In my last post, I talked about the first part of your proposal, where you talk about your project. Today we’re talking about the second vital part of your proposal: your book’s positioning. 

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Remember: Not all book proposal templates will have it organized the way I do, but they WILL address all of these parts!

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Positioning

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Your book’s positioning is its place in the world, relative to other books out there. Keep in mind that when a publisher evaluates a book proposal, they are trying to determine how many copies they could sell. So the positioning section of your proposal is going to help them answer these questions:

• Where in a bookstore or online would someone find your book? How easy will it be for them to find?
• What else does your audience like to read? Where can we find these potential book buyers?
• How will we sell this book?

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This positioning information is critically important for marketing, and will help a publisher envision what a marketing campaign would look like. If you’re self-publishing, then you are your own publisher and marketer, and you’ll need to answer these questions for yourself!

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There are three key components of your book’s positioning: the positioning statement, competitive titles, and your previous works.

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Positioning Statement

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Sometimes called your “elevator pitch,” your positioning statement is a crucial tool for your reader and publisher. In ideally ONE sentence, you should be able to answer these questions:

• Who is your book for?
• What will they get out of your book?
• Why is your book important?

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You might be thinking, “But I already answered these questions in Part 1 about my project. Why do I need to include them again?” Part 1 was just for you and your agent/publisher. This positioning statement shows that you know how to convey your message to your reader - and your reader isn’t going to have time (or access) to read an overview and rationale. You’ve got literally one sentence (sometimes less) to tell your reader everything they need to know about your book and why they should buy it. This positioning statement can later be used in marketing copy, ads, the back of book blurb, etc. You can also often find it in a book’s Introduction. Your publisher’s marketing team will be learning from YOU how to sell your book, because you are the ultimate expert. Your job here is to give them the tool they need to pitch your book successfully to readers.

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Remember this: YOU are the best salesperson for your book. Not your publisher!

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So what should your positioning statement look like? There’s a format I like to use from Ryan Holiday’s book Perennial Seller that works for just about any product, but is especially useful for books:

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“This is a __________ that does _____________ for _____________ because/so that____________.”

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Using this simple sentence frame, you’ve answered all of your publisher’s (and reader’s) questions and given them something they could also use in marketing. Here is what a positioning statement might look like for our yoga book from my last post:

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“This book provides chronic pain sufferers with the knowledge and tools they need to safely practice yoga so that they can use yoga to manage pain and achieve achieve greater health and mobility.”

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Competitive Titles

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This is one of my favorite sections of a proposal, and one that often gets glossed over by authors: the part where you talk about other books like yours. Sometimes publishers might also call these “comparative titles.” This is where you get to tell your publisher where on the bookshelf your book would be, and why a reader would choose your book over the other books there. 

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The other secondary purpose of this section is that you get to show off your expertise on your topic. You need to show that you know everything else that’s out there, and you’ve identified a gap in the information. This is a gap that your audience desperately needs filled, and your book is going to fill it! 

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When you look for your competitive titles, you should look for books that try to solve the exact same problem for the same audience. Search Amazon using keywords related to your book. Look at your competitors on Instagram or other social media platforms - have they written books? Returning to our yoga book example from my last post, when I search for “yoga for chronic pain,” I find a handful of comparable books:

• Yoga for Chronic Pain: 7 Steps to Aid Recovery From Fibromyalgia With Yoga by Kayla Kurin
• Yoga for Chronic Pain: Beginners Exercise to Heal Your Back Scoliosis at Home by Tracy Tailor
• Relax Into Yoga for Chronic Pain: An Eight-Week Mindful Yoga Workbook for Finding Relief and Resilience by Jim Carson, Kimberly Carson, and Carol Krucoff
• Yoga for Pain Relief: Simple Practices to Calm Your Mind and Heal Your Chronic Pain by Kelly McGonigal

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These are the other books that my audience will find when they go looking for help with their problem. So now your job is to answer the question: Why should my audience pick my book over these other ones?

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The first two books are focused on addressing very specific problems (fibromyalgia and scoliosis), so your book might differentiate itself from those books by being more broad, addressing chronic pain from any number of illnesses. The second two books are more direct competitors, so you’d need to dig deep (probably buy and read these books!) to speak authoritatively on why your book is going to be better. Maybe they don’t include pictures of real people with disabilities and chronic pain sufferers doing yoga. The last book is over ten years old; surely it doesn’t include all of the most up-to-date research around yoga and chronic pain - but your book will! Find all of the key differentiators that will make your book unique and make sure you list them out. Again, this is all great information that could be used later in marketing.

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Important Tip: Do NOT write just one paragraph talking vaguely about how your book is different from all of the competition, lumping them together. Write in response to each book individually. Yes, it takes more work - but if you’re not willing to do the work, then why should your editor or publisher?

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Previous Works

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If you have published before, you should write about your previous book(s) as well. You don’t have to list in your proposal how many copies of your book were sold, but know that your publisher will be looking at past reviews for your book, and possibly even the actual sales data through Nielsen BookScan. If your book sold well, then by all means please include that in your proposal! But be ready to talk about why your book sold well. Let’s say you published a book ten years ago that sold 100,000 copies - and that book was on a topic that was incredibly relevant at the time, but is no longer timely. What guarantee does a publisher have that this new book on the same topic would sell just as well? Maybe you want to write a new book on a totally different topic; this could just as easily be a pitfall if your audience is diehard fans of your previous book and won’t be interested in a new book on something totally different. 

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If your book didn’t sell well, don’t try to hide it, but be ready to talk about why it didn’t sell. There will be more pressure on the rest of your proposal to be compelling, and you’ll need to prove in Part 3: Platform that this new book will be more successful because you have a much bigger engaged audience waiting to buy your new book.

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A common question I get is: What if I’ve never published before? Does that hurt my chances of getting published? The answer is no! Having previously published something - even if it was successful - is no guarantee that a new book will be successful. A debut author isn’t necessarily more risky than an experienced one, so don’t let that stop you. 

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It all depends on the strength of your platform, which we’ll discuss in Part 3.

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