One of the most fascinating pieces of working through the non-fiction proposal is the section on competitive and comparative titles — those books already published that are shaping the genre and conversation.
Within the trade market, competitive and comparative titles will be treated in diverse and spontaneous content type ranges (some narrative, some how-to, some somewhere in between, and others overlapping in every other way), versus more explicitly academic or religious treatments — those sub-markets of which the trade model never treats, or treats very rarely.
Here is some feedback with regards to growing out a helpful proposal section on competitive and comparative titles (one of the most fundamental arguments about why your book should, in fact, publish):
[Think approximately 6-15 competitive titles, and an analysis of approximately 100-350 words per title.]
This section compiles the list of comparative and/or competitive titles for this project which you are developing to offer a secondary examination of the book’s need and uniqueness, as measured against books already published and the ways by which those books published have shaped a discipline.
Provide the title of the book, the author’s name, the publisher, and the year of publication, in this form: Medicating Hypertension by Samuel Mann, MD (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012) [TITLE by AUTHOR (PUBLISHER, YEAR OF PUBLICATION)]. This is standard industry format for the bibliographical listing of published books.
Your citation should be two-fold. In the first section, give a positive, thesis-level explanation of what the comparative/competitive title is about. Don’t summarize the argument, but give the argument as it is (i.e., “In this book, the author argues that the economy is a codified institution of persons who have collectively gathered to engage in financial transactions, and one key dimension of understanding the institution itself is understanding the persons who build it,” rather than “In this book, the author gives an account of economic infrastructures.” The latter tells the reader nothing about the structure of the actual argument).
Then, provide a targeted analysis of similarities and differences between the book proposed here and the book listed as competitive. Analyses should include concise, targeted sentences, indicating the author’s awareness of the field and his/her capacity to place the proposal within it. This analysis should flow directly from and be contextualized within the section on the book’s need and uniqueness—once a gap in the field is identified, and this book meets it, how does the book compare to those books already out there? In what ways does this book do similar work, and exactly on which points and on what kind of content and research does this book differ?
Books should also cover a small diversity of ‘angles’ of comparison. This includes topic (for example, ‘other books about pornography consumption’), treatment approach (for example, ‘other books written in letter format’), feel/style (for example, ‘other books written in a comic voice, or written as a lighthearted-for-the-coffee-table-read consumption’), etc. The goal is to contextualize the book’s uniqueness and to aid the marketing plan, with the uniqueness by topic/content the most urgent of all the priorities.
Let me know of any questions here — how I might be helpful in helping to shape your own conversation, as proposed to publishers, about conversations that need to be had culturally, socially, politically, and otherwise; those conversations to which you, as a non-fiction writer, may so deeply want to contribute.
