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Ø Offers up-to-date instruction for creating and submitting proposals and then it goes deeper—taking you through the entire publishing process.

Ø Features insider strategies for beating rejection.

Ø Gives writers a realistic understanding of how the publishing process works and provides the tools needed to make smart choices in preparing and submitting work—ultimately giving you a leg up on the competition.

Read an Excerpt
Authors Sharlene Martin and Anthony Flacco offer tips for building your author platform by building your Internet presence.

About the Book

Demystify the publishing process with this insider’s guide to beating rejection!

In Publish Your Nonfiction Book, successful literary agent Sharlene Martin and noted novelist and nonfiction author Anthony Flacco draw on their years of experience to provide you with an in-depth understanding of what the publishing industry is really like and how to successfully navigate it in order to ensure a long-term career. You’ll learn:

•    Techniques for writing a strong query letter that hooks agents and editors right from the start
•    Strategies for putting together a stellar proposal package that successfully pitches you and your book
•    Methods for creating a respectable author platform—before you start pitching your book
•    Tips for getting an agent and building a lasting working relationship
•    And much, much more!

Plus, the authors examine actual query letters and proposals that worked, so you can see firsthand exactly what catches an agent’s attention and why.

Publish Your Nonfiction Book is the one-on-one agent consultation you need—but seldom get—to learn the ropes and seal the deal.

Table of Contents
Introduction    1
Chapter 1: How to Surf the Tidal Wave in Today’s Nonfiction Book Market     5
Chapter 2: The Many Forms of Nonfiction    15
Chapter 3: The Platform Dance    37
Chapter 4: Getting the Rights Right    55
Chapter 5: The Nine Essential Elements of a Book Proposal    64
Chapter 6: Three Proposals That Sold—and Why They Did    82
Chapter 7: The Tao of the Query Letter—and Beyond    104
Chapter 8: Crazy Queries: How Not to Do it    116
Chapter 9: Why Your Query Will Work    133
Chapter 10: Submitting Your Query    150
Chapter 11: From Agent to Deal (or Not): Tactics for Presenting Yourself    162
Chapter 12: Demystifying the Process: How Your Sale Is Made    174
Chapter 13: High Fives: The Book Contract    190
Chapter 14: The Self-Publishing Option    208
Chapter 15: Discipline Is Your Friend: Follow This Schedule to Finish Your Book    223
Chapter 16: A Targeted Public Relations Campaign: Your Ticket to the Top    245
Chapter 17: The Nonfiction Writer’s Life and You: What’s Next?    268
Appendix: Resources    282

PRAISE FOR PUBLISH YOUR NONFICTION BOOK by Sharlene Martin and Anthony Flacco

Publish Your Nonfiction Book is a useful, accessible, and timely resource that provides excellent guidance and insider advice for prospective authors. Perhaps most importantly, it demystifies the often mazelike publishing process, making it possible for writers with talent and ambition to get their work into print.

-Jason Prince, VP, Publisher, Sterling Publishing

Sharlene Martin and Anthony Flacco have used their considerable experience as a successful literary agent and widely published writer respectively to demystify the publishing process for nonfiction books in a way that any writer will find to be informative and enlightening.  PUBLISH YOUR NONFICTION BOOK clearly explains the process unlike any other book that I know about.  I’ll be recommending it to writers that I work with.

-William Shinker, President & Publisher, Gotham and Avery Books.

PUBLISH YOUR NONFICTION BOOK is practical, straight-forward, helpful, and tells the truth about publishing!  This is the perfect guide to go from dream to reality on your publishing journey.  Highly recommended.

-Joel Fotinos, Publisher, Tarcher/Penguin

Having been in book publishing almost forty years, i've always been surprised at the dearth of thoughtful, insightful and informative books about the integral  things a writer needs to know about publishing a nonfiction book.  Well, now I've found what I think is the best book of its kind, and one that can make a tremendous difference in the lives of writers and writers-to-be. In PUBLISH YOUR NONFICTION BOOK, Martin and Flacco have used their years of experience and an insiders understanding to provide an easy-to-follow path to building a successful career in a volatile and competitive marketplace.  It will become an invaluable classic on any writer's bookshelf.

-Roger Cooper, Vice-President, Publisher, Vanguard Press

If getting published is your plan, take note of a few things: Mere talent isn’t enough. Neither is tenacity. You need tools. In this insiders’ guide, Martin and Flacco open up their specialty kit of wrenches, calipers, and pneumatic nail guns. You’ll find all you need here to get started with building your literary career.

-Joel Miller, Vice President of Editorial & Acquisitions, Thomas Nelson Pub.

Martin and Flacco’s book is insider’s guide to getting published in the turbulent world of a book business in transition. It’s filled with good tips and techniques, but best of all it never minimizes the hard work, discipline, and perseverance that it takes to be a good writer.
-Alan Rinzler, Executive Editor, Jossey-Bass/John Wiley & Sons

When I see a submission from Sharlene Martin and Martin Literary Management, I sit at attention. From pitch to proposal to finished project, Sharlene always hits the mark. She and Anthony, both at the top of their game, consistently deliver commercial, well-positioned, riveting work. Whether you are just getting started or facing your hundredth rejection, this book will help you experience the inside track and professional wisdom that can take you one step closer to publishing success.

– Michele Matrisciani, Editorial Director, HCI Books

For every aspiring writer—even for authors with a book under their belt— Publish Your Nonfiction Book will prove an essential guide through the entire publishing process. Sharlene Martin and Anthony Flacco cover all the bases—sizing up today’s media landscape, how to write and submit the best queries; and dissecting book proposals that publishers acquired, and why. I have published many books on books, and this is one of the most useful handbooks I’ve ever seen. I will recommend it to all my authors.

-Philip Turner, Philip Turner Book Productions

Anyone who has ever dreamed of writing a book must read this one first. A rare blend of publishing wisdom and psychotherapeutic sensitivity, it leads you through today's realities without bursting your bubble. It's as essential as a dictionary for everyone from the wanna-be writer to the best-selling author!

               - Carole Lieberman, M.D., media psychiatrist and Bestselling Author 

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Navigating the Rough Seas of the Publishing Industry with Sharlene Martin and Anthony Flacco

Every writer wants to see their work in print. We check in with Publish Your Nonfiction Book authors Sharlene Martin and Anthony Flacco who offer an at times inspiring, occasionally sobering, but always optimistic view as they discuss changes in the publishing and their views on the industry in this exclusive interview.

What's the one thing you can't live without in your writing life?

Anthony answers: 
Quiet time. The world conspires to distract us all, which fragments our ability to read or write in the longer forms. My remedy is to fight back with peaceful but determined resistance by willfully creating a bubble of time and space sequestered from the chaos. Timothy Leary told the hippie generation, “Turn on, tune in, drop out.”  I would reverse that to, “turn off, tune out, drop in,” meaning to turn off the communication devices and entertainment media, tune out the endless sources of distraction that plague us all, and drop in on your own most uncluttered and lucid thinking.


What message do you find yourself repeating over and over to writers?

Sharlene answers:
I’ve yet to meet one writer who came out of the womb a published author.  Every one starts from the same place—some have more luck or talent, but the starting line is the same.

Would you mind sharing a success story from a writing critique group you’ve been a member of?

Anthony answers:
My writing group at the American Film Institute was monitored by Hollywood writer David Shaw, and his group was the best of any I’ve known.  I felt freer and more inspired in that group than the handful of others I’ve worked in and around.  The odd thing is that I do not recall a single rule, regulation, truism, or “writer’s law” that came from him.  David’s noteworthy talent was to create an atmosphere of such love and respect for the writing process    for its difficulty in the struggle as well as the exuberance in the doing of it that the work flowed out of us.  He was no pushover in critiquing, but he eschewed any sort of condescension and never stooped to telling a writer what they were “supposed” to do.  He took the Socratic method and pushed us with challenging questions.  


What piece of advice have you received over the course of your career that has had the biggest impact on your success?

Sharlene answers:
Many years ago when I started out working in the entertainment industry with writers, I had a mentor who was a very highly placed studio executive…in fact the first female president of a motion picture studio.  She advised me never to give up about something that I was passionate about.  If I couldn’t get their attention by going in the front door, climb in through the window. Just refuse to take no for an answer.  It may account for why so many of my clients, in their testimonials on my website, refer to me as “tenacious.”  In fact, I even had a client present me with a gift—a bracelet engraved “Tenacious S.”

What's the worst kind of mistake that new writers, freelancers, or book authors can make?

Anthony answers: 
I believe that it is a big mistake to personalize the inevitable rejections that every writer encounters. It feels intensely personal each time because it is something precious to you that you feel is being disrespected or unfairly ignored.  While the pain of it is real and endemic to the profession, the intent is not malicious and not focused at you.  The occasional lapses in manners or consideration are an analog of what we experience in heavy traffic: unpleasant but inevitable, and an unfortunate trend in our culture.  None of that is about you or your writing.


What does a typical day look like for you?

Sharlene answers:
Normally I’m up and at my desk by 7am to be available on ET when New York starts the day.  I read my emails, couple of online newspapers, industry blogs, check my Facebook, and so on.  My day is spent reading submissions, answering queries, talking to editors, collaborating with my clients, strategizing with their publicists, editing proposals, and pitching the right projects to the appropriate editors.  On really good days, I’m negotiating contracts, issuing advance checks, paying royalties, and updating my website with new sales.

If you could change one thing about publishing, what would it be?

Sharlene answers:
The antiquated way publishing has not caught up to the 21st century in not being able to turn books around expeditiously.  In this age of instant information, most books take a minimum of 12 months to come to market once sold and if it’s a timely subject, that’s way too long a lag time to continue to expect the public to wait.

In what way (if any) has your writing/publishing life changed in the past 5 years?

Anthony answers: 
The internet, internet, internet.  It has heavily impacted upon every aspect of the writing life -- except for the head work.  One of the many author’s sites that I frequent has an illuminating discussion thread about how much time is being leached out of our writing lives by the fact that writers must maintain a professional presence on a host of book related websites, and somebody – either the author or a publicity assistant – has to maintain and supervise the accuracy of the content for all those places.  Even though the internet  is essential to the 21st century marketing platform, it’s use can easily become another dangerous intrusion upon available writing time -- something few writers have in adequate supply.


Do you have any advice for new writers on fostering strong relationship with their writing group?

Anthony answers: 
I am passionate in my view that every writer has to have access to intelligent and informed opinions about the writing process and about one’s work – but only so long as the ultimate result in your membership is that you get more writing done and feel a genuine sense of progress in your work.  Groups can turn negative, nurturing and projecting subtle jealousies and heightening the neuroses of certain members.  My rule of thumb is that one’s sessions with any group must leave you feeling energized and inspired to get to work.  If you walk out feeling drained in any way, get the hell out of there and don’t go back.  Not everyone around you wishes you well.  Seek the company of truly supportive people and begin that process by being one yourself.


What about advice for writers seeking agents?

Sharlene answers:
Do your homework/research before you ever contact an agent.  Know what they represent, that their time is valuable and that you only get one chance to make a first impression.  Make it count.  And don’t call to pitch your book—we can’t tell how well you write by the sound of your voice!

What do you see as your biggest publishing accomplishment?

Anthony answers: 
No question, it’s finding an audience of readers -- and having the privilege to hear back from them when the things that they have to say are smart or funny or insightful.  Their reactions are often heartfelt and can be deeply moving.  It is amazing to think that they come from every part of the world, often from places that I have to look up on Google Earth.  It’s a wonderful thing. 


Any final thoughts?

Sharlene and Anthony answer: 
Dare to dream. BUT also remember that daring to dream is the easy part; the magical winnowing of losers from winners happens when we stick with this dream regardless of any and all distractions that appear.