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Brian MacDonald is Managing Editor at the Pragmatic Bookshelf. Over the last 20 years in tech publishing, he's been an editor, author, and occasional speaker and trainer. He currently spends a lot of his time talking to new authors about how they can best present their ideas. You can follow him on Twitter at @bmac_editor.
Authored Comments
@Phil, you're right that there's a lot more to the proposal process than I've covered here, starting with thinking about your motivation. I've written about the other parts elsewhere, and spoken about it at SeaGL this year. You can find a link to that talk in the last paragraph of the article.
@Gus, I don't mention agents because they're commonly not used in tech publishing, although there are agents who specialize in tech. In the fiction world, there are many more people who want to write than publishers can interact with, so the agents serve as the gatekeeper. In tech publishing, there are fewer potential authors, so the publishers can interact with them directly. An agent could help you craft a better proposal, but you don't need one to attract a publisher's attention. As an editor, I don't treat a proposal any differently if it's represented by an agent or not.