The One Question Every Author Must Answer to Land a Book Deal

What if the biggest factor in landing a book deal has nothing to do with your writing talent?

In this episode, Meghan Stevenson explains the real question publishers care about: how many copies you can sell and exactly how you’ll do it. She walks listeners through the core elements of her book deal readiness assessment, revealing why having a strong idea alone isn’t enough. Your business, audience, intellectual property, and proven sales systems all work together to determine whether publishers see you as a smart investment.

Meghan also clarifies common misconceptions, like why personal stories don’t always translate into marketable books and why engagement matters more than follower count. One of the biggest takeaways is that a successful book is usually an extension of an existing ecosystem, not the starting point.

This episode is especially valuable for entrepreneurs, experts, and creators who want to traditionally publish but feel unsure where they stand. Listeners will walk away with a clearer understanding of what publishers actually look for and practical insight into how to position themselves for success before pitching a book.

Episode Highlights:
(0:00) Intro
(1:26) Introducing the book deal readiness assessment
(3:28) Choosing the right type of book
(5:26) Why your business and platform matter
(6:51) Intellectual property and uniqueness explained
(8:53) Engagement vs follower count reality
(10:08) Audience size, math, and conversion rates
(12:59) The #1 question publishers ask
(14:08) Evidence publishers want to see
(15:45) Proven sales systems and positioning your book
(17:31) Platform plus idea equals success
(17:56) Listener questions and next step
(18:40) Outro

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• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghanstevenson/
• TikTok: @meghan.stevenson.books
• Website: https://www.meghanstevenson.com/
• Leave Meghan a voicemail: https://sayhi.chat/KOBBD

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 Only Question That Matters

Meghan 0:00

Well, the secret is that all of these questions, and more specifically, your answers to these questions, help me to know the answer to the most important question and whether you will be successful at landing a book deal and writing a best-selling book or not. And that question is: how many copies can you sell? Emphasis on the how, because publishers will want to know and expect to see exactly how you will sell your book and your book proposal. Welcome to the Kind of a Big Book Deal podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn about traditional publishing. I'm your host, Meghan 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. What if there was a free and easy way for you to figure out right now whether you can get a book deal and share what you can do to make your book idea a bestseller. In this episode, I'm so excited to share a very simple tool that has helped thousands of experts just like you to know whether they are ready for a book deal and whether you are ready for a book deal. And if not, what you can do next to make that a reality. This assessment has helped multiple entrepreneurs land book deals worth literally millions of dollars and will help you as well. And of course, I designed it. So I'm very, very proud to bring this to you today. So let's dig in. I've run my own business as a professional book collaborator, ghostwriter, and editor since 2012. In 2019, I decided to grow my business and start marketing online. And very quickly, two things happened. First, I realized there are so many awesome, amazing people out there with great ideas for a book. And second, there was no fucking way I could help every single person individually. Which is why I decided to create a simple assessment to help those experts, entrepreneurs, and creators like you who want a book deal, who want to traditionally publish, or are simply exploring their options. In this episode, I'm gonna give you an insider's look to how I designed my quiz and why taking a quiz can actually be a cheat code to your success as an author, whether you decide to work with me and my team or not. Spoiler alert, all the questions on the quiz, all the questions on the assessment lead to the most important question that you must answer as an expert, as an entrepreneur, and as a creator, who wants a book deal? So before we jump into the number one question, and of course you get to prompt your own answer as you're listening or watching, let's start at the beginning. So after you provide details like your name and your email, the first question I ask is, what kind of book are you writing? And the reason for this is simple. I specialize in prescriptive how-to books that can but aren't always labeled as self-help, which means I don't work on personal stories, I don't work on memoirs, I don't work on cookbooks, I don't work on children's books, I don't work on fiction, I don't work on narrative nonfiction, and honestly, I don't work on most types of books. Where often I see people get confused is that a lot of experts, entrepreneurs, and creators want to share their story. They want to, you know, write it as a narrative, almost like a fiction, right? Except that it's true. Almost like a novel, except that it's true. And they expect readers to learn from the stories, right? Like if I show you the lesson I learned, then you'll learn it. And while that is valid, I just don't work on those types of books, okay? And really that is the difference. So I often bring up two books. I bring up Shoe Dog, and which is written by the founder of Nike, and How to Grow Your Small Business, which is written by Donald Miller, the creator of Story Brand, right? In Shoe Dog, he's just sharing all his stories about how he grew this multimational company, versus in how to grow your own small business, he's giving you prescriptive how-to advice that is like directed at you. So there's another element to this, which is parables, and don't even get me started on that. That's like the alchemist, right? Or the five dysfunctions of a team. Don't even get me started on that. That's a whole different thing. It's like an advanced art form. It's like an epistolary novel or a novel in letters, or writing a whole book in second person. It's like a flashy trick that we don't usually do. So I'm just gonna throw those out for the purpose of this podcast. Okay, so after, like, you know, you answer what kind of book are you writing? And you're writing a how-to book that has advice and is giving advice and giving takeaways and to-dos and action steps, then you get to the next question, which is do you have a business or brand that serves the same audience as your book? And this is a sneaky question to tell me about your platform. So an author's platform, the author's ability to sell a book is necessary to get a traditional deal. And that is because traditional publishers make money on sales, right? Unlike a hybrid, unlike a self-publishing venture, the author isn't really putting up any money. They're actually paying you for the rights to publish your book. And so a platform is necessary. And honestly, building a platform doesn't really make sense without a business, at least not to me. That's why a lot of times fiction authors don't really have a platform because what are they gonna do, right? Um, it's just it's just sort of weird and nonsensical to me. What I learned too when I was working with authors is that building an entire business around a book or even growing an author platform around a book doesn't really make sense. And that's because a book is a low-cost product. So you've got to have a really big audience for it to work. And then you can't really build a business just around that. It takes too much time, it's too much effort. You know, building a platform is a lot of work, and so you have to really want the other things that come with a platform in order to have a successful traditional published book. Okay, so do you have a business, right? If you say, yes, I have a business, I have a brand that serves the same audience in my book, then you get moved on to the next question, which is have you developed intellectual property related to your business, your brand, and your book? So it shocks me sometimes to realize how many uh entrepreneurs and experts and creators don't know what intellectual property is. So basically, it is things that you have designed. So this podcast, this YouTube episode is a piece of my intellectual property. It's something I've written, it's something I've created, I own the copyright, I own trademarks to certain things. So, like I own the trademark to my name, for example. That's intellectual property I own. And so you want intellectual property because it makes you unique and it gives you something to sell, it gives something to the publishers to license. You might be giving the same basic business advice as like, you know, dozens of entrepreneurs on the internet, but because you've put a different framework on it or you're serving a different audience, you've carved out this niche, you own that intellectual property, and we can then sell that in the form of a book. What I see most often is people that do, you know, have a very lucrative business, often in areas like therapy or coaching or psychology or you know, health, where they're saying the same stuff as everyone else. And so because they're saying the same stuff as everybody else, or they're using other people's work as the basis for their work, we don't really have an intellectual property leg to stand on. We don't really have something unique to them that only them are putting out in the world that then like we can monetize. So that's the challenge, right? You need the intellectual property. And the other thing about this question, right? Have you developed intellectual property related to your business, your brand, and your book? Also, if you're trying to write a book that's not related to your business, it also doesn't really make sense and your platform sort of disappears. So, like, you lose that platform piece that's ultimately necessary. Okay, so let's say you answered, yes, I have intellectual property, it's related to my business, it's related to my brand, it's related to my book. Then we go to the next question, which is do you have an engaged audience? This matters because engagement is queen on the internet. Publishers notice engagement. So I have a client, she has a huge Instagram following, it's probably between 500,000 and a million followers. But when her proposal was on submission to editors at publishing houses, a lot of them asked her agent and therefore asked us, like, why there was low engagement. Uh, they noticed there wasn't a lot of comments, there wasn't a lot of shares, there wasn't a lot of saves. And so that's really important because the internet has changed, right? Publishers know that social media has changed and that when you post, say, an Instagram reel, not every single one of your followers is gonna see that. So you really want an engaged audience because what that will do is indicate then that you know you can sell things to that audience. Because when an audience is not engaged, you can't really sell them anything, right? They're just sort of vanity number of followers versus people that are really engaged in your audience, you can use that, right? You can market to them, you can sell to them, you can sell your book to them. And that is ultimately what's important in getting a traditional book deal. Okay, so let's say you said yes to do you're having an engaged audience? The next question I'm gonna ask is how big is your audience? So this is really simple. It's it's honestly math. So, like any products out there in the world, the number of products, in this case, books you're able to sell is directly related to the number of people you reach. It is directly related to the size of your audience, their engagement, and therefore their conversion rate. So conversion being how many people buy when you're selling something. Online conversion is usually one to two percent. So if we take that one to two percent, right, we're able to say, okay, then you need 50 times that number of people. So if we need to sell 20,000 copies in the first year, ultimately we need 50 times that number. So we need 100,000 followers to make that work. So engagement matters a lot here. But often as an author, if you are able to say, hey, I have 100,000 followers, I, you know, across platforms, whether that's on my email list or through speaking or, you know, on Instagram and TikTok and LinkedIn, and I'm able to convert them consistently at 2 to 5% for higher priced offers than a book, right? Something that's more expensive than $30, which almost everything hopefully is going to be, then that's a really good indicator for book sales. And that is why I'm asking you how big your audience is, because this is a super important question. It is equally as important as how much potential I see in your book. How likely do I think it's going to sell? How likely is I think you're gonna have an agent? How likely is it I think you're gonna get a deal? Because that is ultimately the question I have to ask before I take anyone on. I'm not just taking someone's money to write them a very expensive document that's not gonna go anywhere. I want you to succeed. I want you to have everything you need in order to get that look deal of your dreams. And that starts with this quiz. It starts with this assessment. So that is the quiz. If you want to run it back, you can. It's a very short episode, right? And you're gonna notice I didn't necessarily give you all the right answers. And I don't, if I see a flood of, you know, people gaining the quiz, I'm gonna be like, yo, I need to take this podcast offline. But ultimately, like the right answers are the answers that are going to be right for you. Because if you do they game the quiz, and people do that, right? People run the quiz multiple times. We see that on our back-end systems. We can see how you answer, we can see who's taking the quiz, who's not taking the quiz. We know all of that, right? Big data to the win. But like when you do that, I think it's like out of disservice to you. Because honestly, like the right answer is going to be your answer, and understanding your path is gonna be a unique thing. So just know that. And when you go take the quiz, you might not get the answer you like, and that's fine. It will still give you a path to move to the right answer, to move to the answer you want, whether that's working with us or not. So you might be wondering at this point what the number one most important question you need to answer is. Well, the secret is that all of these questions, and more specifically, your answers to these questions, help me to know the answer to the most important question and whether you, and I'm talking to you, each one of you listening to this or watching this, will be successful at landing a book deal and writing a best-selling book or not. And that question is how many copies can you sell? Emphasis on the how, because publishers will want to know and expect to see exactly how you will sell your book and your book proposal. So, for more on that, you can check out the episodes linked in the show notes. But publishers will want to know that your plans are based on previous evidence. They're not just plans. All right, they're not just plans. You're not writing a proposal and being like, I'm gonna have a platform by the time this book's done. That's not really all. And publishers know that. Okay. A lot of people want to grow a platform, a lot of people want a book deal, but very few, about 3% in my experience, in my world, actually follow through on that shit. So that's why plans aren't good enough. Okay. So where do you get that previous evidence, right? Where do you get that how I'm gonna sell books? Emphasis on the how. Well, we can cycle back to the quiz for that. So, question two, your business, right? That's related to the book. Your business success matters when it comes to your book. How prominent your business is, how popular your business is, how many fans you have, how many followers you have, what your marketing is, what your sales rate is, all those things really matter. What your revenue is, all of those matter. Number three, question number three, the intellectual property that's unique to you and that your audience buys. This is a must-have. This is not an optional thing. Intellectual property is ownership, and ownership is key because a book deal is a license. Ultimately, from a legal perspective and a business perspective, it is a license. And so you want to give the publisher something to license. And that's not going to be something generic that everybody else is talking about on social media. Okay, it's got to be something unique to you, even if it's just universal truths or scientific facts or you know, health information that you're putting your own spin on. That's fine. That's all fair game, but that's still intellectual property. Okay. Question four, you're engaged in a hopefully large audience. This is also a must. I'll get a lot of people coming into my DMs and in my inbox being like, hey, I want a book deal. And they have like 10 followers. Not gonna happen, bro. So, like, you need to grow this audience and hopefully get them engaged, right? That engagement is key to a large audience. A lot of people say, Well, why does she have 100,000 followers? And I don't. You've got to be looking at your content and whether you are actually putting content out there that engages your audience. And number five, a proven way to sell that you can insert your book into when it's available. This is a big deal. I just wrote a proposal last week, and what I did was I took all the authors' existing platform, so their social media, their connections, their media, their, you know, platforms they're on to teach. They're an educator in this case, their resume. And I said, hey, using all these things, how could we insert the book in every single one of these instances? And it was easy to do that. It was easy to make that argument. It was easy to show it. And even though that author had over a million direct followers and the ability to reach like 50 million people, they were still like, hey, here's some areas that I see are weak for me and that I have opportunity to grow. And that's the mentality you want to be in. You want to have a proven way to sell that you can insert your book into when it's available that you've already been practicing, you've already been growing, and you already have proof of in like an obvious way, in a public way, that they can Google your name and something good will come up. Okay. So all of that is what gives publishers a quick and dirty way to guesstimate how many books you can sell and also gives them a way to see how much money they can make because that's what publishers are all about, right? It's a business opportunity. They're more, you know, venture capitalists than fairy godmothers or fairy god people. Okay. So you want to give them obvious ways to make money. And so a lot of people don't do that. They focus on the idea, they focus on their feelings about their books, and publishers don't give a shit about their. They're very capitalist, okay? They want to sell books, and you need to make that easy for them and obvious on how you're gonna help them do that. That combined with a great idea, because idea and selling work in lockstep, right? You you can have a huge platform and a bad idea and that book won't sell. A lot of celebrity books end up in that camp, right? Pelania ends up in that camp. Okay. Or you can have a great idea and no platform and it still won't sell. We need both, y'all. Okay, so that wraps up this episode, but I really want to hear from you. What questions do you have about traditional publishing? I put a link in the show notes so you can leave me a voicemail or send me an email. Uh, I really want to know. We're designing, I'm designing, I'm writing the podcast for the rest of this year, and I would love to be able to answer questions directly from y'all and create content that serves, you know, what you're doing right now in this moment. So please, please, please don't hesitate and go ahead and jump in the show notes and leave me a voicemail if you're comfortable or directly send me an email. My email is directly in there. You will get me. It's not going to some random inbox, it's going directly to me, and I will respond to every single email. As always, y'all, I hope this has been helpful. And until next time, 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 MeghanStevenson.com forward slash quiz. That's M-E-G-H-A-N-S-T-E-V-E-N-S O N dot com forward slash quiz. See you next time.