The State of the Beer

I've been working on a book about a local brewery for three years. Like many would-be nonfiction authors I wrote as much as I could when I wasn't at my day job. I was a reporter when I started, then (mostly because I was cheap and the newspaper was bleeding cash) I was an editor and finally a section editor at a bigger paper. Between my day job and my book I was cranking out a phenomenal number of words every week. When I finally left the newspaper business for the nonprofit sector, my first draft was nearly done and I was cruising toward a second draft. It was time to try selling my book. I've learned since that it is foolish (or at least amateur) to first write and research a nonfiction novel before selling it. My first proposal (I also learned nonfiction authors don't query) was to  +The History Press . As I'd never written a book professionally before, I included the first four chapters of the second draft as an example. Having not heard from them, I started...