Therefore, you may not need to do any research at all. You may have all the material you need. If this is the case, you can go right on to fleshing out your outline.

If you need to gather material, then first you should develop a research plan. This may take you an hour or two, but it's time well spent. You will use this plan first to develop your proposal, and later when you're writing your book. For your book proposal, you probably won't need to go past # 6 in your plan to get all the information you need.

Your research plan

1. Develop a frame of reference, and write it down as a complete sentence, using no more than 25 words. The shortest blurb you wrote should work well for this step.

2. Next, mind map or outline everything you need to research. This is to give you a quick overview. It's a good idea to print this mind map out so that you can glance at it as you work. You'll find that if you're online, or at the library, it's tempting to explore other avenues. These avenues may well be productive, and you can explore them at some stage, but not while you're trying to write your proposal. Once you start writing, your only goal should be: "get it done.”

3. Do a general search on the Web using a search engine like Google.com to locate additional areas you could explore.

4. Join online groups. If you find mention of any online groups or mailing lists that seem appropriate for your subject, join them. The members may be able to provide you with anecdotes or other information.

5. Make a note of companies that are mentioned in your Web search. Can they help you? The benefit of asking companies to help you in your research is free, current information. Most companies will be pleased to help, for the PR boost you can give them. Make a note to yourself to acknowledge them in your book. If any company has given you help, it's a nice gesture to send them a copy when the book's published.

6. Check periodical indices for articles which might be useful. Once you needed to trudge along to the library for this kind of help, but LexisNexis (http://www.lexis.com/ ) is faster.

7. Are there any books which could help you? Try www.Amazon.com to find recent books on your topic. (You may already have notes on these books which you collected while you were trying to come up with an idea for a book.)

8. Original sources. This is where your list of contacts comes in useful. Make a note of people you will want to interview, first for your proposal, and later, for your book.

9. Experts and organizations.

STOP!

Don't collect more information than you need to write your proposal. Creating your research plan shouldn't take you more than an hour, or two hours maximum. Until you get into the writing process, whether it's your proposal, or the book itself, you won't know exactly what you need. As long as you have sufficient material for that day's work, you have enough information.

Work on your book's outline and the first chapter, as you research!

We'll do more work on the outline and first chapter later this week. But, because they form such a big part of your proposal, start working on them now, as you research.