Find out if you are ready to publish your book
How to reach Meghan Stevenson
Intro:
Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome to The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm your host, Rhonda Douglas. And this is the podcast for writers who want to create and sustain a writing life they love.
Because let's face it, the writing life has its ups and downs, and we want to not just write, but also to be able to enjoy the process so that we'll spend more time with our butt-in-chair getting those words on the page.
This podcast is for writers who love books and everything that goes into the making of them. For writers who want to learn and grow in their craft and improve their writing skills. Writers who want to finish their books and get them out into the world so their ideal readers can enjoy them.
Writers who want to spend more time in that flow state. Writers who want to connect with other writers to celebrate and be in community, in this crazy roller coaster ride, we call the writing life. We are resilient writers. We're writing for the rest of our lives and we're having a good time doing it. So welcome, Writer. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump right into today's show.
Rhonda:
Hey there, Writer. Welcome back to another episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. So today we're going to talk about nonfiction. So with me today is Meghan Stevenson. She helps entrepreneurs, experts, and thought leaders write nonfiction book proposals. Since 2012, her team has helped clients earn over $5 million in advances from top publishers, including Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hay House, and Hashet Book Group. And she's also worked on six New York Times bestsellers. So excited to talk to you, Megan, thanks for being here.
Meghan:
Oh, thank you, Rhonda. I also want to update that because I realized we were working on some copy for something that's coming up. And I have two editors on my team, former book editors of the big five. So collectively we have 16 New York Times bestsellers.
Rhonda:
Whoa, whoa. Yeah. Okay. That's amazing.
Meghan:
I was very excited about that.
Rhonda:
Yeah, that's really great. So, I mean, those are big numbers, right? Like thinking about being a New York Times bestseller, the mystery around that, I don't know, but like being a New York Times bestseller, millions of dollars in advances, it's big. So is there something different? Like how different is the nonfiction book world from the fiction book world?
Meghan:
It's radically different, honestly. They sell differently. So that's the way I'm starting to, when I talk about, especially with writers, which we know this podcast is for writers, I think about, hey, first of all, you have to wrap your head around the idea that your books are products, right? Which can be hard because it's art.
Everybody has feelings, big feelings about it, right? Emotion, the capital E, right? About it, we have to wrap our minds around first that our book's a product. And if we put our entrepreneurial hat on, our business hat on, and our customer hat on, we shop for fiction and nonfiction differently, right?
Rhonda:
Ooh, tell me about that. Well, how do you, I mean, I think you're right, but how exactly, yeah.
Meghan:
For fiction, you go into a bookstore and maybe I'm looking for a beach read or, you know, I'm, I read trash. So I'm looking for a beach read or I'm looking for a book club book, right. Or women's fiction, right. Or I'm looking for a thriller or, you know, maybe you have a favorite author that you're a fan girl of, right?
I love Emma Klein. I will read anything Emma Klein has to write. Same thing with Emily St. John Mandel. Her new hard cover is $50 on buying it, right? Right. Like that's sort of how you buy a fiction.
In nonfiction, we have to sort of designate, because memoir and narrative nonfiction are sold almost like fiction. So if I'm going in and I'm going to read, I don't know, Mary Karr's book, right, or Sloane Crossley's books, or Jen Lancaster's books, I haven't read them all in a very long time, so these are dated references. But like, I'm going in with the same sort of thing.
Right. I might get more out of it because it's a real life experience, but I'm still going to be entertained. Right. Versus when I'm reading prescriptive nonfiction or even issue based nonfiction, issue based narrative. So when I'm reading evicted, when I'm reading God save me Hillbilly Elegy. When I'm reading..
Rhonda:
Educated.
Meghan:
Educated. When I'm reading Adam Grant. Right. When I'm reading those sorts of thought leaders. When I’m reading Bernie Brown, I'm going to be educated. I'm going to learn, right? And then in prescriptive, which is how to, right? So that's exclusively what my team and I work on.
Then I'm going to change something, right? I'm going, I have a problem and here's my solution. Oh, I am stuck in a rut. Well, let me go buy, take back your brain. I am, I need to lose weight. Let me go buy how to lose weight for the last time. I’m broke, let me go read Rich AF. So that's like the problem solution.
And that kind of is why they're sold differently within the publishing industry. It also is a function of how they read, right? You can write a prescriptive nonfiction book and it can be kind of basic in terms of craft. It's just not to be super, it's better actually if it's not super poetic, right?
It's never gonna, you know, you're never gonna break it down in an English lit class and talk about the symbolism in it. Versus a fiction book where all of that matters and you need the whole book to understand what the book is.
Rhonda:
Right, right. That's so true. I mean, I read a lot of nonfiction of the kind you're talking about, right? Where I'm like, and I've always thought, if you have a problem, the answer's in the bookstore. Right. So go figure out how to fix the problem by getting the book in the bookstore. Absolutely.
Okay. So when you say they're sold differently, if I want to sell as a thought leader expert, you know, I want to sell my creative nonfiction book, my nonfiction book and it's a how to, so how do I need to go about selling it? Like, should I write it and then find the right publisher? How do I go about doing that?
Meghan:
Yeah. So this is all I do all day. And I think about it a lot. And I have data behind it because we have a quiz for authors that helps us figure out who's ready. Because as you know, probably there are just so many writers out there. So many people want to write books. So many people want to write books that aren't even writers, right? So like, there's all these people.
So the very first thing when people come to me with an idea is I ask them what's their platform. Because in prescriptive nonfiction, you don't have, there's very few people who think like you, unfortunately. When I have a problem, let me go to the bookstore. Most people think, I have a problem, let me go to the internet. Let me go to Google, right? Let me go to TikTok, let me go to Instagram, whatever.
Rhonda:
Yes, you too.
Meghan:
And so, right. And so in the non-fiction space, and to some degree, fiction and the industry as a whole is struggling with fiction for this very reason. We are expecting, we, the publishing industry, are expecting the author to bring most of the readers to the party.
So a lot of times I use an analogy of like a frenemy, like a rich, wealthy, affluent frenemy who has this gorgeous house, maybe in like Malibu on the coast, right? And she says, hey, Rhonda, let's have a party. And you say, okay, great, I wanna do this party. And then the bitch turns around and says, so you have to do everything.
And I'm talking napkins, I'm talking invitations, I'm talking catering, I'm talking about the band, I'm talking about everything. You have to hire the house cleaner to clean it first, the cleanup crew afterwards. She's just giving you the house.
And that's a lot of how publishers act when it comes to marketing and promotion. And it seems really callous or capitalist, like disadvantageous to authors. But it's actually a very real problem that Penguin Random House acquires and publishes thousands of books. They don't know your audience.
Rhonda:
Which ones are gonna sell.
Meghan:
They don't know which ones are gonna sell, but they also don't know every audience. Even the books that we're working on right now, right? We have a business leadership development book. We have a personal finance book. We have a book by a very affluent, not affluent, very successful CEO. We have a coach. Those are very different audiences. And so they don't know how to promote or market a book effectively to those audiences.
And frankly, they don't kind of have the time, the bandwidth or the money to do that. So they're expecting the authors to bring that to the party and the best authors are those people that roll up to their, you know, frenemy ready.
Rhonda:
They've got everything that's required. So a platform is important. Now, when you say platform, what are we talking about? Are we talking about 25,000 Instagram followers? Are we talking about, you've got a YouTube channel, a podcast, like what are we talking about? Email list, all the above.
Meghan:
Yes, and so a lot of people look for a magic number and that's a terrible strategy. Don't do it because the publishing industry is so subjective. We have clients who have massive connections, huge platforms and publishers will still find a way to poke a hole in it. What I tell my entrepreneurs to do, because most of the people writing how-to books are either experts or entrepreneurs, is to do what makes your business successful.
Do what makes you an expert in your niche. Do what makes you like, if I had an academic, I would like to publish, publish, publish, right? Because that is what's gonna help you build sustainability within your business. And then the publisher is gonna piggyback on that.
If you bring it back to our friend in the metaphor, if your frenemy knows that you just have really fun friends and you know the best caterer and you know the best band and you can throw a really great party. She's more likely to be like, come on over, use my house, right? So it's the same idea. It's like, you wanna roll up evenly with it.
What I see people trying to do is architect to meet some standard that they expect the publisher to be like, okay, here, here's your magic wand. You hit 25,000 Instagram followers and all of a sudden you have a book now. And that's not how it works at all. Like I've seen people get booked deals with like 4,000 followers. And I've seen people get turned down with 100,000. It really just-
Rhonda:
Whoa, okay.
Meghan:
Depends. It depends.
Rhonda:
Okay, so then that's my next question. So what's the secret? Is it just staying in your niche? Like, is there even a secret? Or is it just so-
Meghan:
No, not really. There's a very, it's like all capitalist ventures. There's a very straightforward path. Right. Make the publisher money is like the number one thing.
Rhonda:
Yeah. OK. Right. Is this book going to sell? Right.
Meghan:
I am like the queen of metaphors. And so my latest metaphor and analogy is Shark Tank, which is like the publishers are Mark Cuban. Right. If you watch Shark Tank and I do at lunch, I watch two shows. I watched my lottery dream home and I watched Shark Tank. And I'm a lot of Shark Tank. It's really interesting when they say you've got a great business, but it isn't investible.
Right? And so that's a lot of the time where people are at. They have a great idea, but it's not investable yet. It's not ready for the publisher to partner with yet. Right. And so that's something to think about in terms of like, not Mark Cuban invest in me, but like almost this idea of like, how could I make it, how could I make myself, my idea, my platform so obvious that this is going to work and this is going to be a win.
And they can do very little. They can do what they do best. Right. Edit my book. Position it within the market, know my competitors better than I know them, because they work in books and they have a sales team that's been selling books for however long. They can get it into the stores, they can get it to my speaking engagements, if that's part of your platform, like leveraging what they bring to the table and not expecting them to be the very God of the Mother, because they are not, they are just people, overworked, underpaid people with a lot of demands on them.
And so, if we as authors can do our part to understand the industry, which is why I'm so passionate about coming on podcasts like this, doing educational things in my content and even in my workshops and things. Like if you can understand the industry and understand how to play the game or the game you're playing, then you can map what you want onto that.
Rhonda:
Okay. So can we talk a little bit about the book proposal? Because it is the...kind of mechanism, if you like, for selling either, you know, an agent or, or publisher and or publisher. So what is it? What's it look like? What should it include? You know, how do we, how do we knock one of those babies together?
Meghan:
Don't write it yourself is my opinion. I've never seen an author write a proposal that I didn't want to tear to shreds. I make most of my money on writing proposals within four people so that’s a biased answer, but honestly I have not seen a good one.
And I think that there's a reason for that. It's because book proposals are really weird documents. So it's kind of the mullet of book publishing in that it's business in the front, no tutorial in the back. Right. Literally like, or business in the front, art in the back, I guess, or craft or something. So the main components, and I'm gonna work backwards forward because that's what we do in our team is the chapter summaries and a sample chapter. Some literary agents and publishers…
Rhonda:
Wait. Just one chapter?
Meghan:
Chapter summaries and sample chapter, yes.
Rhonda:
Right, wow, okay. So I don't have to write this book until I sell it.
Meghan:
No, you should not. In nonfiction, memoir is a little different, narrative is a little different, but in prescriptive nonfiction, you should not write the book first. There's a lot of reasons for that.
Number one, we don't sell books that way. Number two, oftentimes a literary agent or even someone like me, a professional collaborator who's gonna help you write your proposal, anywhere from me forward. So a collaborator you hire, agent you work with, an editor, they all could change the book.
So like I have a client right now, an amazing woman who grew up in the civil rights era. And she was going to do, when I met her, she was gonna do a series of vignettes about her and her classmates. And so I was like, well, that's really cute. It's beautiful. I was like, but there's lessons to be learned from these people. So why don't we turn it into that? So like, kind of like profiles and courage, but like for the modern era. And she loved that idea. And so we ran with it.
But if she had written, the issue isn't necessarily that you've written the book. It's how authors feel about it once they've written it. It's, oh yes. Don't touch my baby. Yeah. Right. They get real, they get a lot of capital F feelings again, capital E emotions again, and they hold onto it and they get offended. And when you want to change it. And so it's, it's just also a matter of time. So when people write their books, you know, the number one thing they don't do is platform building.
Rhonda:
Very true.
Meghan:
That almost like a publishing seesaw or a platform and editorial has to be even. And when you write your book, you're throwing the weight all on the editorial side. And it's like when you are a parent and you are seesawing with your parents and your parents put their full weight on the seesaw and they're like basically holding you up in the air.
That was always my favorite part, but that's not good for your book. So don't write your book before. You do the proposal before you sell it. Before you sell it. Yeah.
Rhonda:
So chapter summaries and a sample chapter and then what?
Meghan:
Then the rest is the business sections. So that's marketing. It's just how you're going to sell the book, essentially laying out your platform. The comparative and competitive titles. This is an area where authors go wrong. I'm not going to drop how we do it in there because that's our..
Rhonda:
Secret sauce.
Meghan:
Yeah. But it's the general rule, you can find this elsewhere. I'm sure ChatGPT would tell you this, don't compare yourself to the big guys. So if you're writing a book about female empowerment, don't compare yourself to Brené Brown, right? Right. Things like that.
Then you have the About the Author, which is a very generous bio. It usually contains part of your platform. So like media credits would be in there.
Or I had a client who wrote a book named Gender Magic. They are a therapist and they came up with a model for people to explore their gender and gender transition called the gender freedom model So we put that in their bio, right?
And then the overview which is the hardest part and it's actually had an agent the other day just be like just send us over the overview and I was like, that's the last thing. All right. It's the hardest thing Right, right. Like I drafted the clients proposal the business sections yesterday and I thought well.
I'm gonna need a fresh eye for the overview. I'm actually gonna need to like tell my brain, hey, think about April's overview all weekend and now on a Monday I can sit down and be fresh and like kill it.
So that's, the overview is essentially a sales pitch. It varies how long it is. Ideally it's like two to three pages, but sometimes you need longer to explain the book. If a book's complex or the issue is complex, right? Like if I need to explain, I have a book that is for entrepreneurs of color. It's called the 19th month – it just sold. And basically the 19th month comes from a stat that said that 80% of black owned businesses fail after 18 months, mostly due to education and access to funding, which is what she teaches on. And so I needed to explain and set the stage because most of the people in publishing are white and don't understand.
Rhonda:
And they won't get it. Right.
Meghan:
And they're not entrepreneurs either. So they don't understand how hard this is. So that is also an issue. So like I had to explain all of that and that wasn't gonna get done in two pages, especially if I'm talking about Ellie's background where she was delivering DoorDash with four kids in the back four years ago during the pandemic and used her sum of money to create this empire that's now a seven, eight figure business. So we needed to explain all of that within a short amount of time and that's. Yeah. That can be challenging.
Rhonda:
So do you also make connections with agents, with publishers? Once you take on a client and you've done the proposal, you've helped them maybe shape the book, shape the idea?
Meghan:
I definitely do. And so we do when I'm talking to a potential client, I say that, hey, introducing you to agents is not in their contract. And that's because I don't know you.
Even if you came from my best client, you know, the clients that I like text random stuff with and send memes with years after their books are done. Like if you came from that person and you're like their best friend and highly vetted, I still don't know you. And so authors can do all sorts of things. This is again, capital F feelings, capital E emotions. And I am not willing or available to burn bridges or throw myself under the bus for anyone. So.
Rhonda:
Hashtag boundaries.
Meghan:
Like I've had relationships with some of my agent friends for 20 years. You know, a lot of us grew up as assistants together. Um, we've had a lot of things, you know, a lot of intimate moments, bonding moments, all a lot of hangovers. And so we, I'm not willing to do that. And so we, you know, it's rare because it's in my best interest when I get the proposal done to send it to an agent and get my clients an agent.
And we do have a list of about 150 literary agents that we all know personally that we can go to. Hopefully we don't have to go to 150 to get somebody an agent. And usually we don't, we usually get it within three to five. But like it is that. So that's how I do it. And then from there, the agent sends it to the publishing houses.
Once in a rare while, I will introduce a client to an editor or a publisher directly, but I almost always get our client in a literary agent or at least in lawyer that knows book publishing because the standard contracts from any publishing house, hybrid publisher, traditional publisher, big, small, whatever, they are going to be vastly unfair to the author. So you need someone who knows what they're doing to negotiate those contract terms for you.
Rhonda:
Oh yeah. And, and heads up, you can negotiate, right? I think a lot of folks get a contract and just like, well, I guess this is it. So they just sign it. It's like, nope, that doesn't have to be the case. So love that.
Meghan:
Some of our authors just negotiate for the sake of getting something. Like we have a clause in our contracts that says that if a client gets over $250,000 as an advance, we get a kickback.
And one of my clients negotiated with me and I thought he was gonna be like, let's take this out, because that's usually the thing. And he said, no, he's like, will you do a better job if you expect to get this kickback? And I was like, no, it's just a bonus for me outperforming the market. Because most of our deals go between a hundred and 250. And he said, well, I want to do something awesome. He's like, I'm going to give you 5%. So he negotiated better terms for me, which I was like, that's awesome. Thanks.
Rhonda:
That's great. Nice incentive.
Meghan:
But you can negotiate any contract.
Rhonda:
Love it.
Meghan:
You might not win. You might have to go.
Rhonda:
Right, but you can try. You can try. Yeah. I think it's particularly a thing with women. We don't ask for what we want. And you know, that is a way to not get what you want. Right there.
Meghan:
I mean, we're actively conditioned and punished before we do that. Totally. So yeah, it makes sense to, if you are a woman that has felt that way, I highly recommend, and this is not a book I worked on, but I do know her personally Take Back Your Brain by Kara Lowenfield.
Rhonda:
Oh, I just saw that one. Right, right, yes.
Meghan:
Fantastic book. It's really, really good.
Rhonda:
Yeah, okay, ordering that. My book budget is just, yeah. It's non-existent. Every time I talk to someone, there's like two or three new books. So if I have what I think is a good idea for a prescriptive non-fiction book, you mentioned you have a quiz. So it's I think it's meghanstevenson.com/quiz, right? And it'll walk me through some questions to help me understand whether or not I'm ready to work on the proposal.
Meghan:
Yep, exactly. So like the three outcomes of the quiz, I'm gonna spoil this for people, are, and some people gain the quiz, but you can see what you all do in the backend. I have respect for that, I think, but I think it's hilarious. The first one is referrals.
So like, if you're listening to this and you're a fiction author, or you're writing a memoir or a narrative nonfiction or a true crime book or a children's book, you can still go take the quiz and answer, you know, according to what you're doing. And you'll get a referral list of writers that I've spoken to that I trust. Obviously I haven't worked with them. I'm not their ideal client, but I've spoken to them, they're the real deal. Or they've come highly recommended.
So that's a resource for y'all that are listening that aren't writing prescriptive nonfiction. And if you are, we'll walk you through questions. And you'll either land sort of in the bucket of building your platform, which we have solutions for, or you'll end up in the, what we call our editorial client bucket, which is someone who's ready to write a proposal.
Rhonda:
Wow, and how long if I am ready and I decide, yep, I'm gonna work with Meghan and her team to get this proposal to be the best it can be so that I can make the money and then write the book and get the book out to the world. How long does it typically take to write a proposal?
Meghan:
So our process is six months and that is longer than a lot of our colleagues and competitors. We don't rush the process and we're also working with people that are very busy. And so they don't, if you're ready to write a book proposal, you don't have time with us three times a week, right? You have time for about an hour a week and that's how we work with you.
I also, it kind of sneakily gets people ready for publishing because publishing is very slow. Like from the day people meet me to the day that they say they signed the contract today. It would be at least two years before their book comes out, if not more like three.
So you got to slow your roll especially for entrepreneurs that are used to like having an idea in the morning and launching it the next week, like it is so much slower than everybody thinks, but that's actually a good thing because you're able to really slow yourself down and know how you're going to market it, really think through what this book is, you know, all those things that that actually make us way more successful. Like we might take more time. But we are way more successful than our colleagues and our competitors as well.
Rhonda:
Right, sounds like, yes. Okay, so if you think you have a prescriptive book of nonfiction meghanstevenson.com/quiz. I'm gonna put it in the show notes. You can just click on the show notes and head over there. Thanks so much for being with me today, Meghan. This is not an area I talk about a lot, but I think it was fascinating. Just really exciting to hear.
Meghan:
It is like a really weird little niche the like, it's, I will tell one little story because I think it's just funny. I used to go to writers conferences and my friends that were agents or editors that did fiction especially would just be slammed, you know, every day, like the council. And I'd be chilling, I'd have maybe like two calendars a day. And it's because it's like a small niche, right? Of this greater publishing industry. So like, as you book, your book as a writer, just really make sure you know your niche because everybody in publishing specializes.
Like I'm not a unicorn out here just like doing my little window. Like most people, whether it's freelance editors, collaborators, book marketers, book launch people, certainly agents, certainly editors, we all niche down.
And so for a writer to understand what your niche is, where you fit in the bookstore and who services that little corner of the bookstore is really helpful and can make your journey so much easier because you're not casting such a broad net and wondering why there's no fish swimming into it.
Rhonda:
Yeah, so great. Thank you for that. And thanks so much for being with me here today. It's been great talking to you.
Meghan:
Great talking to you too. Good luck writing to everyone.
Outro:
Thanks so much for hanging out with me today and for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. While you're here, I would really appreciate it if you'd consider leaving a rating and review of the show. You can do that in whatever app you're using to listen to the show right now, and it just takes a few minutes.
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