How to write a popular science book: From an Idea to the Proposal
Issue 110: We share our experiences and tips for writing a trade book (stay tuned for PART 2 next week)
We are busy writing our next book proposal right now and thought it might be fun to let people get a sneak peak about how to write a trade book. If you have ever thought about writing your own book, here is our own experience and a few tips to get you started. We tried to make our advice as useful as possible for every aspiring author, but it may be especially useful for fellow academics hoping to reach a wider audience.
HAVE AN IDEA
You need to start with a big idea—one big enough for a book.
We started our first book “THE POWER OF US” after a weekend visit when we realized that we might actually have an idea for a book. Writing a book—and then promoting it—takes an enormous amount of time and energy. At times, it can feel like a real slog, which is why it’s probably only worth pursuing if you have an idea you are passionate about sharing with the world.
In our case, we wanted to share the science of social identity with the world. Although there are dozens of academic books and edited volumes on the topic, nobody had yet published a trade book for a broad audience. At the time, we noticed a rapidly growing interest in the power of identity, evident in everything from conspiracy theories and polarization to discrimination and effective leadership. You can see the massive spike in references to “social identity” in the last few decades:
We thought the world would benefit from a deep dive on the topic that anyone could pick up and read. We also wanted to bridge all the experiments and ideas we had been pursuing for the past 15 years in a single volume, as well as lay out the future of identity as we see it. We felt confident that we could easily fill an entire book with stories, science, and lessons related to social identity.
WHY WRITE A TRADE BOOK?
Writing a trade book is a different beast from other types of writing. The writing needs to be far more in-depth than an article or op-ed. At the same time, the writing also needs to be accessible enough for a broad audience to read and appreciate. This can be a major challenge for academics who have spent their entire career learning how to write to insiders using obscure jargon. Unfortunately, almost no one wants to published—or read—a book that is written like a journal article.
If your idea is too arcane or academic to write in plain prose, you would be better suited to find an academic publisher. We spoke to editors at Princeton University Press and MIT Press about publishing our book with them, but in the end, decided to aim for a trade publisher which would increases the chances that it would reach a broad audience. However, we were willing to go to an academic publisher if we had failed to land a book deal with a more mainstream publisher.
One reason for pursuing a trade book publisher is that it usually comes with a more lucrative book advance (we will share the details of our offer in PART II: our next newsletter) and the institutional machinery to get you book out to a much larger audience. Accordingly, they are looking for a book that will help them turn a profit. This means that you need to come to them with a compelling book proposal for a broad audience and a detailed book promotion plan.
(We will share our full book proposal with paid subscribers in a future newsletter, so be sure to subscribe if you want to check it out).
DRAFT A BOOK PROPOSAL
On Jay’s ride home from Dominic’s house, he starting imagining how a trade book on social identity might be structured. He jotted down his initial thoughts for an outline and emailed Dominic the next day to start outlining a proposal. After a few weeks of going back and forth, we had a table of contents for our book.
Since neither of us had ever written a book—let alone a trade book—we had no idea what to do next. Thankfully, we knew a few friends in the field who had recently published trade books. We reached out to a few of them and they were kind enough to share their advice and a couple sample proposals. We owe a huge dept of gratitude to folks like Jamil Zaki, Anni Duke, Adam Alter, Heidi Grant, Paul Bloom, Adam Galinsky, Josh Davis and others who gave us advice at this initial stage.
Writing a good proposal takes a considerable amount of time. It took us about a year to write a proposal that included a summary of the book and each of the chapters, a list of similar books in this space (and how ours was different from each of them), and a detailed promotion plan (that included all of our contacts at newspapers and magazines, as well as other book authors who might help promote our book). We also had to describe, in detail, our target audience for the book. This is necessary to convince the publisher that your book is worth pursuing.
GET AN AGENT
With a proposal in hand, we needed to find a book agent willing to represent us. Again, we reached out to authors we knew and asked about their agents. At this point, several of them very kindly reached out directly to their agents to make an introduction. Two agents read our proposal and passed, and two were interested. We set up meetings with those two agents — including the wonderful Jim Levine who understood the vision for our book and ultimately became our agent. He got rave reviews from our friends Annie Duke and Adam Galinsky who had worked with him in the past.
Although Jim was lovely, and encouraged us to talk to other potential agents before working with him, this was very different from our experience with another agent we met. She was excited about our book proposal and gave us the impression she was eager to send it to auction immediately. However, when we mentioned that we were speaking with other prospective agents she was deeply offended. In her view, we had violated an implicit social norm about exclusivity. She chastised us over the phone and the conversation ended awkwardly.
We were shocked by the whole ordeal since no one had told us about this norm and all of the other agents we spoke with seemed less possessive. Understand that you are stepping into an entirely new social world with entirely different norms. We recommend getting as much advice as possible about each agent from your contacts. However, you might accidentally step on some land mines as you navigate your way through the process.
We were extremely happy to land a great agent with a track record of success with similar books. Only later did we learn that getting an agent is incredibly difficult. Our agent later told us that he turns down 99% of potential authors who reach out to him. In other words, this part of the process can be more competitive than the most selective academic journals.
This is where a great proposal and a strong record of expertise can really make you stand out. Build your reputation as the right person to write this book before you start reaching out to agents and publishers. We were both tenured professors and had published nearly 100 academic papers on the topic of our book. Plus we had already published together in the press (e.g., New York Times, BBC, Harvard Business Review). We recommend trying your hand at this type of writing early and often to ensure you like it—and to help you land a good agent.
We have also heard from other authors that having a platform can help secure an agent and a book deal. If you have a large following on social media, a popular podcast, or a widely read newsletter, that signals to an agent and publisher that you will have a built in audience for your book. Sadly, this can lead prospective authors to try and game the system. One author told us she “bought” thousands of social media followers before submitting her book proposal to create the impression that she was already a thought leader in the area!
REVISE YOUR PROPOSAL
We thought out proposal was solid at this point, but Jim gently told us it needed a lot of work before he could sell it to a publisher. It took us another full year of revisions and meetings until it was ready to go to auction. This meant several meetings and plenty of revisions—on everything from the title to the content.
One of the missing pieces for us was a sample chapter. We learned that big publishing houses would see us as genuine experts on the topic, but would want to see clear evidence that we could write for a general audience. Apparently this is a common concern for academics who often have stellar credentials (e.g., a PhD and numerous academic papers) but lack evidence they can write for the public. (In contrast, journalists can usually write, but need to show they have the necessary expertise to tackle a topic).
Our advice here is to look critically at your own strengths and weaknesses throughout this process to address any potential concerns. If you are new to the topic, maybe you need to focus on publishing some papers and op-eds on the topic before you can provide a compelling argument about your expertise. If you are already a renowned expert on the topic, you might need to spend more time showing that you can communicate these ideas to a broad audience.
For us, this meant that we needed an excellent sample chapter showing that we had a compelling vision—and voice—for the book. Writing the sample chapter wasn’t easy. It meant thinking through which chapter would be most compelling and easiest to write. As joint authors, we had the additional burden of developing a coherent voice that would reflect our shared perspective. Would we use collective pronouns or take turns sharing our individual perspective? These are additional challenges that solo authors don’t have to worry about. In the end, we adapted a shared voice using collective pronouns that we used throughout the book and on this newsletter.
Next newsletter we discuss how to action and promote your book! Please share this with any prospective book authors. And we encourage people to ask questions or share anything we missed in the comments!
News and Updates
We go to work every day without really seeing each other, or understanding the unseen struggles we are all dealing with. In an interview with Holly Robinson Peete, Victoria Pelletier, and Jennifer Brown, Jay discussed the burden of hidden identities and how this impacts our perceptions and stress and leads to problems for the health of employees and organizations. This was hosted by Cigna Healthcare (Jay joins around the 15 minute mark).
You can watch the video here: https://lnkd.in/eMrTehrk
To learn more or listen to the podcast: https://lnkd.in/eRbbm9d7
Learn more about THE POWER OF US
If you like our newsletter, we encourage you to check out our award-winning book “The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony”. You can learn more about the book or order it from the links on our website (here or scan the QR code below). We keep the newsletter free, but are extremely grateful if you have a chance to purchase the book or buy it for a friend who wants to learn more about group psychology.