A: Michael
Lennie, Authoring Attorney and Literary Agent, Lennie Literary and Authors'
Attorneys:
"Ask
your advisor; or research similar proceedings to determine their publisher
and editor. Obtain several and then contact them to see if they have
an interest. The original contact should be by way of a query letter
(one well written page) with or without synopsis, sent through snail
mail with a SASE. Your initial query should be more detailed (3-4
pages) than the query for an article, including the names and a sentence
or two about each participating panelist, his/her subject matter for
the proceedings, the forum, date, time, etc."
A: Richard
Hull. TAA Executive Director:
"The
market for published conference proceedings drops off the longer the
time between the conference and the appearance of the book. Hence,
once you have your conference scheduled, your best bet is to begin
to approach publishers in your field with your proposed, tentative
table of contents. The market will be those attending the conference,
so if you have the book under contract when they show up for the presentations,
and you can get their orders on the spot, you will impress your publisher
with your industry and your understanding of the marketing issues
he or she worries about.
The proposal
should be based on the content of the invitation to contributors to
the conference, and should list (again, tentatively, as you won't
have heard any of the presentations when you propose the volume, and
will want to reserve the right to reject inferior material) the presenters
and their paper titles, along with a page or two that discusses the
likely general thematic content.
Some publishers
have series that are devoted to conference proceedings; others to
selected materials taken from annual conferences over, say, a ten
or 25-year period. The market is the membership of an organization,
libraries, scholars in that particular field or niche of a field.
While you are
in a better position going to a conference with a contract in hand,
don't despair if you get the idea after the fact. Look for publishers
of conference proceedings in your field and approach them, again in
e-mails, letters, phone calls, and approaches at conventions where
publishers have representatives present."
