How to write a popular science book (part I): 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. This post describes how to go from an Idea to a formal book Proposal.

[This is part of a series on how to write a book. In Part II, we described The Auction, Writing, and Promotion aspects of the process. In Part III, we give subscribers a sneak peak at our original book proposal for The Power of Us.]

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 tim…