Writing is a process. It has stages. A first draft is just that: the first of many drafts. But novice authors often don’t see it that way.At BBG, we call it the “I Did Well in College English Syndrome.” So did many of us. After graduation, however, many people suffer two fates. They forget stuff. Then they develop bad habits, take shortcuts (IMHO), pick up arcane industry jargon to replace real words, and fall back on sports or war metaphors.  All this leads to writing that does not help sell books.When my BBG partner Jack Rochester and I were acquisitions editors at Wadsworth Publishing, the people who did the poorest on the production editor test were English majors. One of our authors, a UCLA professor, erased all the copy-editing on his manuscript and sent it back to us. Production was delayed to accommodate his re-education about copy-editing and the second run at it.

An old friend said it best: “I don’t write stuff; I rewrite stuff.” On two books I ghostwrote, the last manuscript draft indicates we were up to iteration 12 on many chapters. Of course, those were not complete revisions. Even draft two was not a complete revision. But we found things to correct or to say better.

All this is made easier if the budding book author starts with a book proposal. It identifies the target reader and that reader’s level of knowledge. The proposal outlines competing books or other sources of information the reader can currently access. Important questions are answered. The big one is Why is this book significantly different and what will it do for the reader who buys it? Why do they need this book? The proposal also outlines the chapter topics with a 3-5 paragraph description of each chapter. No one who knows business well would start a business without a business plan. A book proposal is a business plan for a book.

Roger S. Peterson

West Coast Editor

The Business Book Ghostwriters