So I updated that proposal for a historical biography, and it's ready to be sent off.
When you do a proposal for a nonfiction book, one thing you do is evaluate the market and competition: Are there readers out there for your book? Are there lots of books on the same topic? So it involves poking around a lot and seeing what else has been published.
And let me tell you, while there aren't a lot of good books out there on the specific topic, there has been a LOT of stuff published in recent years in the general subject area.
Which means that there are a lot of publishers out there who are willing to produce a book like mine.
Which, along with reading someone's comment about a bad agent who behaved exactly as my last agent did, has led me to seriously question my opinion of that agent. He has a sparkling reputation--sort of. I looked on the Absolute Write Water Cooler forum, and sure enough, the more-recent entries about him include numerous complaints about him not communicating with authors.
He did not submit my book many places--at least, if he did, he sure as hell didn't tell me about it. And now I'm thinking that if he had, given the number of similar books published recently, he would have been able to sell it.
This really annoys me because I didn't ride this guy because he had such a great rep. It didn't even occur to me that he might have been the problem. And you know something? I know better. The character of Wouter Hoopen exists because I've had so many experiences with meeting people who are famous and fancy and big stars and whatnot, only to discover that they are more often than not self-serving careerists who got lucky one time.