Writing Your EP Essay Collection Proposal – A Guide
Hello!
This post gives some guidance on writing your proposal for our upcoming submissions period.
The first thing I want to make clear is that there really are no hard and fast rules about how you should structure a proposal to us. The most important thing is to demonstrate your thinking and your vision.
However, I know that when you’re submitting your work, the more info the better, so I’ve put together a basic template to follow if you’re unsure of what to do. Read on!
Your Working Title
Introduction:
- What is your book about?
- Is there a general theme or topic? If not, what is the organising principle of your collection?
- How would you describe your essayistic style?
- What will your collection do? As in, what, formally and rhetorically, are you trying to achieve with your collection?
- Who is the target audience for your work?
- How many words will your collection have, approximately? And that leads me to…
Chapter Outline
We’d hope you have a sense of the content of each essay, even if you haven’t started writing them yet. Considering the word count, how many essays do you anticipate including in the collection?
(approx. 250 words per essay summary)
- Lay each essay out with:
- Working title
- Approximate word count,
- Your thoughts on the content of each essay.
- If your essays include interviews, give a sense of who your subjects would be and why. Same with objects, locations, other writers you might be meditating on. How does your consideration of this subject contribute to your overall purpose for the collection? Are these subjects accessible to you?
- Notes on your rhetorical techniques and thoughts on the form and style of the essays.
- If your essay has appeared elsewhere, consider if you have permission to republish it, and why it is of use within this collection.
Finally…
- Include writing samples. If you don’t have an essay written for this project yet, send us something else you’ve written that showcases your style and capabilities.
- When you submit, you’ll be prompted to fill in a Google form. It’s basically just admin, like your name and details, permissions for already-published essays etc. The only bit that may take more thinking is a brief summary of your collection for our reference and the working title. Hopefully, if you’ve considered the points I’ve made above, you’ll have the answers to those questions already.
That’s it! If you have more questions, have a look at our submissions page to see if we’ve covered it there. Also, stay tuned for our upcoming Instagram live at 2pm, Friday 11 June, and our Twitter writeathon on Wed 16th June. The writeathon will include a half hour Q&A at 2pm that same day. Subscribe to our newsletter for writing prompts, updates on the submissions process, and new things from the Press!
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