Query letter

Dear Publisher, Illustration has always been my passion since the last 15 years of my life and now I am at a point from where I can introduce my illustration book, “Cultural Diversity”, to the readers all across the Globe. My book, “Cultural Diversity” offers a collective view of the world, in which it highlights the greatness of it. I have traveled extensively across the continents to create my book from my direct experience. Thus “Cultural Diversity” has become a depiction of wonderful collage of various cultures of Europe, Asia, America and Africa, while identifying the effects of cultures over civilization.
I love to communicate with the world with my paintings and especially I love to put forth a message through them that world is much beautiful than we can anticipate – that irrespective of situations there is always the ray of hope, love, amity and fraternity – and I have sincerely tried to show that these universal positive qualities unify the various civilizations across the globe.
These positive qualities that I could observe among all the places I visited, have remained my guiding engine behind the creation of “Cultural Diversity” – they culminated into a wonderful package of emotion, which then converted them into painting. That package of emotion, however, contains various shades in it – like an intense desire to the hopeless winning hopes or the youths blooming to their best. Thus there are many paintings that contain elements of inspiration for all – which would touch the human mind and tell them to do their bit to come out of the shell of despair and frustration. Pictures tell more than 1000 words, so I believe and that has made me more confident about imbibing the positivism in the readers’ mind through my paintings.

I believe my proposed book would open a new horizon of ideas regarding how people can find the main chord of unity that exists in every part of the world with same qualities known to everyone. My book “Cultural Diversity” thus, would facilitate its readers to discover that common chord and rediscover the joy of togetherness and fraternity. In the wake of global disharmony, I believe this book would serve a great social cause as well.
From a simple perspective, this book would communicate with its readers by two ways – by its paintings/illustrations and by short commentaries on them. This would greatly help a reader to get a comprehensive grasp over the nuances of each culture presented in the book. This brings forth the issue of educational value of this book – which encompasses all the segments of the readers like parents, teachers and researchers, besides the student community.
Though “Cultural Diversity” has been accompanied by Mellitus language, I am ready to present it in other languages too – because the simplicity of the content of this book would pose no hindrance at all their conversion into any other language. As for the language of the picture, it would appeal the same way to anyone belonging to any culture of language. And it is my paintings that dominates this book, each carrying one or two paragraphs of writing with them.
In all, the proposed book  “Cultural Diversity” contains all my own essences of education, experience, creativity, imagination and utmost passion to serve the world in my own humble way – where the world would stop by and happily think of the joy of togetherness, of wonderful unity in diversity. Thus I would like you to be the bridge between my dream and the reality by being the publisher of “Cultural Diversity”
Looking forward to hearing from you

DETAILS OF THE PROJECT
I. OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK: “CULTURAL DIVERSITY”
Each painting of the book has evolved out of a particular culture, and thus contains specific elements of that culture to help the reader/viewer identify that. It took a painstaking amount of research to find out the appropriate characters, social events or other elements that could highlight the uniqueness of a culture. I’m sure, the incorporation of different characters at every page that I have made with special emphasis on remembering them for longer period, would keep its readers engaged from its first page to the last page. “Cultural Diversity” would also serve as a wonderful documentary of a time that is surely in transition in the wake of globalization – with the advent of Internet and virtual world, the little nuances and customs spread all across the globe among different communities are now becoming the part of history – a good slice of which has been kept alive in my proposed book.
This book demonstrates cultural diversity among 19 nationalities with strong cultural features. Between its folds, it holds the message that the world should be peaceful with friendly people living together; no matter what language they speak of what are their other ways of living. This book is an account of my first-hand experience about all the 19 places and their cultures, where I researched painstakingly to gather all the details like traditional costumes, skin colors, facial features, life style, and the styles of their architecture. 19 pieces of painting in the book represent 19 nations, while the last painting combines the features of all 19 nations to form a unique painting to substantiate the final message – “No matter we differ in color, race or nationality, all of us are the parts of one single journey of civilization on this earth.”
The nationalities chosen for the project are: British, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, French, Korean, Thai, Indian, Hindu, African, German, Egyptian, Vietnamese, Greek, Filipino, Turkish, Dutch, Icelander, and Russian. Each painting of them clearly highlights the unique feature of a particular nation, with exaggerated costumes, emphasized facial features and stylized characters. My own imagination too has supplemented the compositions, besides an intense use of my knowledge and skill of painting that I mastered through extensive schooling and practice – in fact this book is the end product of my tenure as a student.
II. CATAGORY/NATURE OF THE BOOK
This books belongs to the category of Painting and Illustration. Three examples of other books, viz., “Jimmy’s Books of Paintings”, “Moster Goose” and “The Adventures of Abdi” from this category would explain better:
1. “Jimmy’s Books of Paintings”: Jiminy he is a famous artist in Taiwan and Japan with lots of titles to his credit. Most of his book have become popular, of which a good many cheater has been made for toy or gift goods. His target readership aims readers from the age group 12 onwards, which would be my target tool. Some of his books have been used as educational items for the younger generations, as Jimmy mostly highlighted the subject ‘Love’ in his books.  Accordingly, my book highlights the topic “Fraternity”.
How My Book Differs from Jimmy: Jiminy’s artwork has solid condense smooth contrast, while my art has more contrast impact, intending to drag more of the readers’ attention. This is in complete contrast with Jimmy’s style. While Jimmy’s book speaks about Love, my book wants to establish the power of fraternity – which holds a much larger canvas and much significance in topicality under the present context of deteriorating state of global harmony. Therefore my book promises to attract a larger readership across the globe.
2. “Moster goose”: This is another kind of illustration book, which simply tells some stories with simple painting. This book targets little children’s’ market. The illustrations and writings in it are very simple and is not for the readership above 15 at the most.
How it Differs from My Book: My book is very complex in a sense that it contains something more than an illustration. It speaks its story through the paintings primarily. However, the elements incorporated in the paintings would definitely rouse the interest among children as well. This way my book is miles ahead in the range of possible readership, with its promise to become a part of the growth of the children all across the globe.
3. “The Adventures of Abdi”:  This book uses live sources as its basic design where it tells a complete story with picture.
Its Difference with My Book: My book covers more elements than live sources, and instead of telling a single story, it highlights different aspects of different communities across the globe and in the end unifies them in a single painting to put forth the message of fraternity. I have used few paragraph to inform about the communities mostly, thereby leaving much scope for the readers to imagine on their own, while letting the paintings interact with them. Thus my book stands apart in style and technique from “The Adventures of Abdi” and also promises to gather much larger readership than it.
III. AUTHOR’S BACKGROUND
I have been learning Art for about ten years. There were many reasons why I chose to be an Artist as my lifetime career. While painting a piece of artwork, other than fulfilling the happiness inside of me, it also helps me to put the painful memories of my real life aside. On top of that, my family background took the major role of why I want to be an Artist.
Since my parents got divorced before I was born, my mother raised me. While I grew up without having a father by my side, my mother became the most important role in my life. But on my age of fourteen, my mother was confirmed having rectum cancer. That was the most frightening moment of my life. What if she left me and won’t be there for me anymore?
Luckily, my mother didn’t leave me. After she got healed, she said to me, “You must learn something in professional skill. In case I must leave you some day, you must have the ability to support your own life in this challenging world.” I love painting since I was little, so I thought maybe I have some talents within this field. But when I decided to join the world of art, my mother had strongly disapproved that idea. She opined that it is hard for an artist to get a stable job in Taiwan, my native the place.
Passion overruled the suggestion, as painting happens to be my life. I never feel tired of creating artworks. Fortunately, she listened to my appeal and finally allowed me to choose what I want to be.
I spent most of my time on painting. I enjoyed and treasured each of my chances of learning in school and that definitely has improved my painting skill, knowledge of art, composition, color theory and creativity. Initially it was more of a challenge took charge of me, as I wanted to prove my worth as an artist to my mother – but in the end it turned out to be one of pure love for art and nothing else! Now my hard work is not just aimed to fulfill my mother’s dream, but also to fulfill the promises showing in my art.
A lot of people use different ways to recall their memories and experiences. For example, writing dairies, recording voices, or taking pictures. My way of recalling my memories and experiences is to paint down what I saw. I have been living in America for five years. America is a very interesting country since it is an international place where people came from different parts of the world. Most of the people I’ve met in this country have actually moved here from another place. With such friends and schoolmates living close by, each of us contribute to form a wonderful global culture here, which perhaps also influenced my thought process to go in creating a book with the concept of global fraternity.
IV. TARGET MARKET SEGMENT
My target market segment covers the following features:
І) It aims to cater to the market segment between the range of 12 years and above.
ІІ) It aims to cater to the global audience
ІІІ) It aims to keep the price range within the reach of lower or lower middle income group.
V. IDEAS ABOUT PROMOTION
There will be online stores under my personal web site and I will contact the online bookstores operating from Taiwan and US, who would carry promotional campaign with excerpts of my book and downloadable screensavers made with one or two of my paintings. Alongside they would provide easy online retail outlets. A promotional video can also be made with the excerpts of the book. These will be joined by traditional advertisements on the magazines and on the websites.
I will open a web blog with the description of the book and promotional literature for it. Besides that I will hold small meetings with friends and peers to hold lecture sessions with the USP of the book. Alongside, I will promote my book with some small giveaways like key holder, small notebooks, etc., all designed with elements taken from my book.
VI. PRODUCT SPECIFICATION
i) Book Size: 16×12 inch total 40 page including covers
ii) Printing: Profession Print will be done in China. Digital file request for example print, most example print will be free if we order the amount of print around 5000-10000 books, full color print. Selection of different paper and book cover paper material will change the cost accordingly. This estimate has been received from a printing farm based at Shenzhen city, China, over international phone quote, which puts the basic price range for 5000 prints (hard cover book, double side saint gloss finish on two-pound paper) cost around $2-$3 per book, excluding shipping cost.
І) Shipping Cost and Delivery Time: It is about $600, that would  take around 3 week to US.
ІV) Estimated Final Cost: Around $4 per book.
V) Estimated Sale Price: I will set my book sale price around $16.99 for US, $10 for Asia such as China, Taiwan, Hong Kong.
Ends