How We Got a Book Deal

walking you through the process step-by-step from proposal to query to contract, including an example query letter

Before we began this year-and-a-half long journey to a book deal, the entire process felt overwhelming and opaque to me. So, I am going to share my journey with you, step-by-step, in an attempt to demystify the process.

Our journey began at a sushi restaurant talking about our vaginas. I had just begun my MFA in Fiction Writing at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and several women from our program went out to dinner to get to know each other. I can’t remember how we got on the topic, but suddenly I was talking about my scare with precancerous cells in my cervix and the procedure I had to remove them—at a table full of women I barely knew. But, rather than changing the subject, another woman shared her experience struggling with PCOS. Another woman chimed in with her experience suffering with chronic UTI’s. We realized every single woman at the table had a story, a gynecological tale. I learned something from each one of these tales: the importance of regular Pap smears, preventative measures for UTI’s, indicators of PCOS, and more. There was power in the sharing, in breaking the silence around topics that are often considered taboo, or at the very least, not polite dinner conversation. And so, Between Our Legs was born.

Justine and I latched on to the idea of collecting an anthology of essays about gynecological health with topics ranging from abortion, to endometriosis, to menopause, to infertility, to childbirth, to UTIs, to vaginismus, to yeast infections, to STDs, and more. But to make this book a reality, we first needed a book proposal.

An important thing to know is that the process for securing a book deal for fiction and nonfiction is very different. In fiction, you finish your entire book, write a one-page query letter, and send that out to agents along with the first couple chapters of your book. You would never query a work of fiction prior to its completion. Nonfiction, however, is queried on proposal. This means you write the first couple chapters of the book, along with a proposal, and send that to agents, securing a publication deal before the project is complete. This is because nonfiction often requires research, and so authors might need the advance from publishers in order to complete their book.

You may think this sounds great! Wow! You can get a book deal without even finishing the book?! But don’t get too excited. Nonfiction book proposals are a beast. Our finished proposal was almost seventy pages, and they are not easy pages.

Justine and I immediately knew we would need help with our proposal, so we enlisted one of our professors, Emily Smith. Emily is not only our professor, but the founder and publisher of Lookout Books, a successful indie press housed at UNCW. The success of our finished proposal, developed over months with Emily’s guidance, is a testament to her expertise in publishing and the care she took shepherding this project.

If there’s enough interest, I can share another essay later breaking down the components of a proposal in detail, but below are the quick hits:

• Overview: Give an overview of the book and really sell the story. Why does the world need this book?

• Author Bio: Sell yourself. Why are you the right person to tell this story?

• Target Audience: Make the case that there are readers and demand for this book. Who will read this book?

• Comparable Titles: Share 6-9 comparable books to prove that there is existing interest around your topic, but yet that no-one has addressed the subject in exactly they way you will.

• Marketing and Promotion: Describe how you will leverage existing networks, communities, connections, and platforms to promote your book.

• Manuscript Specifications and Delivery: A very short section with details on word count and timeline.

• Chapter Summaries: For us, this section included descriptions of confirmed contributors and proposed essay topics. For other nonfiction books, it will include ~1-page summaries of each chapter in your book.

• Sample Chapters: Completed chapters from your book. For us, we included three essays, one by me, one by Justine, and one by another contributor.

Once you have a completed book proposal, the path diverges. If you have an agent, your agent will send the proposal to publishers. But neither Justine nor I had an agent, so we had an additional step. We each had to write a query letter and send the letter to agents. If they liked the letter, only then would they request to read the full proposal, and, maybe (we hoped!), make an offer of representation. We each queried around fifteen agents. Below is one of my query letters:

Dear [Agent Name],

I am excited to reach out to you with a proposal for Between Our Legs: Silence-Breaking Personal Narratives on Gynecological Health, an anthology of narrative essays about gynecological health with an emphasis on the shame, frustrations, and taboos women, non-binary, and trans individuals must navigate when searching for answers and appropriate care. Our committed contributors include award-winning authors Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Nina de Gramont, Anushay Hossein, Gwen Kirby, and others, on topics ranging from infertility, childbirth, vaginismus, menopause, and more.

In addition to providing information and representation, Between Our Legs will serve as a catalyst for essential discourse around women’s health. Emulating the style of Michele Filgate’s What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About, and in conversation with popular releases like Rachel E. Gross’ Vagina Obscura and The Pain Gap by Anushay Hossain, Between Our Legs joins these books in changing the way we talk about women’s gynecological health.

In recent years, pioneering voices have begun to break through the quiet. In June 2022, when Roe v. Wade was overturned, women took to social media and other news outlets to share their frustrations, fears, and stories. In 2023, the White House announced the first ever initiative on Women’s Health Research. In December 2023, the first ever peer-reviewed study identifying the cause of “morning sickness” was published. Readers are finally ready for this long-overdue anthology, and, as women’s rights are stripped away in state after state, they need it now more than ever.

I am co-curating this anthology with my long-standing colleague Justine Payton.

Justine Payton’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Bellevue Literary Review, Isele Magazine, The Masters Review, The Keeping Room, and others. She is currently working on a collection of essays exploring intangible losses associated with the climate crisis, as well as a memoir, The Stories I Tell, which is an intimate look at a decade of her young adult life across four continents, defined by sexual abuse, a life-threatening illness, and six years spent in a high-control Hare Krishna ashram. She is the Managing Editor of ONLY POEMS, an editor for Ecotone, a guest editor for The Masters Review and CRAFT, and an MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at the University of North Carolina Wilmington where she teaches.

I’m looking for an agent to represent me in my writing, and because this project is coming to fruition before my manuscript, I’m looking for someone who will be able to help me find a home for Between Our Legs as well as my future work. I am currently working on a short story collection titled Girlhood Gothic, which explores the isolation, terror, beauty, and drama that typifies both girlhood and the gothic genre. My work on Girlhood Gothic has been supported by the Breadloaf Writers Conference and a research grant from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Stories from the collection have been published in, or forthcoming from, F(r)iction, Fractured, Chestnut Review, Cleaver, Ghost Parachute, and more. In addition to my writing, I work as a publication assistant for Lookout Books at UNCW, where I am also pursuing an MFA in fiction writing with a post-baccalaureate certificate in publishing.

I’m reaching out to you because your love of essay collections like Cottom’s Thick and narrative nonfiction like Machado’s In the Dream House makes you a great fit to represent and champion Between Our Legs. Plus, your interest in literary horror and speculative work on the fiction side, aligns perfectly with the stories I’ve written for Girlhood Gothic.

For the sample, I have included the first ten pages of our proposal.

Best,

Caroline Beuley

www.carolinebeuley.com

The query letter, in many ways, follows the structure of the proposal. It gives an overview in the first paragraph, positions the book in the marketplace by comparison to comparable titles in the second paragraph, and makes a case for the books timeliness and audience in the third paragraph. Then, I described myself, my other projects, and why I was interested in working with the specific agent. Out of fifteen queries, this letter yielded four full proposal requests, making it a very successful query letter (feel free to use it as a model for your own!).

A few weeks after that, Justine received an offer of representation from an agent, and he agreed to represent our anthology, signing me on a one-off basis for this project, and bringing another agent from his team on to the project.

Our agents then queried twenty-nine publishers, including “Big 5” presses, indie presses, and academic presses. Four editors reached out to us to meet over Zoom. This was a part of the process I wasn’t aware of, and the first one was definitely scary. Each of the calls lasted about an hour and were like a two-way interview, in which the editors asked us questions about the anthology and we asked them questions about their press. This part of the process is more “make or break” for nonfiction queried on proposal, as so much of the project is still incomplete when you sign. These meetings are an opportunity for publishers to ensure that their vision for the remainder of the project aligns with yours. And, on the other side, Justine and I were interested in comparing how different publishers would handle the editorial process and promoting the book.

Then, after checking our emails constantly for several days, we received a publication offer. I was in Trader Joes when Justine called me asking if I’d seen the email. I ran out of the store, opened my gmail, and laugh-cried-screamed into the phone with her outside of the Union Market Trader Joes in Washington, D.C. I’m sure people thought I was insane, but I will never forget that moment, chill wind blowing on my cheeks, shoppers rushing past me, tears streaming down my face on the side of the street, knowing that, at long last, this book that we had dreamed up a year and a half ago was going to get published.

We ended up getting one more publication offer, and, after weighing the two options, we went with University of Iowa Press, who will publish Between Our Legs in fall 2026.

The journey to make this book a reality isn’t over yet, though. With twenty contributors to pay, we need to fundraise in addition to the advance provided by Iowa. We also want to fundraise so that we can promote and publicize Between Our Legs, ensuring these stories reach as many readers as possible. If you believe in this book and its mission and want to help make it as successful as possible, please consider contributing to our GoFundMe. All of my essays are free, and I don’t plan to turn on paid subscriptions for at least a year, so if you want to support my writing journey, this is the best way to do it.

Also, this process was long and complicated, so I’ve done my best to include a clear, streamlined explanation for you. If anything is unclear or you have questions, please drop them in the comments below, and I will clarify!