Episode 5 - The Basics: Is Your Book Idea Ready for Traditional Publishing?

In this episode of Kind Of A Big Book Deal, host Meghan Stevenson breaks down the first key element of landing a traditional book deal: Potential. She explains how to determine if your idea is truly book-worthy, why having a built-in audience is crucial, and how to assess whether similar books have been successful. Meghan shares real-world examples, including an unusual book pitch she once received about stadium security fencing, and why not every idea is meant to be a book.

She also discusses the reality of book sales, revealing that women are the primary book buyers and how this impacts the types of books publishers are willing to take on. Additionally, she touches on industry trends, the role of competitive titles (comps), and why chasing trends in publishing can be risky. If you’ve ever wondered whether your book idea has a real shot at getting published, this episode gives you a clear framework to assess your chances.

Stay tuned for the next episode, where Meghan tackles the most asked-about topic in publishing—author platform.

Find the 3Ps freebie here: https://meghanstevenson.kit.com/50230df9e1

Episode Highlights:
(0:00) Intro
(1:41) A real (and unusual) book pitch Meghan received
(3:27) The first P: Potential—What makes a book worth publishing?
(5:26) The importance of a fresh, unique angle
(6:26) Why audience size matters in publishing
(8:04) Who buys books? The data behind book sales
(10:16) How the publishing industry’s demographics impact book sales
(12:53) The role of competitive titles (comps)
(16:47) Recap: Three key questions to determine if your book has potential
(20:41) Looking ahead: Why author platform is the biggest challenge for writers
(21:07) Outro 

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Have a great idea for a book but don't know where to start?MeghanStevenson.com/quiz


Traditional publishing expert Meghan Stevenson blasts open the gates of the “Big 5” – Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Macmillan – to share what every entrepreneur and expert needs to know about landing a book deal.

In episodes released every other Monday, Meghan shares wisdom and stories from 20+ years in publishing as well as interviews with authors, literary agents, and editors. She also answers questions from listeners like you.

Whether you are an experienced entrepreneur with an empire, or are just starting out – this podcast will help you understand what you need to do in order to turn your dream of being a bestselling author into real life.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

First conditions met it's a book right. Second conditions met it has an audience of book buyers. Now we have to look at the competitive landscape it's sitting in, and that gets us to an industry term called competitive and comparative titles, or comps for short. So the question you need to answer is have books like yours worked, which means generating profit for publishers in recent years? Welcome to the Kind of a Big Book Deal podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn about traditional publishing. I'm your host, Meghan Stevenson.

Speaker 1: 0:35

After working as an editor for two of the biggest traditional publishers, I started my own business helping entrepreneurs become authors. To date, my clients have earned over $5 million from publishers like Penguin, random House, simon Schuster and HarperCollins. In these podcast episodes, I blast open the well-kept gates to traditional publishing. I'll explain what every entrepreneur needs to know about landing a book deal without losing your mind. I'm going to share stories, answer your questions, interview the successful authors I've worked with and probably save platform more than a tech bro. So if you dream of landing on a bestseller list but have no idea how, this is the podcast for you and I am so, so glad you're here.

Speaker 1: 1:19

So a few years ago I got a very interesting query and I get a lot of book ideas, right, I get pitched in the pool on vacation and I'm not even an agent or an editor, right, I get pitched more now as a ghostwriter than I do like I ever did when I was an editor at Penguin or at Simon Schuster. So a few years ago I got an email in my inbox and it was from someone who wanted to write a book, a full book, a 300 page book, on raising a security fence at a professional sports stadium. I'm not going to say what league, I'm not going to say where, I'm not going to say what sport, because I don't want to blow up this person's spot, but y'all that isn't a book. In no way, shape or form is that a book, and that actually is kind of rare. Most of the time when people come to me with book ideas, it's a book, like it seems really simple, but it's totally true. Most of the time when people pitch me, even like in the pool or on a golf course or wherever, like they have potential. There is potential there, but certainly not that person who queried me about the security fence, right, that's really an op-ed, or maybe, maybe a letter, like a very stern letter, to like the owner of the sports stadium or the commissioner of the league, but it's certainly not a 300 page book.

Speaker 1: 2:45

Okay, so this is episode five of the basics on traditional publishing. So this is part of a 10 part series. So if you have missed anything prior to episode five, go back and listen, because otherwise this isn't going to make sense, including the fact that this is about the first P. So if you don't know what my three P's are, go back, listen to episode four, go back to the basics, literally, and start with episode one. This is all meant to be sequential because publishing is fucking confusing. All right, so I should know. I teach it every day. I talk about it in the pool, like come on now. Okay, so let's revisit the first P of the framework that I shared last week Again, that's in episode four. The first P to getting a book deal is potential. So what do I mean by potential? And I'm going to be popping some peas in this episode, so hopefully my podcast producer is on point Well, potential is that the idea could be a book.

Speaker 1: 3:43

Right, the idea has potential. Most people have potential because book ideas, honestly, aren't all that unique. So if you're sitting there and you're thinking, oh my God, I have the most unique book idea. Spoiler alert you probably don't. I mean you might? That guy wanted to raise the security fences? That was something new. I'd never heard that before. That was, albeit, a unique book idea, right, most people's book ideas are not unique, and that is okay. There's a lot of reasons why that would be okay that I'm going to explain later.

Speaker 1: 4:16

However, you do have to fit the format, so you do have to, you know, have an idea that works in the book format, right? So our sports fan that I mentioned earlier really had an op-ed. He might've had a podcast, he might've had an angry letter, he might've been a great Karen or Darren, right, you know, sometimes people have psychological studies, they don't have a book. Sometimes you'll have a podcast and not a book, and very, very often people either have a scrapbook or a journal or a diary and they don't have a book. Don't blame the messenger, don't blame your girl, Meghan, but you get my point, all right. So not all book ideas are book worthy, and that's upsetting because people love their book ideas, right, my husband has a million TV ideas, but, like, not all those are TV worthy, right? So you just have to know that. That's sort of what's happening.

Speaker 1: 5:12

However, if you can ask yourself and honestly answer yes to the question of, is this idea really a book and do I really want to pursue it, then we're good to go. Okay, you also need something new, something fresh or something unique. So a great example of this is I have a client named Caitlin B. She is writing a book for Hay House on sexual health, but unlike most books that have hit the bestseller list in that category right, books about how to have great sex Her book isn't for women. Every other book in that category is for women. Her book is for men and it talks more about emotions than erections. Right, so it's new, it is fresh, it is unique and there are books that are similar to it, so it's not like super duper unique, but it is the first of its kind.

Speaker 1: 6:04

So, okay, the first condition okay, so that's the first condition right To having potential by my definition anyway is that the idea has to be a book. Right, it has to fit the format and it has to be fresh book. Right, it has to hit the format and it has to be fresh, new or unique in some way. So the second condition is that your book has to have a market, meaning that it has to have a big enough audience of book buyers to satisfy a traditional publishers economic needs and requirements. Okay, so roughly that is being able to sell anywhere from 10 to 25,000 copies or more in its first year. That is, a able to sell anywhere from 10 to 25,000 copies or more in its first year. That is a high ask, especially when your audience is niche. Say, you work with female CEOs or series eight founders, or gay male owners of shih tzu poodles. Okay, those are niche audiences might not be big enough to justify a traditional publisher, right, they might not be big enough to warrant a traditional book deal.

Speaker 1: 7:13

That's sort of where reputable hybrids, reputable hybrid publishers, which we're going to be talking about later, kind of come in right. They can be very useful. So a great example of this is a few years ago I worked on a lot of firebooks. So financial independence retire early. I kind of got into that community in like 2007 or 2008, and they all wanted to self-publish or hybrid publish. I would edit all their books and it was very lucrative for me, very helpful for them, everybody sort of won. But they didn't want traditional deals, number one and number two. They were publishing for a really niche audience at the time, so they wanted to do a hybrid. So the last condition is that your audience has to be proven book buyers. So there's a lot of research around this that I find really fascinating.

Speaker 1: 8:04

So, in publishing, there is an idea that women buy books and men don't, and research supports that. Right, research shows that 80% of books are bought by women. However, what's compelling about that stat is that research has also shown that men actually don't read that much less than women. Okay, so they might buy less books, right, men only buy 20 of all books, but in 2021, 73 of men reported reading at least one book in the past year, compared to 78 of women. So not that much difference, right? Five percent, five percent difference, but yet such a huge gulf in who buys books, right?

Speaker 1: 8:47

So when I was looking into this, the general consensus that researchers had was that women generally do more of the purchasing. Right, if we are, you know, the homemakers and the caretakers, and we're certainly buying, you know, maybe, the books about good marriages and, you know, I don't know good communication or like business or career or whatever, right, we are doing more of the purchasing and the gift buying for households than men. That is just the guess, like no one actually knows, right? But that's and of course it's a little sexist, but it's ultimately probably the truth, in that women buy more books, right? Women and men read almost the same amount. Buy more books, right? Women and men read almost the same amount.

Speaker 1: 9:30

So another thing that complicates this and might be responsible for that gulf in purchases is that when you talk about avid readers, so when you talk about people you know that are reading more than 30 books in a year. So in a survey last year, in 2024, 51% of women reported reading more than 30 books a year, compared to only 34% of men, right, so that's a really big difference. Right Over half of the women out there read 30 books a year. That is roughly two to three books a month. Right, only a third of men read that much, which I was actually really astounded by, like that third of men figure. Now, reading could be listening to an audio book, right, reading an ebook, reading a print book, it kind of doesn't matter.

Speaker 1: 10:16

But when you think about the rabid buyers, so the people that buy over and, over and over again, and for the market we're talking about, which is really the self-help junkies, right? Or the people that are just in the bookstore because they're in the habit of buying books a lot, because they need two to three books every month, right, to read, to satisfy their reading habit. Then you're really likely talking about women, right? And you're certainly talking about women in a certain age bracket, I would guess 25 to 65, just because that's like the age bracket when we buy things and we want leisure and we still have our eyesight and you know all those things are still kind of active in our learning and active in our like consumerism, if you will. So now we know, okay, although men read at roughly the same rates as women, women are more likely to be avid book buyers and they make all the purchases right. So we know those two things.

Speaker 1: 11:11

So let's combine that with the fact that 78% this is like so high, right, 78% more than three out of four of people working in the publishing industry. Look like me, they're women, right? And then you combine that with the gender stereotypes that men don't read books, and you can kind of see, you know why, a book that's not for that prime book buying audience of avid female readers, which makes up also 78% of the publishing industry might have an uphill battle in terms of marketability. Industry might have an uphill battle in terms of marketability and in terms of it even being able to be sold to a publisher right To even get an agent to sign on. So that's really important because when we think about, okay, who's going to buy this, who's going to read it in the publishing process we talked about earlier, right, go back to the basics, go back to episode two, roles and stages. You know, when we're talking about that, you're looking to convince an agent who's likely female not always, but likely. You're looking to convince an editor that's likely female. You're looking to convince a publishing team that's likely very female, right? So it's just looking at that.

Speaker 1: 12:23

It doesn't necessarily mean that books for men don't sell. I've certainly worked on several, including Caitlin's, my best-selling book of all time. The Bro Code was definitely a book for men, acquired by a woman, represented by a woman on the agency side, but still a book seriously, for men. So that leads me to the last condition, right. So if we're talking about, okay, first, conditions met, it's a book, right? Second, conditions met, it has an audience of book buyers. Now we have to look at the competitive landscape it's sitting in and that gives us to an industry term called competitive and comparative titles, or comps for short.

Speaker 1: 13:03

So the question you need to answer is have books like yours worked, which means generating profit for publishers in recent years? Note that I say recent years because publishing, like everything else, is trendy right. What's in today might not be in tomorrow. Like I have skinny jeans I needed to throw out this year because all of a sudden they were out after years and years of being in right Same idea. So what worked in 2008 is not very likely to be working in 2025.

Speaker 1: 13:33

This is another reason why I hate prescriptive memoirs. They were popular for like a hot second in like 2005, and everybody 20 years later is still trying to write them. Please don't do that. So how long the trend lasts? That's also another reason why you don't want to chase trends in publishing, because they can either be lightning fast, like sheen H&M fast right, or they can be like Old Navy Gap fast, where they last for a few years, but it's like hard to hit those things. Also publishing subjective, so you never know what's gonna happen.

Speaker 1: 14:06

So what should you do as an author for comps Right? Well, you want to get a sense of how books like yours have sold. So you're not going to have all the know-how of you know someone on the inside, like me, right? You're not going to have access to BookScan, but you do have sources of information to call from so you can look at bestseller lists, usa Today and New York Times, which we're going to talk about in a future episode. Those are a great place to look.

Speaker 1: 14:33

Look, as are the shelves at your local Barnes and Noble and your local indie bookstore. Now, indie bookstores aren't always the most accurate, like it's. It's kind of funny, because indie bookstores operate a little differently. They're independent businesses, so, just like a clothing boutique or a record store, they're going to stock what they think they can sell and so they're not always even gonna have like all the best-selling books. Like my local indie has a tiny little part like literally, it's I don't even know like 10 books wide, 20 books wide, and it's like six shelves tall and that's all their prescriptive non-fiction. So, like, once in a while I'll see one of my books in there and it's usually one of the bestseller ones, like Rich AF by Vivian too, right, because they don't have a broad selection. Most of their selection is what their neighbors and customers are going to buy, which is primarily fiction. So, while none of this is entirely accurate, barnes Noble has also switched to a local model where local managers pick what books they put out.

Speaker 1: 15:36

Like those real life stores and those real life experiences can give you a sense of what's trendy and what's selling today and especially what those avid book buyers because everybody that works in a bookstore presumably is an avid book reader like what they're reading, what they're looking for, what they're enjoying. Like what they're reading, what they're looking for, what they're enjoying. So I guarantee that if you walk into most indies when I'm recording this, which is February 2025, you're going to see a ton, like absolutely a ton of romanticcy, and that's because combining romance and fantasy is having such a moment. Like it is so popular. It is so popular. My husband, who loves sci-fi and fantasy, accidentally bought a romanticcy audio book and he came home and he's like, uh, there's a lot of sexy time in this. And I'm like, oh, you bought romanticcy. Um, so that trend may be popping again in five years. Tell me if hockey romances are still a thing in five years, but like, that is very much a trend that's happening. So 50 Shades of Grey, right Another big trend. Harry Potter lasted for like I don't even know, like 10, 15 years. Like trend right. So like they're all there, I mean steampunk, come on now.

Speaker 1: 16:47

Okay, so let's recap, because I've gone in a lot of directions, as usual on this podcast today. So the first step in getting a book deal for you as an author is to ask yourself three questions. These are to help you determine whether you have potential. Number one is this a book, is a book the best format for my idea? Now, it doesn't have to be the only format, right? We have a lot of clients who do courses on their book material or offer one-on-one coaching or therapy on their book idea, or teach it at live events or do all sorts of things. But like, is it the best way to deliver that idea? Like, is it, does it actually work, right? So number two is your audience large enough?

Speaker 1: 17:33

We're going to get into percentages in an upcoming episode, but for now, just recognize that only a small percentage of your audience is actually going to buy your book. So in online entrepreneurship, it's generally assumed that one to three percent is the kind of the standard run-of-the-mill conversion rate. It's slightly higher for that with books, but, honestly, when I look at proposals, I am looking for audiences in thousands or millions, like hundreds of thousands or millions, and that's really, really important, right? Because we're only going to have a percentage of those people and we have to hit that 10 to 25,000 copy mark for a traditional publisher at least to be interested. So then on top of that is your audience book buyers, you know, or do they consume content another way? So if you do a podcast, that's why, you know, podcasts work really well, because podcasts, audio books, pretty similar formats, tiktok, booktok apparently is, you know, such a huge trend, such a huge community. So sometimes TikTok books can work, right, where YouTube books by, you know, books by YouTubers, didn't always work, because that's a different medium.

Speaker 1: 18:43

And lastly, number three, have books similar to yours been successful? Because the only caveat I'm going to put up to that last question is that you should never compare yourself to the rock. Is that you should never compare yourself to the rock stars, right? You should never compare yourself to what I call, you know, self-help celebrities. So these are people like Glennon Doyle or Brene Brown or Adam Grant, right? So that's really important because you don't want to make that comparison. It's just not fair to compare yourself to Mark Manson or James Clear unless you have the platforms that those gentlemen have. Right, if you have a newsletter with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, then sure that's a good comparison. But if you are a corporate consultant, it's not a great comparison, even if your book is similar, just because their books have done exceptionally well. And it's just not an apples to apples Like when books hit like that, like you know, girl wash your face.

Speaker 1: 19:43

Hit like that, so are not having a fuck. Hit like that, good energy in the last year. Hit like that, good enough by Dr Becky. Hit like that. Those are like exceptions to the rule. You don't want to compare yourself to those people, so we want to look for normal-ish people, the people that maybe are your direct competitors, that you know in the space, right, maybe your colleagues, right. If you're writing a book about highly sensitive people, a book about perfectionists could be a great comp, okay. So look up for normalish people when you look at comps. Okay.

Speaker 1: 20:20

So those three things Is it a book? Is the audience big enough and are they book buyers? And number three have books like this done? Well, that is how you get potential. That is how you measure potential. So that wraps it up for that first P, which, honestly, most of you are likely to have. There's very few people I meet without potential. So next in the series of 10 episodes, that really should be called Publishing. It's Complicated, is all about author platform, which I single-handedly get asked about the most and is also single-handedly the biggest fucking dream killer for you as an author. So let's look forward to that. So until next time, don't give up on your dreams just yet, and cheers to your eventual and future success. Thanks for tuning into the kind of big book deal podcast. Want to see where you're at on your book journey? Check out my free quiz at meghanstephenson.com forward slash quiz. That's M-E-G-H-A-N-S-T-E-V-E-N-S-O-Ncom forward slash quiz. See you next time.