So I wrote a non-fiction book....what's next?
100,000 words of a meticulously researched, non-fiction sports history book.
I've done 4 full revisions. Everything from restructuring chapters and cutting/adding whole sections, all the way down to line-by-line editing for punctuation, grammar, and repetition issues. I feel like, at this point, I've gotten it as finished as I'm capable of making it and anything else is just tinkering and nitpicking.
So now I kind of feel stuck.
It could probably benefit from a professional editor. Is that my next step? How do I approach that? From my understanding, most nonfiction books are sold on a proposal rather than a completed manuscript. That ship has sailed. The book is written. Do I pull up QueryTracker and start blind-submitting it to agents? I've read that the editing process is usually handled by the publisher in the case of nonfiction books but I don't know how true that is? This is all uncharted waters for me.
Additional Note: When I say the book is finished, I should clarify that there are things I could, and would love, to do. For instance, there are a lot of people I would like to interview for it, just to have additional stories and comments to help color the narrative. I've reached out to a handful of them. But I've gotten mostly silence or rejections.
And I understand. I'm a nobody, without any previously published works to show for myself, no publisher behind the project, no agent, no particularly notable social media presence....just a dude in his office at home who's spent the last couple years working on a dream. Part of me thinks maybe I would have a better shot at scoring some of these interviews if I had an agent or publisher behind the project, but what do I know?
So what do I do next? Any advice would be appreciated.