Thread: Help! My Book Proposal Keeps Getting Bounced Back As Spam

Why does my 44 page book proposal bounce back to me because it supposedly looks like spam? What can I do to rectify the situation as I spent hours creating it and am frustrated that I can’t send it? I have tried to send it to a number of people at the same destination but had the same spam result. I successfully emailed it to someone in another country who tried to forward it to that same destination I tried but it was returned to them as spam also.

The rejection message I received was “Remote host said: 550 5.7.1 Message rejected as spam by Content Filtering.” I googled that sentence but found little or no good advice as to how to fix the situation in the results received.

Does anyone have any ideas? This is an important proposal to me and other than sending it by old fashioned snail mail I am at my wits end as to what to do.

Thanks

Not sure how professional it would look, but can you send a shorter normal email first asking them to put your email address on a non-spam list?

Or try getting a new email address (gmail is usually good).

Originally Posted by j.w.olson

Not sure how professional it would look, but can you send a shorter normal email first asking them to put your email address on a non-spam list?

Or try getting a new email address (gmail is usually good).

I thought of sending the shorter email idea but was concerned that it would only be misinterpreted and/or just get me involved in a longer cycle of the acceptance/rejection process. I already tried the other email approach with my Lycos account. That didn't work either. Having the proposal forwarded from another country with yet another email accont resulted in it being bounced back also.

Are you sending your proposal as an attachment? Many agents and publishers will not open an attachment out of fear it could contain a virus and they might have their e-mail software configured to reject all e-mails with attachments. Is your addressee expecting your proposal or are you cold calling? If your addressee is expecting your e-mail, they should either tell you to include the 44 pages in the body of the message and not in an attachment, or they should be aware of the attachment problem and tell you how to get it through their filters. C.M.

Originally Posted by C.M. Aaron

Are you sending your proposal as an attachment? Many agents and publishers will not open an attachment out of fear it could contain a virus and they might have their e-mail software configured to reject all e-mails with attachments. Is your addressee expecting your proposal or are you cold calling? If your addressee is expecting your e-mail, they should either tell you to include the 44 pages in the body of the message and not in an attachment, or they should be aware of the attachment problem and tell you how to get it through their filters. C.M.

The 44 pages were included in the email itself. I never send attachments as I am familiar with the concern agents and publishers have concerning them. The addressee would not have been expecting the proposal as it was a cold call.

Then I would send a simple inquiry to your addressee asking if they are accepting proposals at this time, what are their expectations for a proposal, and what is the best way to get a proposal to them. They might give you a different e-mail address. If you can't reach them by e-mail, try phoning them or snail mail the initial inquiry. Mention that you would have e-mailed them but had difficulty. C.M.

It could be the length of the body copy itself then, especially from an unknown address. I agree with C.M., try condensing your proposal into a short, punchy paragraph long summary and ask if they would be receptive to reading a longer, more fleshed out proposal based on that. Good luck