Saturday, May 11, 2013

The Idiot's Guide to Writing a Baseball Book


The Daily Beast offers some tips.

From the story...

Let’s say you’re a young baseball beat writer itching to land a book contract. You cover a team that few book editors in New York care about—the White Sox (not the Cubs) or the Twins (no explanation necessary)—and have never fit in among the trendy sabermetrics crowd. Ghostwriting is not your thing, and you find that all the great dynasties have already been exhaustively dissected by brand-name authors. What’s an ambitious writer to do?
Never fear, there’s still a surefire path for securing a book deal. Simply pick a year—any year, really—and make a case for why that baseball season stands out from all others. Follow one of the templates below and you’ll ink a deal in no time.
Declare Your Chosen Year the Best in Baseball History
Does your chosen year include any combination of the following: record-breaking performances, tight pennant races, controversy, a World Series that went the distance, a slew of future Hall of Famers in their prime? If so, then your year was not merely great; it was the best ever—an assertion that you must trumpet in your book’s subtitle and defend vigorously in the opening chapter. (You can drop it entirely afterward.)

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