A Place for AI in Your Writing: Book Proposals

By Ann Kathryn Kelly

How many writers out there love writing book proposals? Show of hands, please.

Just as I suspected. I see very few hands going up.

Book proposal research and writing is not for the faint-hearted. If I’ve learned anything over months of querying my memoir to deafening silence, it’s that book proposals need to be about the sales viability of one’s project.

Yes, proposals also need to showcase your creativity—in concept, craft, and writing style. But I’ll admit that I made a rookie mistake in the first draft of my proposal when I packed it with the literary language that peppers my manuscript, focusing solely on story arcs and placing too much emphasis on the prettiness of my prose.

What I should have done a better job on is researching, for example, my target audience and how my memoir will appeal to them—for that is an essential point to articulate in book proposals. Agents and publishers want to understand your book’s sales appeal and potential profitability before they will consider taking it on as a project.

Expediting Proposal Research with AI

This is where artificial intelligence, for all its detractors, can help us.

Upfront disclaimer: I’m not here to advocate AI’s use in crafting creative work. Besides obvious plagiarizing pitfalls, AI tends to spit out “wooden” prose that often lacks the emotion, musicality, and spirit that makes authentic prose, written entirely by humans, enjoyable.

Rather, this post is about how AI can be a tool to help writers brainstorm and complete time-consuming book proposal components such as Target Audience, Comparative Titles, or Marketing Plan. I experimented with AI to brainstorm my proposal’s Target Audience, tying together what I anticipate will be similar tastes in TV shows and the types of books they like to read.

My book proposal supports a 71,000-word memoir that explores my childhood and young adulthood that was marked by mysterious and undiagnosed neurological deficits. A lifelong limp, a crossed eye, muscle atrophy. I never received a diagnosis, after consulting with specialists for years. I adapted and got on with life, until my symptoms worsened at 40 and I was diagnosed with a brain tumor—compounded by a shocking twist (which I’ll save for the book).

Because the Target Audience identifies types of readers most likely to buy one’s book, I wanted to include a handful of TV shows I felt they might have watched. Readers who enjoy medical TV shows, for example, would seem likely to enjoy memoirs about medical conditions. I wanted to differentiate my list of TV shows from the list of books in my Comparative Titles section. While the latter should ideally include books published in the last two years that are similar to my memoir, I had more latitude in researching TV shows for my audience. I decided I could go back as far as 15 years to find shows with similar themes to my memoir.

I used the ChatGPT tool, taking time to be specific when writing my prompt. The more direction you give an AI tool, the better results it will deliver. I started by providing my memoir overview, pointing out how my family and I finally connected with a top Boston brain surgeon who figured out the root cause of my mysterious symptoms and correctly diagnosed me.

My ChatGPT prompt, in part, read:

Send me a list of 10 TV shows from the last 15 years (2008 to 2023) that deal with topics of serious illness and that also present mysterious symptoms. The TV shows must feature a medical professional who helps families interpret these mysterious symptoms and correctly diagnoses patients when it feels like all hope is lost.

Aha! Moment with AI

The first TV title ChatGPT suggested is the medical drama “House” (aka “House, M.D.”). An aha! moment for me. Though I’d watched “House” when it was on network TV from 2004-2012, it was not top-of-mind for me. Yet, I recognized an immediate comparison between this show and my memoir. Both highlight brilliant doctors able to unravel mysteries, correctly diagnose patients, and get them the help they need.

I’ve included “House” in my proposal because it’s a strong example that targets my ideal readers’ tastes. ChatGPT also suggested “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Private Practice,” but I won’t include those since neither show is closely aligned to my memoir’s themes.

As the discussion surrounding the use of AI in our creative writing lives rages on, I’m clear on how I want to use it. Authentic creative writing needs to come from our heads and hearts, filled with meaning that AI cannot possibly imbue. Yet, I feel AI is a useful tool to help me quickly populate elements of my book proposal—often, in lightning speed—that might previously have taken me hours to research.

What are your opinions around using AI to help research something straightforward, like a nonfiction book proposal? Drop a note in the comments and let me know.

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Ann Kathryn Kelly writes from New Hampshire’s Seacoast region. She’s an editor with Barren Magazine, a columnist with WOW! Women on Writing, and she works in the technology sector. Ann leads writing workshops for a nonprofit that offers therapeutic arts programming to people living with brain injury. Her writing has appeared in a number of literary journals. Learn more at her website.