Today, I’m going to share another installment of our popular column, World’s Worst Book Proposals. Yes, we can learn from others’ mistakes! Featured below are real quotes from book proposals submitted to me over the past few months.
Chapter 1, Paragraph 1 –
“When working in my garden we are a team he does the gardening and I lay in my hammock with a drop of the old amber nectar to hand pointing out any blade of grass or weeds he has missed he considers this positivehelp.”
Chapter 1, Paragraph 2 –
“When I started 9th grade my life changed gotten in a fight and had a concussion and blacked out for 80 seconds that is when all my problems started.”
From the book description –
“…the property once hosing circus and performers has been sold to a hard core two year drug rehab, the missing girl, Elizabeth draws together un unlikely pair…”
We see these types of errors all the time. Newer versions of MSWord flag them –
“A children’s story dealing with excepting differences.”
The very first sentence in the book –
“This was my first time in the principles office.”
When asked about articles cited with fictitious references in his book, this serial copyright infringer replied –
“The contents of the articles have been re-written for the book. The titles of the newspapers and magazines have also been transformed. What is meant there is that the articles do exist in real life, but publishing them would have been quite costy!”
Um, what???
“It made a long time that I didn’t see them. When I was sit in one of the tables of the bar.”
From the first paragraph –
“All she had to do was hold her breathe for seventeen seconds more. When she vagary opened her eyes, she could see a familiar face which was more like blur.”
Alcohol and emailing just don’t mix…
“every new thing thats happens and I think I cant take anymore,,I just say another chapter in my book,,and the name of my book would be,,And Im still laughing,,”
He actually got into college?
When asked how many hours he would be willing to devote to marketing his book each week, the author responded: “Not many i am attending college, that’s what your for.”
When asked how many hours he would be willing to devote to marketing his book each week, another author responded: “As little as possible.”
These left me speechless –
“My book is based on how wifes put there husbands before there family and even there children. Women does not have to always listen to there husband even if there ex husband wants to see his children but he can because of her new husband. Her new husband basicly turned her whole family aganist her.”
and
“It took me four years to wright.”
For more, see the previous installment of World’s Worst Book Proposals HERE.
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