The project description is just one part of your academic book proposal, but it’s the part that really clinches the interest of editors, peer reviewers, and editorial board members, so it’s arguably the most important thing to get right when you pitch your book.

The project description can also become material you can use for job letters, research statements, and grant applications, so it’s worth investing effort in drafting it. To help you out, I have a template you can start from.

As with all my templates, this is not a formula that you absolutely have to follow in order to land a contract. It’s just something I’ve come up with after working on lots and lots of proposals with clients. Use it as a starting point if you’re lost or a revision tool if you’re stuck.

Here’s the structure (each bullet point corresponds to a paragraph, more or less):

• Hook + a statement of the book’s big takeaway

• A more detailed statement of the book’s central argument and conclusions

• What’s at stake? Why should your findings matter and to whom?

• The evidence and methods you use to build the book’s argument

• The general structure and narrative arc of the book

• Your target audience and why your target press is a good fit to reach that audience

The hook can be an intriguing episode from your research or a particularly vivid or familiar real-world example that readers can relate to. It should be something that illustrates the big thing you want readers to take away from the book. Then say what that big thing is.

In the next paragraph, take a few sentences to lay out the book’s main arguments. Here’s where you also give away the book’s conclusions. Yes, you should give these away up front. Editors and reviewers need to know what the book contributes in order to assess whether it’s a contribution this press should publish. If you don’t make this clear from the outset, readers may wonder if you really have something to argue or contribute at all.

Then explain why the findings in the book matter. A good way to do this is to highlight the consequences for human actors. Depending on your topic, you might also/instead be revealing consequences for animals or the environment, which is also fine. This paragraph should answer the question of what readers will know, believe, or be able to do as a result of this book.

Next you can talk about the Stuff in the book. What sites, objects, or texts do you analyze and how? Give the reader a sense of what you’re basing your argument on and how you arrive at your conclusions. Notice that this is a description of methods, not methodology. You do not need to justify your methods here, just describe them. If the book uses a truly innovative methodology that will advance your scholarly field(s), then you can make the case for that here as something that will interest readers. But most books don’t do that (and that’s ok—don’t claim it if it’s not true).

The general structure and narrative arc is the story of how you get from Point A to Point B over the course of the book’s chapters. Don’t list every chapter and describe its contents here! That is boring, and it doesn’t necessarily tell readers how it all works together to serve a larger purpose. (To me, listing the chapters or topics instead of giving a more macro overview of the book’s structure is a red flag that we may be dealing with a dissertation that needs further digestion.)

Here’s an optional paragraph I didn’t include in the list above: you can also talk in a more meta way about how the book contributes to or intervenes in a scholarly field, especially if you’re doing theory. This will be particularly helpful information for your acquiring editor and their editorial board (who won’t all be experts in your field).

Don’t make it a slog through the literature, though. Pick out a few key concepts or theories that your work builds on and adds new, exciting layers to. Notice I said “builds on” and “adds.” This is not the place to put down other scholars or theories, because the people you talk about might just be your reviewers. And don’t spend too much time on this, because it’s easy for your voice to get lost when you dwell on other scholars’ ideas, and you want to demonstrate to editors and reviewers that you have a strong voice people will want to read.

Finally, I think it’s nice to describe the main audiences you are trying to reach and why they’ll find the book useful. Sometimes a press’s proposal template will ask for this information in a separate section from the project description, but I think including it here shows that you have fundamentally conceived the book with readers in mind. Bonus points if you can explain why your target press is the right place to reach those readers.

I like this structure because someone can kinda stop reading at any point and still appreciate what the book is about and why it’s important. Ideally, your writing here will be compelling enough that an editor doesn’t want to put it down, but if you can get the point across quickly, that can start the gears turning in an editor’s head about how they will make this project work at their press.

You can find more advice about project descriptions—and all the other elements of your academic book proposal—in The Book Proposal Book: A Guide for Scholarly Authors.