Another way to get literary agents excited is to have a book on a topic that fills a hole in the market. That doesn’t mean presenting a book proposal on something no one’s ever seen before. You don’t really want to write the first book on a topic no one’s ever heard of. You want to find a hole in an existing market.
One way to do that is to create a whole new category for yourself and your book. For example, what do you get when you combine sex & dating with working out?
Billy Sunday Mars knows. He bills himself as a “romantic fitness expert.”
Mars just got a publishing deal with The Experiment for a new book, FIT FOR LOVE. He calls his book “a kind of prequel to the Kama Sutra on how best to train and strengthen the body for intensely pleasurable love-making.”
See how he combines two proven markets?
Hey, we all know some people go to the gym to improve their love life. (If this weren’t a blog for my business, I would have said that in a much crasser way!)
Also worthy of note: Check out how he compared his book to one of the bestselling books of all time. It’s a prequel to the Kama Sutra.
Imagine how talk show hosts will introduce this guy: “Our next guest wrote a prequel to the Kama Sutra. He’s a romantic fitness expert. Please welcome Billy Sunday Mars.”
Literary agents and publishers actually think about things like that.
So find a hole in the market, compare your book to a bestseller, and show how it’s different. You’ll greatly enhance your chance of getting a literary agent.
