Choosing a book publisher and writing the proposal

A question from a dear reader in office hours

Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash

One of my dear readers asked this question in office hours:

What is the best publisher for first time authors in biblical and theological literature? What is a good format for a proposal?

Thank you so much for reaching out about this question! I often find it wild that people have to jump from writing a dissertation, which is a genre they’ve never written, to writing a book, which is yet another genre they’ve never written. There are so many obscure conventions for both of these that it can be overwhelming to know where to start.

Since I’m not a biblical literature scholar, I won’t be able to give you discipline-specific advice; rather, I’ll tell you how I would generally approach your questions.