# How to write a non-fiction book proposal

> The eight sections agents expect, what the comparable-titles section really tests, and why a proposal is a business case rather than a sample of the writing.

Canonical: https://buk.press/blog/how-to-write-a-book-proposal

15 September 2026 · 6 min read

A non-fiction proposal is a business case with eight parts: overview, the market, comparable titles, your platform, the chapter outline, one or two sample chapters, the specifications, and a short covering letter. It is sold on the argument that this book will find readers: the sample chapters prove you can write, and everything else proves the book is worth publishing.

Non-fiction is sold on a proposal rather than a finished manuscript, which surprises people who assume they have to write the whole thing first. You do not. What you have to do is make a case, and the case is commercial before it is literary.

Fiction works the other way: novels are sold complete, on a query letter and the pages. Everything below is about non-fiction.

## What the proposal is really being read for

An editor is deciding whether to commit an advance, a design budget, a print run and eighteen months of a team's attention. They are reading for three things, and only one of them is the writing.

- **Is there an audience, and can it be reached?** Not "is this interesting" but who specifically buys it, and how do they find out it exists.
- **Can this person write the book?** The sample chapters answer this and nothing else does.
- **Can this person help sell it?** Which is the platform section, and the reason it is uncomfortable to write.

A common misreading: treating the proposal as a longer query letter about how good the idea is. Ideas are not scarce. Evidence that an idea has readers is scarce, and that is the document you are writing.

## The eight sections

| Section | Length | Job |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | 1–3 pages | The book, the reader, the argument |
| The market | 1–2 pages | Who buys it, and how many of them exist |
| Comparable titles | 1–2 pages | Where it sits on a shelf |
| About the author | 1 page | Why you, and what you can reach |
| Chapter outline | 3–8 pages | The whole book, a paragraph each |
| Sample chapters | 1–2 chapters | Proof you can write it |
| Specifications | Half a page | Length, delivery date, illustrations |
| Covering letter | 1 page | Why this agent, why now |

Thirty to fifty pages in total is typical. Agents' submission pages vary and their instructions override anything here. Read them, and follow them exactly, because not following them is the cheapest possible reason to be rejected.

## The overview

The hardest page, and the one written last. It has to state what the book is, who it is for and what it argues, in prose good enough to demonstrate the voice while doing all three.

1. **Open with the hook**, not with context. The first sentence should be the most interesting thing in the proposal.
2. **Name the reader explicitly.** "This book is for X who needs to Y." Vagueness here is read, correctly, as not knowing.
3. **State the argument in one sentence.** If you cannot, the book does not have one yet.
4. **Say what the reader can do afterwards** that they could not before.
5. **Keep it under three pages.** An overview that runs to six is an overview that has not decided.

This is the same act of compression as a cover blurb, at a slightly greater length, and you will reuse it. [How to write a book description](https://buk.press/blog/writing-a-book-description) is the shorter version you will need whichever route the book takes.

## Comparable titles, and what they are testing

The section people get most wrong. Comparable titles are not flattery and not competitors to dismiss. They are evidence that a market exists and proof that you have read it.

| Do | Avoid | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Four to six titles | One, or twenty | Too few looks unread; too many looks unsorted |
| Published in the last 3–5 years | A classic from 1997 | The market it proves no longer exists |
| Comparable in size, not aspirational | Sapiens, Atomic Habits | Naming a mega-seller reads as naïve |
| A sentence on what each does | A list of titles | The analysis is the point |
| A sentence on what yours does differently | "Nothing like this exists" | That claim means no market |

That last row is worth dwelling on. "There is no book like this" is intended as a strength and reads as a warning: either the market has been tested and found empty, or you have not looked. The answer an editor wants is "books like this sell, and here is the gap in them".

## The platform section

Uncomfortable to write and impossible to skip, because it is the section that most often decides the outcome for a non-fiction book. It asks: when this publishes, who already listens to you?

- **Give numbers, not adjectives.** Mailing list size, monthly readers, talks given, clients, followers. Specific and checkable.
- **Be honest about small numbers.** An engaged list of 1,200 in a professional niche is worth more than 40,000 general followers, and saying so with the context is credible.
- **Include professional standing**: the role, the practice, the credential. For a professional readership this outweighs social media entirely.
- **Describe what you will do**, concretely: the newsletter, the podcast circuit, the conference, the client base you can email.
- **Never inflate.** Every number is checkable in ten seconds, and one inflated figure discredits the whole document.

If the platform section is genuinely thin, that is information rather than a dead end. It is the strongest argument for self-publishing the first book and querying the second from a position of evidence (see [self-publishing vs traditional publishing](https://buk.press/blog/self-publishing-vs-traditional)).

## The chapter outline and samples

The outline is the whole book in miniature: every chapter, a paragraph each, in order. It proves the book has a structure rather than a subject, which is the difference between a book and a long article.

Each paragraph should say what the chapter covers and what it establishes for the next one. Chapters you cannot summarise in a paragraph are chapters doing two jobs. It is the same test as the structural pass in [how to edit your own book](https://buk.press/blog/self-editing-your-book), applied before the writing rather than after.

For the samples, send chapter one and one chapter from the middle. Chapter one shows the opening; a middle chapter shows the book at cruising speed, which is what the other forty thousand words will actually read like. Send your best work, not your first draft.

## How it should look

The proposal is the first thing you have made that the agent will see, and it is competing with a full inbox. It does not need design; it needs to be effortless to read.

- **One PDF**, unless the submission page asks otherwise. Not a zip of six documents.
- **A serif face at 11 or 12 point**, generous line height, and margins wide enough to read comfortably on a screen: [page margins and line length](https://buk.press/blog/page-margins-and-line-length).
- **Page numbers and a running header** with your name and the title, because pages get printed and separated.
- **A contents page** if it runs past about twenty-five pages.
- **Each section starting on a new page**, which is a `---` page break in the manuscript: [page breaks in Markdown](https://buk.press/blog/markdown-page-breaks).
- **No cover design, no illustrations, no colour.** They signal effort spent on the wrong thing.

Writing it in plain text and exporting the PDF is the path of least resistance here for a reason that goes beyond tidiness: the proposal is a document you will send to twenty agents over a year, revising it each time, and each revision has to come out looking identical to the last. [Markdown to PDF](https://buk.press/blog/markdown-to-pdf-guide) is that export.

## What happens next

Slowly, and mostly silence. Responses take weeks to months, many never come, and a rejection is usually a form. Query in small batches of five to eight so you can revise between rounds, and keep a record of who has it and since when.

Two outcomes are worth planning for before you start. If it sells, you will write the book to a deadline against an outline you have already committed to. If it does not, you have a fully structured non-fiction book planned, a chapter outline, two chapters written and a description drafted, which is a considerable head start on publishing it yourself, and the reason the work is not wasted either way.

**About this article.** Written by the team that builds bukpress, which turns Markdown into print-ready PDF and EPUB books. Spotted something wrong or out of date? Write to [support@buk.press](mailto:support@buk.press).

## Read next

Explainers 12 September 2026 · 5 min read

## [Self-publishing vs traditional publishing](https://buk.press/blog/self-publishing-vs-traditional)

Traditional publishing buys your rights and pays an advance in exchange for editing, a cover, sales representation and physical bookshelves. Self-publishing keeps the rights and roughly ten times the per-copy royalty, and hands you every job the publisher would have done. The deciding question is not which pays more per copy; it is whether your book needs a bookshop.

[Read it](https://buk.press/blog/self-publishing-vs-traditional)

Guides 7 September 2026 · 6 min read

## [How to write a book description that sells the book](https://buk.press/blog/writing-a-book-description)

A book description is an advertisement, not a summary. Its job is to make a reader want the book, which means opening with the tension or the promise in the first two lines (everything a store shows before the fold) and spending the rest on who the book is for and what they get, rather than on what happens in it.

[Read it](https://buk.press/blog/writing-a-book-description)

How-to 13 September 2026 · 6 min read

## [How to edit your own book before you pay anyone](https://buk.press/blog/self-editing-your-book)

Edit in four separate passes, in order: structure, then scene or section, then line, then proofread. Doing them simultaneously is why self-editing feels impossible: you cannot judge whether chapter six belongs while fixing a comma in it. Then hire a professional for the pass you cannot do on your own work, which for almost everyone is the proofread.

[Read it](https://buk.press/blog/self-editing-your-book)

## Write it in Markdown. Ship a book.

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