The True Story of How I Got My First Book Deal: Hello Hair Story!
April 23rd is International Day of the Book, so to commemorate the occasion, I decided to take a walk down memory lane and share the story of how I got my first book deal. It’s a great story with a happy ending, and it comes with some useful advice for those of you looking to get your first book published with a traditional publisher. I hope it inspires somebody to get their work out into the world, because the world needs our stories, today more than ever.
The Seed Was Planted in School
The first book I published, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America , remains my most popular and best-selling book to date. It was originally released in February 2001 by St. Martin’s Press, but it started out as a school assignment several years before. I wrote my thesis at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism on the history, politics, and economics of Black hair in the United States. At the time, turning my thesis into a book was the furthest thing from my mind. I just wanted to graduate and find a job in the magazine industry, but my thesis advisor thought my paper was so enlightening, she told me I should definitely try to turn it into something bigger, so the seed was planted.
Black Hair is a Vibe
As soon as I graduated from Columbia, I got a job working at Vibe magazine as a fact-checker. The job was exciting, and I loved being surrounded by so many talented, and creative Black writers and editors. But being a fact-checker meant working ridiculously long hours, as we waited for copy to come in to be checked. It was at that time that I met my Hair Story co-author, Ayana Byrd. Like me, Ayana was a fact-checker, and, also like me, she’d written her honors thesis on Black hair. After chatting about our mutual fascination with our crowning glory, and probably because we were operating on very little sleep at the time, Ayana and I decided that we should write the definitive book about Black hair in America. You know, because somebody had to.
Soon after we made that decision, Ayana and I agreed to meet up every weekend at a diner in Brooklyn Heights, where, over French toast and hash browns, we outlined exactly what the book would entail, essentially a combination of our two academic projects with some additional and updated material. We wanted to make the book accessible to a general audience, and we wanted the book to read like a fascinating cultural story, not a dry academic text. It took us only about six weeks to flesh the whole thing out, and then we knew we had to find an agent to help us get our book out into the world.
How to Find a Literary Agent Before the Internet is a Thing
Just to recap, Ayana and I were working on our Black hair book idea before the Internet was considered a reliable source for information. This was in the late1990s. I believe we were able to do a Lexis/Nexus search for literary agents, but we also looked in the acknowledgements pages of other books, asked people we knew for the names of their agents, and looked in old copies of Literary Marketplace to find the names of prestigious agents. Eventually we compiled a list of ten agents we would have been thrilled to work with, ranking them in order from our top choice to our tenth choice. Our plan was to send a letter to one agent at a time, explaining who we were, and attaching our amazing outline for our Black hair book. We had our fingers crossed that the first agent on our list, the legendary Marie Brown, would respond to us, but we tried to keep our expectations realistic. After all, the two of us were both 20-something, unknown fact-checkers, who had never even written a magazine cover story, but we were confident we could write a book. Yes, youthful hubris is a thing.
Imagine our great joy and surprise, when Marie Brown responded positively to our letter, and invited us to lunch to talk about our book!
It’s All About the Proposal
By the time we met with Marie, I had left my position at Vibe to accept a new position as a reporter at Entertainment Weekly magazine. I loved my job at Entertainment Weekly, but I was eager to make a name for myself as a writer beyond being a chronicler of pop culture and celebrity news. I was confident our lunch meeting with Marie was going to take me from being “just an entertainment journalist,” to an Author. I was so excited, and I was ready to do whatever Marie told us in order to get a book deal.
“What you have to do is write a proposal,” Marie said, getting right to the point. I remember Ayana and I looking at each other, both of us thinking that we’d already written a proposal with our four-page outline of what the book would be about. Marie laughed at our naiveté.
“You girls aren’t the first ones to come up with an idea to write a book about Black hair, but every time I tell writers that they have to write a proposal, they never follow through. They just disappear.”
“Is it hard to write a proposal?” I remember asking.
Marie shrugged. “I mean it’s not harder than writing an actual book.” And with that she pulled out some papers from her bag and handed them to us. It was a template for writing a nonfiction book proposal. “All you have to do is follow this template and write the dang thing. Aim for 25-30 pages. If you can do that, then we can talk for real,” she said.
When our lunch was over and Marie had left, Ayana and I looked at the template. Both of us had erroneously thought that our lunch with Marie meant we were going to be signed to her agency. Instead, we were left with an assignment to write a 25-page book proposal. To say we were mildly disappointed and slightly overwhelmed would be an understatement.
But as journalists who were used to meeting deadlines, we simply made the decision to get the proposal done. Ayana wrote half of the proposal and I wrote the other half. The proposal also required two sample chapters. We each wrote one. And then we edited each other’s work.
It wasn’t easy. But it wasn’t hard either. It was just a matter of following the template, one section at a time. We kind of looked at it like following a recipe, and we leaned on each other when we got stuck or frustrated. At the end of the day, writing the proposal forced us to gain more clarity on what Hair Story was going to be about and how it was going to be structured.
Eight weeks after our lunch with Marie, we were able to send her a finished proposal.
Sold to St. Martin’s Press
Faster than you can say peace and hair grease, Marie sold our book to St. Marin’s Press. Ayana and I were so excited and surprised at how fast the book sold. We were prepared to wait for months, even though of course, we harbored dreams of a quick sale. Marie told us she was able to sell the book so quickly because we had written such a clear and compelling proposal.
Once the thrill of the sale had worn off, it was time to get to work. Our editor wanted the book to be written on a fairly quick schedule. Since we were two people, I guess she expected us to be able to write twice as fast. Which we did. I took a leave of absence for three months from Entertainment Weekly, and Ayana paused some of her freelance work so we could put all of our energy into researching and writing Hair Story. The book came out just in time for Black History Month in 2001.
A Book is a Blessing to You and Your Readers
As I had hoped, writing Hair Story changed my identity from writer to author. It was a lifelong dream come true for me, as I’ve wanted to be an author since I was eight years old. Hair Story truly launched my book writing career, and I’ve written six more books since. Not to mention, Ayana and I wrote an updated version of Hair Story that was released in 2014.
And here’s the the thing, the thrill is always the same every time a new book with my name on it makes its way into the world. I honestly liken it to giving birth. After conceiving of the idea, laboring over the writing, then seeing the book in stores, libraries, and in the hands of readers, it truly feels like a miracle and a blessing.
I hope all of you writers laboring over your current literary projects, are inspired by my story, and at the same time clear that you too can get your book out into the world. It just takes a commitment to the craft and your dreams. Follow the process and see it through to the end.
Have a great idea.
Write a great proposal (BTW, you can sign up for my upcoming How to Write a Nonfiction Proposal class if you need help with this step).
Find an agent who believes in you and your work.
Get Your Miracle and your Blessing.
I know you can do it. Good luck!