Help with my book project

[Norm]

Update on my Paul Yandell book.

When you approach a publisher most ask that you send a detailed cover letter describing your work and why you think it warrants publication. They routinely ask for two sample chapters and if they think the letter and chapters are marketable they ask for the whole manuscript.

This is called Making a Proposal.

Once you make your proposal you wait, anywhere from one to three months for the publisher to get to your submission and make a judgment on it. Some will tell you if they decline your proposal, some do not.

I took aim at Hal Leonard because of the way they did the Chet Atkins ‘Me and My Guitars’ book and “The Story of Paul Bigsby” mainly because of the way they threaded photos through the text and also had some full page photos. The books were a nice size and beautifully done.

Hal Leonard is one of the publishers that, due to the volume of submissions, ask for a three month wait and they do Not let you know if they decline your proposal.

Mid May will be my three month mark and I have yet to hear from them so I have to seriously start looking for other publishers to target. I’ve been compiling a spreadsheet of publishers who publish country biographies but I have yet to go to a bookstore and actually check out the way their end products look due to physical constraints. I have emphysema and moving around a lot gets to be quickly exhausting.

Here’s where you folks come in.

I’m asking those of you who buy and read biographies, (country biographies in particular) to look at their bookshelves and tell me who they think Hal Leonard’s closest competitor is in layout and production quality.
Hardcover is not a requirement. I’d like it to be a nice size and illustrated.

Any other suggestions are welcome…

Thenkewvurrymush

[Ray Bohlken]

Norm, I was hoping you'd have good luck with Hal Leonard. They did good work on Chet's Book and the Bigsby book, like you said. I read this book Memories an autobiography by Ralph Emery and the sequel to it More Memories and they were well done I thought. They had photos in a middle section and not woven through out, but the pictures were great. The first book was published by Scribner and the second was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.
Here is a link to one of them. Down in the page, there is a link to the other book, too.

http://www.amazon.com/Memories-Autobiog ... rd_title_0


I wish you good luck in finding a publisher because I think a book about Paul and his career would be great and I hope to read it one day.
Ray

[Norm]

Thanks, Ray...
Duly noted...

I was hoping for a more like MAMG layout but of course will take what I can get. It's more important to get the information out there than fussing about technicalities. Hoping for something larger than your standard fiction thriller paperback size.

Just so you don't think I've been lazing around...
I went to the Barnes and Noble website and did a search of 'country music biographies' and am compiling a sortalbe spreadsheet of titles and publishers.

I'm seeing some patterns but have yet to actually take the books in hand and see if they use illustrations, etc. Not all of them do because of the added expense.