Later today I’ll be discussing about fifteen book proposals with my editorial colleagues. We’ll review them with an eye toward deciding which ones should move on to our publishing board (where publishing decisions are made) and which ones should be declined. The reality is only a small number will move on.

Imagine your book proposal is in this stack. How do you make sure it stands out? I’ll highlight four possible ways.

1. Great Working Title and Subtitle

Not very often, but every now and again we see a title that we all know is a winner. If you have a title like this, you’re fortunate! Examples of this kind of title include:

• Have a New Kid by Friday
• 50 People Every Christian Should Know
• I Became a Christian and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt

But honestly titles like these are few and far between. As I look at my bookshelves, I see a lot of solid titles, but most of them are the result of an intense titling process which occurred after the books were contracted.

So if you have a truly standout title, terrific. If not, try to come up with one that’s good enough. I recently wrote a post about how to do this. (Click here to read it.) Then capture the other leading contenders and move on.

2. Powerful Marketing Plan

I’ll never forget the book proposal I received that had over fifty unique marketing ideas. Our team knew it would be impossible to execute all of them. We also knew doing so wouldn’t be the best thing for the book.

But we were blown away with the author’s creativity and obvious commitment to marketing. Nobody comes up with over fifty marketing ideas without caring about promotion. We were impressed, and we pursued the book vigorously, as did other publishers.

3. Amazing Writing Sample

Of these fifteen or so proposals I’m about to review, I can almost guarantee there will be at least one that looks pretty good in terms of concept and marketing plan, but the writing sample will torpedo it, sadly.

Remember that your writing sample is the thing we as a publishing house are thinking about actually sending into the world! Work hard on it. Try creating something so compelling that anyone with a pulse couldn’t possibly put it down.

That’s a tall order, I know, but an amazing writing sample is another way to get your book proposal to stand out.

4. A Definitive Throwdown Statement

My friend Gary Neal Hansen referred me to a video in which Steven Pressfield and his agent talk about how a throwdown statement helped Steven win a book contract. Watch the clip here.

I like the idea. I’m not sure how long they would say a throwdown statement should be, but one or two sentences seems about right to me. Pressfield says a good throwdown statement should answer these three questions:

• Why this topic?
• Why you?
• Why now?

Let me throw out some examples. I’m just making these up. These books don’t really exist as far as I know.

• Former CEO who grew his company’s revenues from 0 to $150 million in ten years shares why workplace culture is more vital to success than anything else.
• Pastor in Atlantic City empowers Christians to go into scary places to bring healing to the hurting, hope to the desperate, and salvatoin to the lost.
• Christian-turned-atheist-turned-Jesus-follower shares his journey of losing his faith because of science and regaining it because God did the inexplicable.

Hopefully these throw-down statements give you a sense of how compelling they can be. A brief, strong throwdown statement captures attention by casting vision powerfully.

Question: So if you had to pick just one of these ways to get your book to stand out, which one seems the most realistic to you? You can leave a comment by clicking here.