I've edited this post. Now, Tom's commentary comes first, and the book proposal comes second.

I thought it would be fun to revisit the book proposal after running through all the changes that happened with the Table of Contents. It's like, on those second discs, when the original screenwriter/story person and first producer recall shopping around the idea and you realize how much the movie changed from their original ideas--inevitable.

Now, you have to remember that this is the summer of 2007, so about 18 months ago. I had written in May a book proposal for "How to Become a Grand Strategist" and had that proposal gently rebuffed by Neil Nyren, who said, I'll do the book with you if that's what you really want, but it's not the book I'm looking for right now from you at this point in your career. Hearing that Neil actually considered me to have a career as a book author was enough for me to change my mind.

So I retooled in June and wrote this in July. Putnam thereupon offered me about half of the advance I got for both of the first two books, primarily in response to the far lighter sales of the second one, Blueprint, which we all now agree wasn't handled in the best way (I've lamented that storyline enough). I knew I was going to get a smaller advance and this one was a bit lower than I was hoping for, but you have to understand: it's really an advance, meaning they're pre-paying you and not paying you in addition to your royalties. The bigger the advance, the longer it takes for you to "earn out," or payback the advance and start getting royalties--something that most books never do. So a more modest advance means you'll actually have a chance of seeing royalty money sooner. In this case, we have some riders in the contract that advance those payments if I sell a certain amount in a certain timeframe, meaning if this book does as well as PNM, my advance will be similar in total sum. I kind of like that contract better, to tell the truth. Being incentivized is the way to go.

First off, with this proposal, you notice how relatively short it is. The PNM proposal ran like 50 pages and was about 25k, if I remember. BFA was only 10 pages, because it was an obvious sequel to PNM. This one fell in between: 19 pages and 6200 words. No need to intro myself or Mark or spell out my commitment to selling (beyond the perfunctory). Rather, just sell the content and the timing.

The original title, The Coming Realignment: Reconnecting America's Grand Strategy to a World Transforming was totally mine. The sentiment remains, obviously, but the words changed. Neil came at me first with Great Powers and then later with the subtitle. We went back and forth a lot, but Neil got his way on both. The clincher for me? Warren kept saying it was right for Tom Barnett to be putting out a book right now with that title--it just sounded right.

Right off in the opening I give a series of mis-alignments that were/are unfolding. I later pirated that sequence for a column entitled, "To rejoin world, U.S. must rejoin conversation." The first three words in the column are "Sen. Barack Obama." I had just spend an hour with his top Senate foreign policy guy, Mark Lippert, in his office right around the time he was getting ready to announce, so I was clearly intrigued. It's interesting to note that he's the only candidate I mention in the proposal.