Just a personal writing update….

I’m taking Friday off from work this week, because it’s my birthday (yeah… blah, blah, another year older). I’m not doing anything in particular other than refusing to work, so I’m thinking it would be a good time to work more on my book proposal. I can probably hammer out most of what I still need to do over three days.

I’m conducting some interviews this week for the sample chapters of the proposal. That should be fun. I have a few really awesome folks lined up for confirmed interviews and more that I’m still waiting on confirmations from (mostly in the music industry – I’ll mention more about that on my personal writing blog when the interviews are about to happen though). It’s really a fun process.

The idea hasn’t been done with this approach yet. There are two very large niche markets that would have an interest in the finished piece. I have plenty of marketing vehicles in place, and strong networks, in those two niche areas already, and I’m building more. I have very strong credentials relating to both niches and primary focus of the book. I have some fantastic interviewees lined up who make the project all that much more attractive if the book is picked up. The more I work on this, the more I’m realizing that the idea is coming along much better than I could have planned, and has a serious chance of being picked up. That’s an exciting thought.

I was originally just planning to start off by pitching Adams Media, because they work with a lot of former and current About.com Guides on books (so I’ve heard quite a bit about them and what it’s like working with them). From what I understand, they tend to just buy out the book rights though, instead of paying in a royalty model, so even if they picked it up, I’m not sure how I feel about that (if anyone reading this has worked with Adams and wants to share some thoughts, feel free to leave comments… I’m always interested to learn more). So as of now, I’m just finishing up the proposal, and not really sure who I want to pitch the book to. I need to go back to the drawing board on that one. If anything, given my independent nature in everything I do, I’d probably rather focus on pitching a really small publisher. Anybody have any experiences they’d like to share? This particular book would be targeting those publishing in the business/marketing area.