From Jon Reiner’s agent Mitchell Waters regarding The Man Who Couldn’t Eat:

What about the Jon’s story excited you as an agent and gave it potential as a book? 

The experience of deprivation amidst plenty, on primary physical, sensory, and emotional levels.  The fact that while Jon’s illness prevented him from eating or drinking, this was also a story about the appreciation of many different aspects of food and eating, including the crucial role they play in our relationships. We are living in a pretty food obsessed culture, but like so many things we obsess about, we often take some level of access to those things for granted. Jon’s story called many common assumptions into question.
 
What were the key points you used in proposing the book to publishers? 

A wise and experienced publisher once pointed out that a memoir by a less-than-famous person would tend to have to be about an experience that brought the author to pretty dire circumstances, but from which he or she managed to emerge, survive, thrive, but otherwise live to tell the tale.  In Jon’s case, it was both chronic illness and near-death experience. As well as deprivation of one of the most basic elements necessary for survival as well as the enjoyment of life–food!
 
What kind of marketing plan or "platform" do you look for when accepting a book? How did The Man Who Couldn't Eat and Jon fit into those expectations?
 
Of course it very much depends on the nature of the book but, unfortunately, we seem to be functioning in an era when even fiction writers are expected to have a platform or hook in order to convince publishers that they will have a better chance than the next writer of reaching a respectable number of readers. It certainly helps to have an online presence related to your subject or an established fan base for your writing. This could be your own website or pieces popular blogs, as well as some print publication credentials, but the bigger the following and the more vibrant the responses to your work, the better. The most important recommendation, though, remains your suitability for writing the book at hand. The Man Who Couldn’t Eat is a memoir, but Jon did have something of a platform when we submitted the proposal because the core of his story originally appeared in an article in Esquire and he had already been on one NPR show as a result of that exposure.
 

Query letter for The Man Who Couldn’t Eat, sent to publishers by Mitchell Waters, Jon Reiner’s agent:
 
Jon Reiner was middle-aged, happily married with two children and living on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, acclimating to his role as primary parent-caregiver after having gone through several professional setbacks. In February of 2009, Jon was stricken by an acute medical crisis while alone in their Upper West Side apartment. Seemingly in an instant, he was catapulted from a life accommodating and managing years of chronic illness to facing the real possibility of imminent death. The many months of treatment that followed were an often doubtful, rocky road to regaining at least a manageable degree of health and stability. The most outstanding feature of that journey was Jon’s inability to eat anything—at certain points to receive nutrition by any means.

The medical commandment nil per os or “Nothing by mouth” came to represent not only the prolonged food deprivation that would have a radical impact on Jon’s sense of the physical world, but the intense and enduring effect it would have both on his own emotional state as well as on his wife, children and friends. Jon’s vulnerability and fear during this profoundly difficult time would strain all of these relationships, but it is the amazing support he received from all of them as he made his way to some semblance of normality, that would alter and deepen his understanding of the value of love, friendship and community.
 
I’ve known Jon for many years and was just one of the concerned friends who encouraged him to write about his experiences during his slow recovery as a way of dealing with the fear and anxiety he was experiencing. This evolving record of his and his family’s ordeal is told with honesty, humor and growing insight. His exile not just from our obsessive contemporary food culture, but from life-sustaining food itself, brought into sharp focus for me and many others, so much of what makes life seem worthwhile besides mere living. The article has touched a nerve and the book will resonate even more with readers.

I’ve attached the proposal as well as a pdf and Word file of the original article (and follow-up from Esquire’s November issue).  I’ve also included an attachment of a radio interview Jon had on the NPR show “Good Food”  Other editors are considering, several of whom have expressed keen interest in Jon’s story since reading his Esquire piece.  We look forward to hearing your thoughts.