One Year Anniversary of the Acceptance of my Book Proposal

Today, March 11th, marks the one-year anniversary of the acceptance of my book proposal by McGraw Hill. I had first contacted them on February 1st about my manuscript on cost and schedule risk in defense and aerospace programs. It was not a completely cold contact, as I did know someone who knew an editor at McGraw Hill, who forwarded my proposal to yet another editor at the company. This led to a phone call on February 19th. At that time my working title was Risk Blind: The Hidden Role of Financial Risk Management in National Security. The editor told me that he was concerned that the narrow focus would limit sales. After a couple of weeks, he contacted me again about taking my book proposal forward to his management if I was willing to re-write my proposal so that it addressed projects of all types. I turned this around in a couple of days with suggested titles ranging from The Good, The Bad, and The Risky: How Poor Financial Management Jeopardizes Project Success and How to Do It Right to Here Be Dragons: The Hidden Role of Financial Risk Management in Project Success.

On March 11th, I received the following email:

Hi Christian, I have good news. I presented your book proposal to my Editorial Board this morning, and it was approved. I need to do a bunch of paperwork at this end, and then I would like to work out a contract with you. Concerning your manuscript, I understand you’re widening the scope to address major projects instead of only focusing on space or weapon systems. I’d like to confirm that. We’d like to publish in the first quarter of 2021. Do you have an estimate of when you would be able to deliver a final manuscript to us?

From McGraw Hill editor

I set an aggressive schedule for myself and committed to completing an initial draft with input from McGraw Hill by the end of May. I then set a goal to complete my initial submission to my editor by the end of April. I had a lot of work to do as I had to add information about other types of projects, including examples that had experienced significant cost growth and schedule delays.

The timing of my agreement with McGraw Hill was fortuitous. Shortly afterward, my family decided to isolate at home until the end of May because of COVID-19. That helped me focus on completing my new manuscript and meet my deadline. I had used the quarantine as an opportunity, making it a quarantunity. Partly as a result of my focus on completing my book early, McGraw Hill was able to produce my book in November 2020, several months before their initial projection. Without the self-imposed isolation, I doubt my book would have been published last Fall.

About the title, Solving for Project Risk Management: Understanding the Critical Role of Uncertainty in Project Management? McGraw Hill chose that, but the subtitle is similar to one of my proposed titles I sent to McGraw Hill, which was Risk Blind: The Critical Role of Uncertainty in Project Management.

If you are interested in learning more about risk management, you can read Chapter 1 of Solving for Project Risk Management for free. You can also order the hardcover and e-book versions from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other booksellers.