Most nonfiction books are sold to a trade publisher before they’re written by means of a book proposal (BP). BPs are usually between ten and thirty pages plus one or more sample chapters. Writing a BP that’s strong enough to succeed in today’s highly competitive marketplace is no easy task—but it’s easier than writing the entire manuscript.

What follows is a list of the steps that take a book concept all the way to publication:

1. Write a strong BP.

2. Write personalized query letters to literary agents who have sold similar books in the past urging them to look at your BP. (“Why not send the query letters first, and save time,” you might ask. Because it’s counterproductive. Agents always have lots of book projects going. If they ask for your BP in January and you can’t send it to them until March, they will have forgotten all about asking for it. Be ready to overnight your BP to any agent who asks for it.

3. You continue to query agents until one of them agrees to represent your book to the trade. At this point, the agent may want you to put a different slant on your BP before s/he takes it to market.

4. The agent calls to say they have an offer to publish.

5. On the advice of your agent, you accept the offer and the paperwork flies back and forth, and you get a check for the first installment of your advance against future royalties.

6. Now you write the book. Whether or not you submit early drafts of it to your agent, depends on the agent and the situation.

7. You polish your manuscript exhaustively and submit it. The agent may ask for changes before forwarding it on to the publishers, who also may ask for changes.

8. All changes have been made, and your manuscript goes into production. Nearly a year goes by while the publisher puts your manuscript through various essential steps.

9. Finally, early one morning, the presses roll and before lunch, 5000 or more of your books—in cartons and stacked on skids—are moving across the printing plant’s shipping dock.

10. A few weeks later, your book starts showing up on bookstore shelves throughout the country.

If the BP doesn’t find a trade publisher, why go to the effort and expense of writing the entire 300 to 500 page manuscript? You won’t, unless you plan to self-publish.

Self-publishers don’t have to go through most of the ten steps above, and they don’t have to wait for two years to get books. If you’re a public speaker, having your own book can make even freebie events profitable. A good book that’s well presented from the front of the room will often go home with half or more of the audience. The markup is usually at least 7 times the per copy cost of the book in medium-size print runs from a webpress printer. This means that books sold Back of the Room are very profitable. Say you speak to 30 people. Half buy the book, on which you net $15 each, so you walk away from that small meeting with $225. Stage an event for 100 people and you’ll take home between $750 and $1,000.

One of my clients has a small book that costs him just under a dollar a copy and sells for $19.95. His take-home when he speaks to groups of about 100, as he does several times a month, is nearly $1000 each time.

Writing a BP that stands a good chance of pulling a publishing offer is a larger task than one might think. It’s something like a business plan such as what you’d use to get financial backing to open a restaurant or start a software company.

Good agents, the legitimate ones who really sell books to legitimate publishers, get about 100 BPs a week. They’re busy; their time is precious to them. So your BP has to hit dead-center on the kinds of books they sell. The BP has to be complete; it has to shows them concisely what they want to see—but nothing more. What they want to see includes, among several other things, a chapter by chapter outline of the entire book. .

Many people approach me with the idea of doing a joint venture; that is, no money upfront and we split the proceeds–if any–50/50. I don’t do that anymore, haven’t since I wrote two books with Ed McMahon some years ago. Instead, my writing arrangements are: money upfront at my hourly rate plus a percentage of royalties, if and when they materialize.