A physician asked me to co-author a book

[katinmn]

It could have some broad appeal since it has to do with actual cases of wrongful death. It will involve investigative reporting and I'm looking at it taking up to a year.

I'm a freelance health and science writer writing mostly for trade journals. Have never written a book proposal.

Does anyone have any ideas or resources to suggest on how I should go about pitching our idea to a publisher?

[DavidDvorkin]

1. I'd want to know how the work would be divided

Make sure your partner understands that having the idea doesn't equal the work done by the writer. If you're doing the investigative and writing work, you should be getting most of whatever money there is. Get this all down in writing.

[katinmn]

2. Good point. He is supplying the real life examples and the

medical knowledge. I will put it in context of what is wrong with the current system in terms of lack of oversight.

We should probably agree on a percentage.

[petgoat]

3. The book by Michael Larsen "How to Write a Book Proposal"

is a classic for non-fiction.

If you have never completed a book-length manuscript before, it might be well
to include on your team someone who has (even if he/she has no intention of
working on the book) to provide "completeion insurance" credibility for your
outline-and-three-chapters proposal.

Best of luck!

[katinmn]

5. Excellent. Thanks!

Sounds like what I need to be thinking about.

[Taxloss]

4. First, good luck with this.

Second, I would suggest working up a sample chapter or section. This will be a valuable exercise because it will give you something to show to potential publishers, but equally importantly it will teach you a lot about how you work together. Whatever you come up with needn't go in the book in that form, or at all, it's just a test run.

[katinmn]

6. Thanks, T. Rapport is key with a long-term project like this.

I'm excited but have never tackled this before so I have a lot to learn.