Here’s what you’ll need to prepare if you want to pitch yr academic book project to a publisher this year:

1. A working title for the book. Don’t worry, you can change it later.

2. A project description or overview. Summarize your main argument, how you prove it, why it matters

3. A description of yr intended audience. Don’t get too complicated. A simple, clearly targetable audience is better than like 10 different possible readerships

4. A brief discussion of other bks that share a topic, approach, or audience with yrs. They don’t have to be identical

5. A projected table of contents + summaries of every chapter you plan to include. These can change later too, but make sure you have a clear rationale for why every chapter needs to be there

6. Book specs: full word count (not page count), number of images, type of images, whether you already have or can get the right to print them

7. Manuscript status: how much is finished now, when will the rest be done?

8. Author bio: your qualifications to write the book and your track record of reaching the kinds of people who would read the book

Some presses/editors will also want to see sample chapters right away, so be ready with one or two

If you need more help figuring out how to write the proposal, my newsletter archive should help

If you can wait until July, THE BOOK PROPOSAL BOOK: A Guide for Scholarly Authors will help even more: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691209678/the-book-proposal-book