How I Would Get a Book Deal in 2026 If I Had to Start Over

In this episode, publishing expert and host Meghan Stevenson breaks down exactly how she would land a traditional book deal in 2026 if she had no followers, no connections, and only an idea she believed in. Instead of chasing shortcuts or hype, Meghan lays out a clear, grounded path built on business growth, real audience demand, and patience.

She explains why publishers care less about big dreams and more about proof, platform, and profitability, and why growing a business first makes you a stronger author later. You will hear why creating consistent content is not optional, how testing your ideas in public saves you from writing the wrong book, and why most people rush the process and regret it.

Meghan also reframes books as long-term assets, not quick cash grabs, showing how successful entrepreneurs use books to deepen trust, expand reach, and support larger offers. Finally, she explains when and why investing in leverage can save years of time and energy.

This episode is a practical reality check for entrepreneurs and experts who want a real book deal, not just the idea of one.

Episode Highlights:
(0:00) Intro
(1:50) Why Business Growth Builds Platform
(4:35) Content As Proof And Testing
(7:36) Why Ideas Must Work At Scale
(9:48) Books As Long-Term Assets
(12:52) Why Patience Beats Speed
(14:25) The Proposal And Publishing Timeline
(17:01) The Five Percent Growth Rule
(20:09) Investing In Leverage Wisely
(25:25) The Four-Step Book Deal Framework
(27:40) Outro

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 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

The Four-Step Reality Check

Meghan 0:00

If I had to start over and get a book deal in 2026, here's what I would do. Number one, I would start a business or commit to growing the one I've got. Number two, I would create a shit ton of content and test it and measure it and understand deeply what my audience wants and how I can help them. Number three, I would be patient AF. And I would know that all of this is just gonna take time. Welcome to the Kind of a Big Book Deal podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn about traditional publishing. I'm your host, Megan Stevenson. After working as an editor for two of the biggest traditional publishers, I started my own business helping entrepreneurs to become authors. To date, my clients have earned over$7 million from publishers including Penguin Random House, Simon ⁇ Schuster, Harper Collins, and Hay House, just to name a few. In these podcast episodes, I will blast open the well-kept gates to traditional publishing. I'm going to 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 had the pleasure to work with, and probably say 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. As a ghostwriter, a book collaborator, and a book proposal writer, I have been able to help entrepreneurs and experts earn more than seven million dollars through traditional book deals. If I woke up tomorrow with zero connections in publishing and zero followers, but a book idea I wanted to pursue, there are four steps that I would take. Number one, you need to grow your business. Now this sounds a little weird, right? Why would you need to grow your business in order to get a book deal? And the secret is platform. So when a publisher considers publishing a book, they consider three things. They consider the idea and whether they think the book can sell, and they consider the author platform, which is how likely is the author able to sell this book and promote their own work and really do the work marketing, publicity, and sales-wise on behalf of the publisher. And the last thing they consider is does it work in their profit and loss statement? So they individually put each book they consider acquiring into their profit and loss statement to see exactly how many copies they'd have to sell and what advance they can offer the author. So when you're thinking about platform, that is the piece that's usually missing. And where it is missing for most entrepreneurs is in their business. So frankly, you wouldn't be giving advice if you didn't have a business, right? Otherwise, what's the point? Trust me, a book does not a business make. Okay. There's a lot of people out there in self-publishing talking to y'all about how you can use a book as a business card, but I like to play way fucking bigger than that. So something I learned from the six, seven, and eight-figure entrepreneurs I work with is that you have to grow your business first before you do kind of these fancy, nice to have things, right? Before you get a bunch of media sometimes, before you have a podcast, before you have a YouTube channel, before you, you know, have a TV show or get on TV shows, and certainly before you write a book. So it can be really, really helpful to grow your business first. And the reason I like to say that is because I've learned from six, seven, and eight figure entrepreneurs that I've worked with how I could be playing bigger and testing out my content more and figuring out more of what my clients want to hear from me and what my audience wants to hear from me. And all of that is amazing work for you as a potential author. Also, a business allows you to get paid while figuring out the book you want to write. Because in order to have a business, you have to have clients, and in order to have clients, guess what you gotta do? You gotta put yourself out there, you gotta do some sales and marketing, you gotta get good at those things. And ultimately, those things, getting good at sales, getting good at marketing, getting good at putting yourself out there, getting good at understanding what your clients want from you is what's actually going to make you a great author. Which brings me to the second thing you need to do, and that I would do if I was going for a book deal in 2026 and had zero followers and zero connections in publishing and maybe zero idea of what to do next after I have a book idea in my heart, in my soul, on the brain, right? The second thing is to create content. Now, when I used to teach author platform building, people would always like roll their eyes at me and be like hem and ha and kind of huff and buff. Years ago, I had a dog that would literally go when he didn't want to do something. And that's kind of like the physical manifestation of it I see on people's face when I say, hey, create content. And it's ironic because these people who want to write a book, which is usually 50 to 70,000 words, don't want to write an email, which could be five to seven hundred words, right? But the really being a writer, and I say this as a writer, as a practicing professional writer for the last decade, writing's about more than just the fancy stuff. Writing's more than books, writing's more than, you know, articles, writing's even more than like, you know, getting something out in the public. You could write for yourself, right? I have a writing practice that's all for me. That's just journaling. And I've been doing that since I was like, I don't know, 12 or something. So, like, writing is more than just these fancy things. And so the people that I see the most resistant from, ironically, are the entrepreneurs and experts who see themselves as writers. And I think there's this notion that like writers have to be fancy, or you have to have the moleskin notebooks, or you have to have the perfect setting, and you have to have the right desk, and you have to, and none of that's true. Like you can just be getting writing and getting putting content out there because content, y'all, is gold. So content allows you to see what resonates and what doesn't, where people get confused, where people are interested. Maybe you're really into a certain part of your work, and like other people just aren't that interested in it, right? That means that doesn't mean you have to stop talking about it. It just means maybe you talk about it less often. You get to find out what your target reader and audience wants, you know, really, really in depth. You get to listen rather than just talking. Listening is so important in growing your audience and developing content that works. You get to test your ideas, your frameworks, and your approach with more than just a small group of people. The number of people I have coming to me who have a book idea and they say, Wow, this X thing changed my life. And I say, Great, that's wonderful. Good for you, right? How many more lives have you changed? And they're like, none, it's just me, but I'm amazing and this result was amazing, and we should trust it. Nah, bro, that's not how this works, right? Like, that is so not how this works. Like, we want to make sure that works at scale. So, yes, it works for you, but just because it works for you doesn't mean it works for everyone else. So we need to test out the framework. Now, maybe it worked with, you know, 10 people. Could it work with a hundred? And once it works with a hundred, does it work with a thousand? Do you get those testimonials? Do you get that feedback? Do you get that proof of concept that a lot of people just frankly don't have? So when we're talking about experts and entrepreneurs who want a book deal, getting that content out there and really creating a bunch of it and learning what sticks and what doesn't is super important and crucial for your eventual deal. You also prove out by doing that and by developing that what literary agents and publishers want. So something that happened recently was I had someone reach out to me. I send weekly emails on publishing. You can sign up for them. The link is in the show notes. But she was like, oh yes, you know, my assistant didn't promote my book, my publisher didn't promote my book. And of course, it was like a hybrid publisher, but it was like, hey, you know, I tried very politely being like, that's not your assistant's responsibility. It's not your publisher's responsibility to sell your book, it's your responsibility to sell your book. So when you think about creating content, you're putting yourself out there. That's what you're gonna have to do when you have a book. You are finding out what people want to know. That's what you're gonna have to do when you write a book successfully. You are interacting with your audience, you are giving them a lot of value. That's ultimately what we want to do with the book, right? It's not all you, you, you as the author. It should also be them, them, them as the readers of the potential book. So you really want to keep your reader in mind, and you can start by doing that with content. So let's recap those first two points. You're gonna intentionally grow your business. That's number one. And number two, you're gonna use content to do that in order to get proof of content, and simultaneously, and this is where it gets really good, be building an audience while getting paid at the same time for your expertise. Now, getting paid, that is a big deal, okay? And that is what people forget about too, is they get all caught up in like, oh, I need an advance, I need this, I need that. I want a traditional publisher, so I make all this money and blah blah blah blah blah. And that's not real, okay? Yes, you're gonna get paid for your book deal. That is kind of how the traditional publishing arena works. But a lot of that advanced is gonna get eaten up by hiring help, which I'm about to get to in a minute, but it's also not really the point of writing a book for six, seven, eight, nine-figure entrepreneurs that I've worked with. They're writing their book as a lead magnet, as a loss leader, as a way to create even more fans in their audience so that they can then sell other things. Whether that's, you know, I have all sorts of models among my clients, all sorts of business models. So I've got people selling$25 courses, I've got people selling$25,000 courses, right? I've got corporate consultants that charge a million dollars per client. I've got, you know, everything everything between$25 and a million dollars, right? And a book can sell anything between$25 and a million dollars further up your funnel, further up your offers. But you have to be really intentional about building that ecosystem first so that when you launch the book, it's successful in that ecosystem, right? That person complained that her assistant didn't promote the book and that her publisher didn't promote the book. She didn't have an ecosystem. And you as the author are responsible for that ecosystem. It's kind of like that joke about accountants where, like, even though you don't know what's on your taxes, like when you file them, really, like I can look at it and be like, yeah, the math book's right, but I don't really know what it means. Like, you're still, I'm still accountable for that. And the same thing is for the book. Like, you're gonna hire people to help you with your book, but ultimately it comes back to you. Okay, so to circle back to one to two, because I kind of went off the rails there a little bit. I kind of went into tangent town. So, number one, you're gonna intentionally grow your business, right? With the book in mind. Now, a big thing is alignment. I get into this in a previous episode of the pod, but like if your intention is to grow the business anyway, this works really well. It's like, okay, I'm gonna grow the business, and my reward at the end is gonna be a book, or my reward somewhere in the middle often is gonna be a book, which is a great way to do it. Second, you're gonna use content to do that in order to get that proof of concept, in order to say, hey, yeah, this methodology worked for me, but it also worked for these hundreds of people, this also worked for these thousands of people. And then while you're doing all that, you're growing the business, you're writing content, you're sharing content, you're getting proof of concept. You're also by nature building your audience, right? You're building that author platform. So to be clear, this is not gonna happen quickly. This is not a get rich quick scheme. This is not go from you know five figures to six figures in a year. This is not zero to a million in 90 days or whatever the marketers are out there screaming about. And it's not gonna get you a bestseller next year either, mostly because traditional publishing works way slower than that, and content is also slow. Content ideally is a long game. I hear more regret from people that rushed all of this, all these stages, the growth in their business, the content, the book publishing. They tried to rush it, they tried to put it on their timeline, they tried to make it all about them, and spoiler alert, they were not happy in the end, right? Versus the people who took their time. So here's tip number three. Okay, it's gonna take the time it takes. And I know that's kind of rough to hear, or could be rough to hear, because it's super uncertain. I know a lot of people have worries about oh, it's my idea gonna get stolen, or someone else is gonna run with it before I get a chance to. And the odd thing about publishing that I've learned after over 20 years in this business is that you are going to publish when you are meant to publish. And I don't know if that's the universe or God or the great spaghetti monster in the sky, or just fate and weird luck kind of shit, like just happenstance. But it always turns out that everybody gets their deal at the right time, or they don't get the deal at the wrong time. Does that make sense? It's it's very interesting. However, if we intend to say, hey, you're gonna grow your business, you're gonna play the content game and get proof of concept, get paid while you're building your audience on your way to a book deal. Your book deal is still gonna take the time it takes. It's still gonna be years, not months, not weeks. It's not gonna be on your launch schedule. It's not gonna be like deciding you want to make a new offer in your business, putting an email sequence together and doing it next week. That's just not how things work over here. We're very analog and we're often ridiculously slow. So, what does ridiculously slow look like? Well, when you look at someone like me and my team, it takes us four to six months to write a book proposal, which is your next step. So I like I have a framework, I love to share it. It is potential, which is your book idea, which I'm sure you've got you're watching this video or listening to this podcast episode. Number two is platform. So that's what we were talking about in terms of building your business, building your audience, doing it with content. That is platform building. And the next step is proposal. So that's when you work with someone like me, someone like my team, to put together a book proposal, which then gets you a literary agent and then gets you a publisher. So what you need to know about that, right, is that it's awesome to take time. So let's say we did four to six months to write your proposal. In that four to six months, you could be purposely growing your audience with the intention of landing that book deal. You could be pruning off areas of your business that don't do as well. You could be, you know, putting more money into ads to really boost your email list, boost your follower account. You could be asking, you know, to do joint launches and things like that to expand your audience. There's all sorts of things that I've seen clients do that would be really helpful in that four to six month period. Same thing applies for your book. It takes about six to nine months to write the first draft of a book, given the publisher's deadlines and the deadlines we create within our own company with our clients. But then you have the production period, which is usually about a year. So if you're thinking two years is about the fastest, you're probably about right, right? Because it takes you about four months, maybe on the quickest end, to write the proposal. It takes us a couple of months to get you an agent. So let's say it's six months for proposal and agent. Then it takes you six months to write it, and it takes them six months to produce it. So now we're looking at two years. In that two years, how big could your audience get? How much more you know, revenue could you spend on ads and marketing? And how many more people could you reach? How many more collaborations could you make? The platform can grow a lot in just two years, and that's what we want. So, what's awesome about that, right, is that your platform will continue to grow. And because your platform's continuing to grow, because that work never ends. So don't show up here thinking that you're gonna build an author platform and then stop when you get your deal, because everyone in publishing will hate you if you do that, and it doesn't serve you, right? All of the entrepreneurs I work with, unless they're actively exiting their companies or taking a step back as the founder, want to grow their business. That is like a part of their DNA, and that should be part of your DNA too. So that is something that's really, really important. So what I tell everybody a good number is is 5%. So 5% of your audience growing month over month, quarter over quarter. Those are sort of your two options. It's very likely that you're gonna have more than two years developing your platform, right? Because it's not just gonna be about what happens after the deal, it's also gonna be what happens before the deal. So let's say that, you know, anywhere from two to five percent of your audience buys your book. That's what I've seen, at least historically, with my clients. There's a couple exceptions for that. Like if you're a corporate consultant that can, you know, bundle 50 books every time you do an engagement with somebody, you're gonna have a higher sales rate. But for most online entrepreneurs, I would say it's two to five percent. Let's go with that 5% number. To sell 20,000 books, that means you need at least 100,000 followers. Most people that need to grow their audience that I see are anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000 subscribers. Now, what I would love for you to do is to set a goal of growth of 5% over your platform. So that's all everywhere, right? That's email, that's podcasts, that's Instagram, that's social, that's TikTok, that's YouTube. That's something that's been invented since I made this video. But if you were to do that with an audience of 10,000, let's say you were gonna do that quarterly. If you set a 5% goal quarterly, that means you'd be adding 500 people every quarter, right? So you'd get to 10,500 the first time, and then more than that the second quarter, and more than that the third quarter. If you were really bullish, you could do it by month. That's what I've seen people be really, really successful at in terms of you know generating a platform that snowballs over time. So my client Erica Jordan Thomas is a great example of this. A couple of years ago, she and I had a conversation where she had a you know a growing business, a small but good platform, and I told her, hey, 5% growth. You know, I said quarter over quarter, she said, okay. And she did that the first couple quarters and then switched to the monthly goal. And she's been using that as a barometer ever since, right? And she not only was able to work with us on proposal, but she got a book deal, she got a six-figure book deal with Hey House, and her book's about to come out later in 2026 because of that 5% growth. So you want to take your time in getting to that 5% growth. And I want to say that that 5%, it sounds small, but it's actually secretly kind of aggressive. Because if you're not actively going out and trying to build your platform, you're probably not gonna see 5% growth. You might see 1% or 2% or 3%. So you really have to be active and focused on that as a metric that you want to, you know, really prioritize in your business. So that is just something really important. Okay, so we're up to step four. So to recap one through three, we've got you're gonna grow your business intentionally to your book deal. Second, you're gonna create content with the idea that you want a book deal. Three, you're gonna take your damn time using that content to grow your audience, grow your platform, and kind of get ready for a book deal. And number four, once you're ready to do this, you can invest in leverage. Now, what do I mean by leverage? There's a lot of options. If you're beginning, you could hire a content strategist to help you understand what your points are in your marketing, right? If you're like, I have no idea where to start. Content strategists are great helpers, brand people as well, although I find them less helpful than content strategists, but I'm a content strategist, so take that as you will. I also think that, you know, hiring a social media strategist or a social media manager can be really helpful because it takes that dailyness of getting in the apps off of you, which I personally find distracting, but you might like it too. There's a merit, there's kind of two different camps in that where I see entrepreneurs and creatives really getting in the weeds of their social to better understand their audience. That's one way to do it. The other way is to kind of come in in the expert space and be like, I'm the expert, here's what I'm gonna say, and then you're like answering questions and polling and doing those sorts of things. Either way can work, but you can invest in leverage with social media, you can invest in leverage with business coaching. My up levels in business came directly through coaching. I'm a little bit of therapy too, so you can invest in that as well. And when you get closer to getting your book deal, or you want to know exactly what to do, you can invest in working with someone like me. So I have a couple different offers that could work for you. So we have a free quiz. The link is in the show notes that you can take that will give you your absolute next step. People find this really valuable, it doesn't take a ton of time. And you look at a resource no matter if you're a fit to work with us or not. Highly recommend this quiz. The second level up is a consult with me one on one where we can talk about what you need to do more in depth. Usually, this is a business conversation, jumping off of these steps that I've given you so far.

unknown 21:59

But

What A Collaborator Actually Does

The Four Steps Reframed And Recapped

Meghan 22:00

This would individualize it to you and of course answer any specific questions you've got about your book deal. And then the third thing is to work with us on proposal. Now, again, you'd have to have enough followers, right, to sell 20,000 books. But that does happen, you know, everyone watches YouTube and everyone listens to podcasts. So if you're out there and you have the ability to sell 20,000 books, hit me up. I'd love to hear from you. But when you are ready, this step number four, invest in leverage is really important. So ghostwriters get a bad name out there, but we can't do anything we do without our clients. I can't create books out of thin air, right? What I'm doing is taking my clients' best work, their hard-earned work over the last three, four to sometimes 10 years and codifying it, using what I know about good books into a book that their readers can use. And I'm totally fine with not, well, I want to be acknowledged in the acknowledgement section, right? But I'm totally fine taking my hands off the wheel and letting them own that success because honestly, it is a lot their success. I contributed to it, but a lot of it's their success. And that's a good thing, right? So a lot of people get caught up in, you know, oh, it's my book. I should write it, I should DIY it myself. But like, that's just really short-sighted. My clients don't ever, you know, have to go to Chat GPT to ask it or AI functionality to ask it how to write a book proposal, because we do that for it. They never have to query agents because we make direct introductions, right? They get their time back, which for six, seven, eight, and nine figure entrepreneurs is like the most precious commodity ever, right? Your time is the one thing you can't get back. You can get money back. Money is regenerative, right? Money is a renewable resource. Time is not. And so by hiring people to help you with your book, you are buying that time back. You are buying that leverage. And in a lot of ways, you are buying a shortcut to your dreams. After all, my clients, they don't have to do all the intermediate steps that someone at DIYing has to do, right? They don't have to slog through Query Tracker, they don't have to guess at agents, they don't even have to buy a$25 subscription to publishers marketplace because we've got that for them, right? We can just, they can just show up to calls, tell us about their book, write as little or as much as they want to, and they get a book deal. It's kind of magic. It sounds really magic. It's still your book, it's still your content, it's still all those things, right? So you want to invest in leverage because it is really important that you as an entrepreneur focus on what only you can do. We can write your books for you, only you can do the work that you do in your business. Whether that's creating content, whether that's showing up on reels, whether that's working with clients that pay you more than your book's gonna pay you. All those things are really important. And hiring a collaborator buys you that leverage. So let's wind back the advice in this video because I know I gave you a lot. If you are an expert or an entrepreneur who wants a book deal, there are four steps you need to take, and four steps I would personally take as an expert and entrepreneur with expertise in publishing. If I had to do everything all over again, if I woke up with zero connections, zero knowledge about the publishing industry, and zero followers, right? If I had to do all of this over, if I had to start over and get a book deal in 2026, here's what I would do. Number one, I would start a business or commit to growing the one I've got. Number two, I would create a shit ton of content and test it and measure it and understand deeply what my audience wants and how I can help them. Number three, I would be patient AF. And I would know that all of this is just gonna take time. It's gonna take time to grow my business, it's gonna take time to grow an audience, it's gonna take time to prove out my content, it's gonna take time to land on an offer that everybody likes, and it's gonna take time to land a book deal and write my best book. It's just gonna take time. And the last thing is I would invest in leverage because as an entrepreneur, as an expert, as someone who wants to live a balanced, happy, joyful life, I don't want to be working all the time. So I'm gonna pay someone else to lend me their expertise in exchange for money because again, that's what I'm asking people to do in my business. I'm saying, hey, I have this expertise. Will you please give me money in exchange for the expertise, right? Like it all comes back around. So it's like this very reciprocal, lovely circle to invest and leverage with your book deal. Not only does it benefit you, but it just keeps this economy of small businesses going, and isn't that just the best? Also, who doesn't fucking want a shortcut to their book deal? Am I right? Okay, so that is how I would reverse engineer it if I had zero followers, zero connections, because I have seen the experts and entrepreneurs that I've worked with, these six, seven, eight, sometimes nine-figure entrepreneurs, use these exact four steps to get the book deal of their dreams. If you want to know more, I've got tons of resources for you in the show notes, as always. So I've got a great episode on alignment. I'm gonna link to that. I have a fantastic quiz. It is free. You should really take it because it comes with free resources. Even if that's not working with me and my team, I try to help all y'all with understanding the traditional publishing industry. So that's there for you. And also link to send out for my email newsletter where there's always fresh and new content every week for you to devour. And until we see each other again on the internet, cheers to your success. Thanks for tuning in to the Kind of Big Book Deal podcast. Want to see where you're at on your book journey? Check out my free quiz at MeganStevenson.com forward slash quiz. That's M-E-G-H-A-N-S-T-E-V-E-N-S-O-N.com forward slash quiz. See you next time.