Nonfiction Book Proposals

FOR years journalist Chloé Cooper Jones, who was born with a rare congenital disorder called sacral agenesis that affected the development of her hips and legs, had been filling free moments between assignments by writing journal entries on how strangers viewed her body. These private reflections grew into an essay about a trip Jones took to Lake Como, Italy, titled “Such Perfection,” which caught the attention of literary agent Claudia Ballard when it appeared in the Believer in 2019.

Ballard, an agent at William Morris Endeavor, e-mailed Jones and suggested she might want to consider turning the material into a book. If Jones had been writing fiction, she almost certainly would have had to write a complete novel before Ballard could take it to editors. But because this was nonfiction, Jones instead sold the book, Easy Beauty, which is due out in April 2022, based solely upon a proposal, then used the advance from her publisher, Avid Reader Press, to help finance the writing of the rest of the book.

The proposal for included a twenty-page overview of the book and its market potential along with four sample chapters, one of which was the original article. “I just turned in the final book, and I’d say only about 20 percent of that is in the book,” Jones says.