How My Clients Earned $7M+ from Big 5 Publishers

What actually makes a publisher say yes to a book deal? In this episode, Meghan Stevenson breaks down the real thinking behind successful traditional publishing deals through her 3P framework: potential, platform, and proposal. She explains that a strong book idea is not enough on its own. It also has to fit the market, reach the right audience, and be presented in a way that answers a publisher’s biggest concerns before they even ask.

One of the biggest takeaways is that platform is more than follower count. Meghan shows why audience trust, engagement, and clear messaging matter just as much as visibility. She also explains how a proposal can make or break a deal, especially when it anticipates objections and proves the book can sell.

This episode is especially useful for entrepreneurs, creators, and experts who want a traditional book deal. It gives listeners a clearer picture of why some books get rejected, why some advances are bigger than others, and what they can do now to improve their chances of success.

Listen to Meghan’s 3P framework episode at https://www.meghanstevenson.com/podcast/episode-4 

Leave Meghan a voicemail at https://telbee.io/channel/qe1lgsl0yrjbrcj-xcb3pa/ 

Send Meghan an email with your questions at meghan@meghanstevensonbooks.com 

Episode Highlights:
(0:00) Intro
(1:31) Real book deal numbers and what they show
(2:17) How the 3P framework drives results
(3:24) What makes a book idea marketable
(4:18) Why crowded categories can hurt potential
(5:53) Why platform matters more than followers
(7:14) How content builds frameworks and clarity
(9:16) Why advances depend on platform and sales potential
(11:01) How strong proposals win publisher interest
(12:55) Anticipating objections inside the proposal
(14:08) What usually goes wrong in the 20 percent
(16:01) Can they get a deal soon or later
(17:39) When even strong proposals still do not sell
(19:38) 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

Cold Open On Winning The Room

Meghan 0:00

So I'm anticipating those objections in the proposal, and that is what makes my proposal so so good. Is that in that make or break moment, in those discussions, that either the publisher says yes or no, I'm already anticipating what they're gonna be asking and what that conversation is.

Survey Invite And Listener Q And A

Meghan 0:18

Hey everyone, Meghan here. I would love to hear what you like and don't like about the content I'm putting out, including the kind of a big book deal podcast. You can help me out by answering a few questions online. And when you submit your answers, you'll automatically be invited to an exclusive Q ⁇ A with me where you can ask me anything you want about traditional book publishing. To participate, all you need to do is visit Meghan Stevenson.com forward slash survey. That's M-E-G-H-A-N-S-T-E-V-E-N-S-O-N.com forward slash survey. And thank you. Cheers to your success.

Deal Numbers And The 3Ps

Meghan 0:54

400,000, 375,000, 15,000, 175,000, 400,000, 1.95 million, 25,000, 500,000, 225,000, 100,000, 15,000, 70,000, 40,000. Those are a handful of deals that I've gotten for clients out of more than 30 book deals since starting my business in 2012. In total, the work that I've done alongside entrepreneurs, experts, and creators have generated millions in revenue for my business, their business, and traditional publishers. How we collectively got there is what I'm going to talk about today. Now, usually in these episodes, I focused on what you can do as an entrepreneur, expert, or creator to put yourself in the best position to get that book deal you've been dreaming of. But today I'm going to flip the script. I'm going to filter my own journey as an entrepreneur, creator, and professional book collaborator through my 3P framework so that you can learn how my team and I get such amazing results. And hopefully apply that to your own journey as a business owner and a future best-selling author. So let's fucking jump in. If you've been a follower of mine for a minute, you know all about the 3P framework. But here is a quick reminder for the uninitiated. And if you have not heard me explain the full framework from your perspective as an aspiring author, I encourage you to check out a link in the show notes to an episode where I walk you through each of the three P's in detail. So there's an episode about the three Ps, and then there's episodes about each P. So you can check all of that out. I came up with this framework in 2020 or 2021 based on all of my past experience in publishing, which is also what I'm going to draw from

Potential And Reading The Market

Meghan 2:52

today. So let's start with potential. So in this, when I examine an author's book idea, I'm looking for potential. And how I come up with this is that I'm really using my knowledge and experience within the publishing industry to understand whether your book idea has potential. Now, personally, I've always erred on the side of believing in people and believing in their potential rather than excluding them automatically or being judgmental about it. Just ask all my ex-boyfriends and some of my ex-friends and some of my ex-colleagues. But honestly, what I'm looking for is to say, hey, does this book idea have the potential to be a book that sells? To be a book that works for readers, but also works for editors at a publishing house, agents, all of that. This me believing in your potential isn't entirely up to me though. So for the last couple of years, we've had a couple of projects that did not sell. And both of these books happened to be about perimenopause and women's hormonal health in their 30s and 40s. And these books both had promised, their authors were platformed, they had great ideas, but the category was super crowded, right? So now, even though I believe in the potential for a book on perimenopause to change women's lives and be very, very important, I also say, hey, those books right now don't have potential, right? So it's this idea of like what's going on in the market right now and what's gonna happen in the future, right? What's gonna happen in six months with agents and editors and how they see this book? What's gonna happen in two years and how readers are gonna see this book? And sometimes, you know, you just happen to be in a moment where it's not gonna work and you don't have potential, but that does not mean you will never have potential. And what's funny, and I'm saying all these things that don't have potential because most people have potential. I very rarely say no on potential. And the only reason I would is if I have evidence showing me that, hey, this category is overcrowded, perimetopause, or that these books simply aren't selling, or like the zeitgeist has moved on, or the zeitgeist isn't there yet, or this just isn't a book, right? So some things that are super timely just aren't books because you know, if you're writing a book about how to use AI right now in the spring of 2026, that book's gonna be hella data by the time it comes out in 2027 or 2028. So those are the sort of things I'm looking for in potential.

Platform Beyond Follower Counts

Meghan 5:23

Now, the next P is platform. So one of the funny things is that I actually was doing a customer survey. So I was the customer for one of my vendors, and they said, Hey, you know, did you always worry about platform? And I said, actually, no. When I started my business, I was so happy I didn't have to think about platform anymore. Because as an editor, I would turn projects down I loved because they didn't have a platform or C books fail because the author didn't grow the platform they promised to grow. But as I stayed in freelance longer, and certainly within the last six to seven years, I have realized that platform is the most important part. It is equally important to the book idea and the potential. It is so, so important. And that's because platform is more than just followers, right? It's more than just having an audience, it's more than just having attention. It's about engagement and it's about your ability as the author to sell books. Okay. So platform also has an editorial component. So this is the blessing of platform that I don't think a lot of people understand. When you don't have a platform, you often have not talked about your ideas enough to have frameworks, to have, you know, systems, to have client stories, to have, you know, broad-based evidence. So I came up with my 3P framework after about a year or two of putting out content consistently and saying, okay, there's so much I could say about publishing. How do I distill this into a way that people can understand immediately, right? But developing that framework took a lot of time. It took learning about what a framework was, which I didn't know, right? So, like, shout out to Rachel Rodders and the team at Hello7 who taught me frameworks. But like that whole idea of like, hey, you need to talk about your book idea with your primary audience in order to actually have a platform not only to grow your audience and get that engagement, get those followers and get that ability to have an audience to sell to in the first place, but also then to have the editorial know-how that will make your book a success, right? So that's really, really important. And I've seen authors fail on that where they didn't have a clear notion. They might have had a lot of ideas on what they wanted to say, but they didn't have a clear here's the step-by-step framework I'm gonna walk you through, or here's my step-by-step method. So that's really important, and that's part of what makes a platform. I'm looking for, yes, am I looking for followers, of course, but I'm also looking for cohesive branding. I'm looking at engagement, I'm looking at your ability to sell, I'm looking at all these different things because that all is platform. The other piece about platform that's super, super important is that authors with platform tend to be way easier to work with, both editorially and easier to get results for. And that's partly because the publishing industry loves a good platform, right? But it also is because you know your shit, right? If you're talking to audiences multiple times a day, you know exactly what your people want to hear from you. And that makes writing your book really easy. I think people underestimate that. Um, and so you really want to make sure that you're growing platform and engaging with your audience so that you know what their questions are and how your answers are gonna be. That will make not only writing your book easier, writing your proposal easier, it'll make getting a book deal easier and it'll make landing on a bestseller list easier. So let's go back to those advances, right? You heard everything from you know 15k, 25k to 1.95 million. And I want to talk about the lower end of those advances because that's what people always ask about, and it's important. So those numbers, those 15k, 25k, 40k, those numbers are low because of potential and platforms. So either they had a smaller audience, they had for the book and themselves, right? Or it was a niche, or they just didn't have as broad of range of readership. There's a lot of reasons, right? Whereas those higher numbers, that 1.95 million, that's 400,000, that 300,000, that 500,000, that represents a bigger possible sales number in the eyes of the publisher. Now the publisher can be wrong about that, right? There are certainly books that they took huge swings on that didn't sell very much, right? They might have invested, you know, half a million dollars in a book that didn't work, or they can invest a you know, 25k in a book that sells hundreds of thousands of copies. I've had both in my career. But those numbers, that advanced number, is based on a PL that an editor does when they want to acquire the rights to publish your book. And what that PL throws off is based on what they think you can sell, which is directly then related to your platform. So I hope you are connecting these dots in terms of like platform helps you editorially in terms of shaping your ideas, creating frameworks, creating methodology, creating things that are really unique to you, that intellectual property, but then it also helps you get the advance you want. So if you know getting a six-figure, seven-figure advance is in your dreams and it's one of your goals, then you will also want to build a platform that throws that off in their PL. Okay, so that's a platform.

Proposals Built For Edboard

Meghan 10:38

Let's go to the final P, which is proposal. So I'm gonna admit something here. So the first proposal I wrote, it was in 2012 and it was a mess. I got fired or replaced off that job, to be fair. I didn't really know what I was doing. It was my first proposal. I had seen them, but I didn't really know. And, you know, as I wrote, more and more I got better, right? So, you know, I started having smaller deals, so 25K, 100K, 165k. Before 2020, I'd only gotten about $500,000 in advances, and I would say that was over three or four books. But then since 2020, we've done $6.5 million in book deals, my team and I. So what got better? Well, first of all, I got to work with more people. Second, I got to do more, and as you write, you will get better. That's just sort of a natural thing of like any habit. You're gonna get better at it the more you practice it, right? And then the third thing was that I write for Edboard. And so Edboard is a meeting where all the editors at a publishing house and the imprints, the different, you know, departments get together and talk about their submissions. So, what projects have been submitted to them? And that is a very tough meeting to get a book through because people are gonna read it, they're gonna be, you know, either really engaged and like super critical or super, you know, in favor of buying this book, or they're not gonna give it a much time at all. I'm speaking about publicity and marketing people who don't really have the time to look at all the submissions, and they're gonna give it a passing glance. And when an editor wants to acquire a book, they've got to get publicity on board, marketing on board, their boss on board. And these people aren't doing a deep dive, right? They're doing a very quick evaluation of that project's viability. Will it succeed? Will it make them a profit? Will it make them money? Is it the kind of book they want to publish? Those are all the questions. So in my proposals, I want to answer all those questions. And because I have a unique experience of being that person in that meeting, I know what they're asking. So I'm anticipating those objections in the proposal. And that is what makes my proposal so, so good. Is that in that make or break moment, in those discussions, that either the publisher says yes or no, I'm already anticipating what they're gonna be asking and what that conversation is. So when I'm successful landing a book deal, which happens, by the way, 80% of the time since 2020, that what that means is not only have I written a bangin' proposal, but I've been correct in my choices at every single stage. I've been right about the potential of the idea. I've been right about the author's platform and their ability to sell books. And collectively, the client, my team, and I, because we all collaborate on the proposal, have written a saleable proposal that got, you know, an agent interested, an editor interested, a publisher interested, and all of those people, the agent, the publisher, the editor, agreeing with us on the book's potential and the author's platform.

Why Deals Fail In The 20%

Meghan 13:41

All right, so earlier I said I've been successful 80% of the time. I'm sure y'all are gonna ask about the 20%, and I've addressed that in other episodes, but I'm gonna address it here too. So, in that 20%, what goes wrong? Well, anything and everything, but within the 3P framework, I could be wrong about potential. So a few years ago, I worked on a dating book that was very about women stepping into their feminine power, and I thought it was great. I thought it was really cool. There have been books kind of like it and the zeitgeist, but editors just didn't get it, right? So that project got rejected. So I was wrong in that instance about potential. Another place we can go wrong is platform. So sometimes this is outside of our control, right? An author can lose their platform because of their own choices, right? They can decide, hey, I'm gonna take my foot off the gas or I'm gonna stop posting on social or I'm gonna quit my job or whatever. But where I personally go wrong in this choice is hoping that a client will succeed instead of facing the tough reality that their book idea is great and lovely and needed out in the world, but their platform or their audience or their marketing is too quiet, which just means that it won't sell enough to justify a deal. So this is where me believing in everybody's potential kind of comes back to bite me in the ass, right? So now I've got to be really, really, you know, tough on platform because what I've also seen is when I take people on saying, okay, you're gonna build your platform while we work on this proposal, right? Most people don't do it. And then they get mad about it, right? So I don't want that outcome for you or anybody else or for my team. And so I'm very, very tough on platform. And that is hard for me sometimes because I want to believe in everyone. And certainly my business could make more money if I signed on more people that were edgy in terms of platform or like needed to grow. But honestly, I've learned the hard way to switch my mindset from can they ever get a book deal to will they get a book deal soon? And so that's really, really important. And honestly, I think that serves y'all because when I was teaching publishing at Pace University in their graduate program, I had a student who I had to fail. I had to give her a failing grade on an assignment. And when she came up to me, I told her to talk to me after class because I wanted to explain. And what I said was, hey, I'd rather have you learn this particular lesson in my classroom in the safe space than out at your first job. So I'm gonna teach you this here. And yes, you got a failing grade in an assignment, but this would have gotten you fired at an editorial assistant job. So, like, I'm just helping you out and teaching you this lesson in a safe space. And for me as a collaborator, evaluating a potential client's potential and platform, doing that in a sales call setting or in a consult setting or even in the quiz, I think is more helpful than you investing in a $30,000 proposal because that's what we charge right now in 2026, that's subject to change. You paying that amount of money and then being disappointed after you've done all that work, right? I would rather tell you in a sales call that, hey, you need to do X, Y, and Z before you're ready and break your heart then than break your heart when you can't get an agent or you can't get it at the all. All right, so that's the tough part of that combo. So now let's finish up with the last P, which is proposal. So sometimes the best proposal doesn't sell. I had a client a few years ago who he worked in the restaurant industry, and his book was basically on reasonable hospitality. If you know of that book, it was basically a precursor to that book. We had celebrity chefs attached, he had a great platform, he had a way to sell it, and he had an agent, and it just didn't sell, right? It just didn't work. And that was heartbreaking for everybody. But ultimately, like when it all came down and everyone gave us very nice no's, all the editors gave us very nice nos, the client was kind of cool with it because he had tried, he had done his best effort, and despite, you know, me believing it and his agent believing it, and it just didn't work at the time, and that is totally fine. And so sometimes just things don't sell, and that's okay. Often we can regroup and editors will say, Hey, I would love this author, give me a different idea or come back in a year, or when we get the same rejection, we might revisit it soon, right? But like that is something that happens as well is like sometimes the proposal just doesn't land with editors, and there's not a lot we can do about that.

Your Questions And Final Ask

Meghan 18:26

So those are the three P's, and today I've given you a peek into my journey personally as an entrepreneur, as an expert, as a creator, as a book collaborator, so that you understand exactly how my team and I help our clients get huge advances, right? $7 million and counting. So I am putting out this ask all spring until I start getting answers. I'm gonna keep asking y'all. I want to hear from you. What is one question that you have about traditional publishing? So I'm gonna put a link to leave me a voicemail in the show notes. You can also send me a DM, you can send me an email. I really, really want to hear from you so that I make this podcast as best as it can be and answer the questions that are on your mind about your book. So tell me, tell me, tell me, please. And I look forward to hearing from you. And as always, of course, cheers to your success. Thanks for tuning in to the Kind of a Big Book Deal podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you subscribe and also leave a review. Not only is this good for my ego and annoying for my enemies, but it also helps more entrepreneurs like ourselves find this podcast. Also, I'm pretty sure it's good karma. See you next time.