I've come up with an idea for a humor book and have started putting together a book proposal. Yet I was wondering how much humor I should put in the proposal and how much just content of what will be in the book. I know I have to have a certain amount of humor for them to know I am funny and the book will be funny. But I don't want to go overboard and have them not take me seriously. Anyone have suggestions on where to draw the line?
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I can't help you draw a precise line but I think I can safely advise you to be yourself in your proposal. If humour comes naturally to you then it's part of your personality, and you want that personality to come through in your communications.
Humour is such a subjective thing and telling a prospective publisher that you're funny isn't as good as showing them. But by no means should your query/proposal be a nonstop series of thigh-slappers. You want to project a professional (if slightly off-kilter) image.
For the most part you want the book sample(s) to show your chops, so I'd work on keeping the initial couple of paragraphs - your intro and brief book description to be fairly straight. If you can work in a smile-inducing line along the way - go for it - but your main job is to whet the reader's appetite and hope they like the samples.
Speaking of samples; do be certain to research your prospective publisher's guidelines very carefully. Ditto if you decide to query an agent first. Some only want a very brief, one or two page query/proposal and if interested, will then ask for 3 chapters or a full ms. If that's the case, you might have to tweak your approach to show more of your funnybone in the query than you would if you were also enclosing samples.
In other words, you might have to tailor your approach a bit depending on your target's guidelines.
If you don't have a fairly lengthy publishing history in other media I hope you have at least the bulk of the book written before you query. Few publishers will offer a contract to a first-timer until they've seen the whole book, or least most of it. And if you do whet someone's appetite and they ask for the full, you don't really want to say "Um...ok..gimme six months or so."
If you're concerned about your query and would like feedback, feel free to post it on the Share Your Work board and give us a heads-up here when you do. Some of the humour hounds will give it a once-over.
Good luck.
Humour is such a subjective thing and telling a prospective publisher that you're funny isn't as good as showing them. But by no means should your query/proposal be a nonstop series of thigh-slappers. You want to project a professional (if slightly off-kilter) image.
For the most part you want the book sample(s) to show your chops, so I'd work on keeping the initial couple of paragraphs - your intro and brief book description to be fairly straight. If you can work in a smile-inducing line along the way - go for it - but your main job is to whet the reader's appetite and hope they like the samples.
Speaking of samples; do be certain to research your prospective publisher's guidelines very carefully. Ditto if you decide to query an agent first. Some only want a very brief, one or two page query/proposal and if interested, will then ask for 3 chapters or a full ms. If that's the case, you might have to tweak your approach to show more of your funnybone in the query than you would if you were also enclosing samples.
In other words, you might have to tailor your approach a bit depending on your target's guidelines.
If you don't have a fairly lengthy publishing history in other media I hope you have at least the bulk of the book written before you query. Few publishers will offer a contract to a first-timer until they've seen the whole book, or least most of it. And if you do whet someone's appetite and they ask for the full, you don't really want to say "Um...ok..gimme six months or so."
If you're concerned about your query and would like feedback, feel free to post it on the Share Your Work board and give us a heads-up here when you do. Some of the humour hounds will give it a once-over.
Good luck.
- Status