Sample Pitch Letter for Folio Literary Management
Dear Editor,
A roller coaster looks like a lot of fun when you’re standing underneath it, waiting in line, examining every twist and turn for its thrill factor. But things get a whole lot scarier once you’re sitting in the cart, belted in by an unforgiving metal bar, traveling upwards at a 45-degree incline with no view of the track ahead. When people call an experience an “emotional rollercoaster,” they don’t tend to mention that thoughtful anticipation of every bump of emotions while standing in line. The metaphor doesn’t really hold, but this isn’t because a comprehensive look at the whole array of emotions we experience isn’t possible; it simply isn’t available yet.
The Emotional Roadmap is a book designed not only to address the whole spectrum of feelings, positive and negative, but also to point out the useful ways emotional literacy translates to both personal and professional success. It offers these insights within the entertaining and easily digestible architecture of the alphabet, allowing for its wisdom to be processed with just the right amount of fun.
The book’s eighty different entries offer readers the guidance they need to recognize and cope with the full gamut of human emotions. Readers can leaf through the book as suits their needs and moods. Every entry includes a quotation, scientific facts about emotion, advice for coping, and a call for action that readers can take. Taran offers sage advice for how readers can better identify their emotions—whether good, bad, or somewhere in between.
The idea for this book was born when Taran’s teenage daughter told her that she didn’t know how to be happy. In her quest to help her daughter, Taran produced an award winning documentary Project Happiness, featuring experts such as George Lucas and the Dalai Lama. Taran then founded the nonprofit organization The Happiness Project, now a global organization with more than two million followers on Facebook. In 4 conjunction with experts at Princeton University, he Happiness Project has produced an online curriculum for emotional literacy. Schools and universities around the world, including Stanford and USC, have used the course. Taran has given a TED talk and her work has appeared in The Huffington Post. Meanwhile, her daughter has become a well adjusted young woman pursuing her dream of becoming a physician. Although much has been written on the subject of happiness, The Emotions Roadmap is distinguished through its reader-friendly format and focus on the full range of human emotion. This book will appeal to self-help readers who want a simple and accessible guide for navigating the ups and downs and life.
With a foreword from the Dalai Lama, Taran’s Emotional Roadmap is prepared to make the process of understanding our emotions easier and more fun. It leads its readers down a path of growth so that they can best appreciate whatever ride they’re on. Taran will be available for calls at _________. Read on for the full proposal.