Of all the live videos I do in the 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge Facebookgroup, today’s is always the best attended. Because this is the day of the Big Reveal: when I announce the winner of the publishing deal from all the completed proposals submitted ahead of the deadline earlier this week.
Having a prize for a challenge like this is great in lots of ways. There’s real skin in the game, it gives it a point and purpose that can be just the motivation you need on a bad day, and there’s an undeniable frisson around the reveal itself. I do try to inject a bit of suspense, though I haven’t yet gone as far as tense backing music.
But the big unavoidable problem of choosing a winner is that you’re left with one very happy person and everyone else feeling like you’ve kicked them in the teeth. Or at least, NOT chosen them, which is pretty much the same thing.
SIgh.
But as someone who didn’t technically win it said in the first challenge, ‘This is the furthest I’ve ever got with my thinking about my book, so I have totally won.’
This time there were THREE technical winners – I know!! – but in the end they’re three projects that excite me enormously, that I’d love to publish, and that I know I can make work commercially. So why not?
The winners are:
Alex Drago with Impact! How museums can create more innovative, relevant and transformational learning experiences;
Chris Radford with Attractive Thinking: The powerful new approach to brand strategy and customer engagement;
and
Suzanne Collier with How to Job Search in Book Publishing: The ultimate insider’s guide.
All three will be joining the This Book Means Business bootcamp which starts 3 July, and I’ll be working with them over the coming weeks to get these brilliant ideas from proposal to book.
Can’t wait. 🙂