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Manning Books book proposal 01

Last updated: July 10, 2025

Intro…

Video in the works!

Book Title

Name of Author(s)

1. Tell us about yourself.

What are your qualifications for writing this book?

Do you have any unique characteristics or experiences that will make you stand out as the author?

2. Tell us about the book’s topic.

What is the technology or idea that you’re writing about?

Why is it important now?

In a couple sentences, tell us roughly how it works or what makes it different from its alternatives?

3. Tell us about the book you plan to write.

  • What will the reader be able to do after reading this book?For example:After reading this book, the reader will be able to:
    • Use Spock to write the unit tests required to test typical Java code
    • Automate the testing process
    • Use Geb to write functional tests for web applications
    • Apply best practices for creating individual tests and suites of tests
    • Transition from jUnit to Spock
  • Is your book designed to teach a topic or to be used as a reference?
  • Does this book fall into a Manning series such as In Action, In Practice, Month of Lunches, or Grokking?
  • Are there any unique characteristics of the proposed book, such as a distinctive visual style, questions and exercises, supplementary online materials like video, etc?

4. Q&A

  • What are the three or four most commonly-asked questions about this technology?For example:
    • What is Docker?
    • Is Docker only for Linux?
    • Does Docker replace a traditional VM like VMWare or Hyper-V?
    • Can I use Docker with tools like Chef, Puppet, or Ansible?

5. Tell us about your readers.

Your book will teach your readers how to accomplish the objectives you’ve established for the book. It’s critical to be clear about the minimum qualifications you’re assuming of your reader and what you’ll need to teach them.

  • What skills do you expect the minimally-qualified reader to already have? Be specific. E.g.
    • General knowledge of distributed application architecture
    • No hands-on experience with reactive application design.
    • Intermediate Java language skills.
    • No experience with functional programming.
  • What are the typical job roles for the primary reader? Be specific: e.g.
    • 4 years of experience as a front-end engineer.
    • Entry-level system administrator
  • What will motivate the reader to learn this topic?

6. Tell us about the competition and the ecosystem.

  • What are the best books available on this topic and how does the proposed book compare to them?
  • What are the best videos available on this topic and how does the proposed book compare to them?
  • What other resources would you recommend to someone wanting to learn this subject?
  • What are the most important web sites and companies?
  • Where do others interested in this topic gather?

7. Book size and illustrations

Please estimate:

  • The approximate number of published pages to within a 50-page range
  • The approximate number of diagrams and other graphics
  • The approximate number of code listings

8. Contact information

  • Name
  • Mailing Address
  • Preferred email
  • Preferred phone
  • Website/blog
  • Twitter, etc

9. Schedule

  • To write and revise a chapter, most authors require 2-4 weeks. Please estimate your writing schedule
    • Chapter 1: We typically expect the first chapter in about 1 month
    • 1/3 manuscript:
    • 2/3 manuscript:
    • 3/3 manuscript:
  • Are there any critical deadlines for the completion of this book? New software versions? Known competition? Technical conferences?

10. Table of Contents

The table of contents is your plan for teaching your intended readers the skills they need to accomplish the objectives you’ve established for the book. While every Table of Contents is different, there are a few common best practices for a typical In Action book.

Introductory chapters

Chapter 1: The first chapter is typically an overview of the book’s topic. This chapter should tell the reader:

  • What is the book’s topic? How does it relate to other things the reader may already know? How does this topic fit into the larger context of its technology ecosystem?
  • At a high level, how does this technology work? How would you draw a picture of this technology on a whiteboard? How does it differ from other approaches?
  • What are the practical benefits of this technology? Please provide some short use cases that illustrate these benefits.

Chapter 2: The second chapter is often a brief tutorial example that shows what the technology looks like in actual use. The reader isn’t expected to understand everything in this example, and it should be simple enough to show just the important characteristics. Ideally, the reader will be able to work through the example.

Chapter 3: If needed, you may want to include a chapter that reviews prerequisite skills that you can’t assume all readers already have. As an alternative, you might include this information in an appendix.

Core chapters

The next several chapters should cover the core aspects of the technology. Given the reader’s existing knowledge, what’s the first/next thing the reader should learn? Are there other concepts you need to introduce so that that the reader will be able to do something useful with this topic? What examples can you provide for the reader?

Next steps:

Typically, you should expect that all readers need the information in the core chapters. In later chapters, you may cover topics of interest to only certain segments of your audience.

Apply as needed

Not all books follow this pattern. If you’re proposing a book for a specific Manning series, such as In Practice, Month of Lunches, or Grokking, you’ll need to follow the pattern established by other books in that series.

Formatting the Table of Contents

At this stage, your ToC should look something like the sample below. Please number your Table of Contents in this way

  1. Chapter name
    1. Section
      1. Subsection [this level is useful, but not required, in the proposal]
      2. Subsection
      3. Subsection
    2. Section
      1. Subsection
      2. Subsection
      3. Subsection
    3. Section
      1. Subsection
      2. Subsection
      3. Subsection
    4. Summary
  • The first section of each chapter is usually an overview of the topic that chapter covers putting the topic into its general context.
  • The final section of each chapter is a Summary.
  • You may include a brief annotation for each chapter, but the topics covered in the ToC should be clear without the annotation.
  • Every chapter should have clear objectives. “In this chapter, the reader will learn how to…”

Example ToC

Camel in Action

Part 1 First steps

  1. Meeting Camel
    1. Introducing Camel
    2. Camel’s message model
    3. Camel’s architecture
    4. Your first Camel ride, revisited
    5. Summary
  2. Routing with Camel
    1. Introducing Rider Auto Parts
    2. Understanding endpoints
    3. Creating routes in Java
    4. Creating routes with Spring
    5. Routing and EIPs
    6. Summary

Part 2 Core Camel

  1. Transforming data with Camel
    1. Data transformation overview
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