy. Traditionally I would have said the best thing to do would be to buy a copy of one of the publishing guides, but now it's easy enough to go through a good number of books aimed at a similar readership as is your own in an online bookshop, noting down their publishers. Build a list of, say, ten likely publishers then visit their websites and explore them in detail. Look at how they describe themselves and what ranges of books they publish. Take a look at any guidance they have for authors. As mentioned in the previous part , try to find an appropriate contact (a commissioning editor, usually) to send a proposal to for each publisher. (Linked-In can sometimes help w

When someone gave me a copy of this book I was rather doubtful. Not because the chances are it's only going to be of interest to Pratchett fans, because that why I was given it in the first place. I have more Pratchett novels on my bookshelves than those by any other author - and most of them are hardbacks, suggesting I couldn't wait for the paperback, a sure sign of fandom. However, I find it easy to separate the creator and their creation. Just because I enjoy a particular book, or piece of music, or artwork - or even foodstuff - doesn't mean I have any real interest in the person who created it. They are quite distinct entities. The starting point, then, has to be whether the subject's life story is interesting as a standalone thing. And I think it's fair to say that in Terry Pratchett's case, that it was quite interesting. Not in any outstanding way - his wasn't an extraordinary life by any means - but there is no doubt that some of the aspects of his p

To date in this series, we've got a book proposal together. There's one last component that can seem relatively trivial - but in reality requires as much effort as you can put into it - the pitch letter. This is the cover letter for your proposal. In reality, these days, the 'letter' is likely to be an email, and that makes it particularly dangerous as we're used to writing emails quickly with limited editing. I highly recommend you craft your basic cover email in a separate editor, such as Word and only paste it in as an email once you are happy with the contents. This should help give it the attention it deserves. Put yourself in the head of the person who receives this email. They will receive many such emails. Although I'm not an editor, I review a lot of books and I get sent plenty of book press releases from publishers, which are a form of pitch email. They go through a two stage filter. Quite a few will get deleted after a few seconds, because I can alrea

It seemed almost impossible after Janice Hallett's first two novels, The Appeal and The Twyford Code that things could only go down hill - yet, somehow, she's managed to better them both with her latest. While continuing in the same style of collected communications, the Alperton Angels is more gripping (and even more clever). And once more, the setting is sufficiently different to impress. Here we have the collection of notes, messages, emails and more put together by a non-fiction author, commissioned to write a true crime book on a terrible event from eighteen years earlier. A cult had persuaded a 17-year-old that her baby was evil. On the night of the great conjunction of the planets, it was to be sacrificed to save the world by deluded individuals who believe themselves to be angels in human form. Yet all but one of these 'archangels' appear to have killed themselves, while the last of them, Gabriel, is jailed for life for his part in their deaths, and the murde

The previous part of this series looked at putting together an outline, which both helps the writer get ideas together and is an essential part of a book proposal. Here we'll look at what else a good book proposal contains. Always remember that in the end this is a sales document - you are selling your book idea to a publisher. Make it engaging, not dull. Start off with a title and subtitle. These may we be changed in discussion with a publisher, but it's a starting point and is necessary. The title is your first opportunity to grab the attention of a would-be reader. Don't waste it. It can either make clear what the book is about, or be a clever title that intrigues, which is then explained in the subtitle. Either way, the subtitle is also a good opportunity to get in some keywords that might be useful when someone searches in an online store. I recently read Ananyo Bhattacharya's book The Man from the Future . This title could have applied to anyone male, but grabs t

Hugely impressed by Janice Hallett's The Appeal , I had to buy her second novel, The Twyford Code and was equally pleased, though for slightly different reasons. Once again, what we have here is an ingenious mystery novel, constructed in an unusual fashion - where The Appeal was primarily made up of emails, the bulk of The Twyford Code comprises 200 voice notes, left by one-time career criminal Steve Smith. Transcriptions of these (supposedly made by software, and so containing a series of transcription errors) have been sent by a police inspector to a professor to ask if he can throw any light on them. At the heart of the story are a series of books by a variant of Enid Blyton called Edith Twyford. The equivalent to the Famous Five is the Secret Six, and a Secret Six book that Smith encounters while at school seems to both contain mysterious coded messages and to be linked to the disappearance of his school teacher, an event that still haunts him from many years in the past. Sm

If I am honest, I'm not a great fan of books with a disaster, 'end of civilisation as we know it' scenario. In my teens I hoovered up vast quantities of these from War of the Worlds to Day of the Triffids , and absolutely loved them in my typical teen enjoyment of misery, but as I've grown older I have become increasingly fond of it all ending happily ever after. I think my problem with disaster books (and films) is the cavalier way that millions are slaughtered by the author. We are expected to feel connected to the main character, who usually miraculously survived, but I am always kept at a cold distance, because I am so sad for everyone else, the bit part players who are killed off for the sake of the scenario. This meant I was a little nervous coming to Kate Kelly's young adult novel Red Rock , as this is 'cli fi' - fiction based on the world being transformed by climate change, and on the whole that's a pretty disaster-laden scenario. I needn'

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense