Let’s talk about elevator pitches and how to set yourself up effectively the next time you need to make one in front of a literary agent or editor.
In today’s blog, I want to make the case that preparing for your elevator pitch is one of the best tools you can use to set yourself up for success. By the way, even if you aren’t pitching a book, the three questions in today’s post can help you triage a book project that seems to be languishing without good solid interest.
First, let’s acknowledge that elevator pitches are intense. Totally. As a literary agent, I see writers in the hallway pacing before appointments because they are looking for the right words to say. Let’s review our goal:
Your elevator pitch has three objectives: Clear. Concise. Compelling. Of course, you can say more during pitch session, but this is the foundation upon which the rest of the conversation will be built. Successful elevator pitches end with a literary agent leaning towards you and saying, “Tell me more.”
Here are three questions to help you accomplish those three objectives:
- Can you summarize your book in one sentence?
- Can you sell your book in one sentence?
- In one sentence, can you explain why your book will attract your target audience?
Ready? Here we go!
1. Can you summarize your book in one sentence?
Your goal is to make your book easy for an agent to understand. Novelists and non-fiction writers have unique objectives when offering the one sentence summary.
For novelists, your one sentence summary should include: your genre, key conflict, emotional theme, and a quick mention “writing style of my book is similar to ________” plus the status of the manuscript.
For non-fiction writers, your summary should include: the target audience, a description of the problem, felt need/pain point for the audience and the unique prescriptive/remedy that you have to offer.
NEXT STEP: Write out the one sentence description of your book. If it flows over into a second sentence, that’s okay. But if you need more than three sentences to explain your book, then consolidate the summary. Again, your goal is to make your book easy for an agent to understand.
2. Can you sell your book in one sentence?
If you can give us a great hook, it’s one way to help us visualize success in selling your book.
In an elevator pitch, the hook is the crucial point of connection between the idea of your book and whether it could be marketable and salable. There’s an inescapable truth that every aspiring author needs to understand: Hooks sell books.
How do you know when your hook is hot? It’s the point at which a literary agent leans towards you and says, “Wow. Tell me more.” We LOVE hearing great hooks, so wow us!
NEXT STEP: Crafting a hot hook is an entire topic, so if you need to work on yours, here’s a link to a previous Books & Such post.
3. In one sentence, can you explain why your book will attract your target audience?
Here’s a poignant insight that I heard from a multiple best-selling author: There are books that a reader wants to buy someday, but our job is to write books that readers feel they must buy today.
As a literary agent, I need your help understanding why someone will, not just think about, grab your book off the shelf or drop it into their online shopping cart. I love that you love your book, but during your pitch session, tell me why your audience will love it AND how you will create the urgency for them to buy it.
In her book, The Inside Scoop, Books & Such President Janet Kobobel Grant (co-authored with Vice President Wendy Lawton), wrote about hitting a reader’s “hot buttons.” Janet noted that fiction fans look for books that tickle their fancy and spark their imagination, while non-fiction clients snap up books that appeal to felt needs more often than intellectual curiosity.
NEXT STEP: What are three to five key words or phrases that describe the experience you want readers to have with your book?
SO GLAD THAT YOU’RE HERE! Thank you for joining us today. Do you have a one-liner about your book that you’d like to share? Drop it in the comments below and let us know if it’s the summary, the hook or why your book will attract readers. If you don’t have a sentence to share, what are your takeaways from today’s post?
Emotional Markers for Writers
Someday you may be asked to give
something you’ll be remembered by,
a gift to one who will not live,
a gift to help him gently die.
I’ve been down this road, my friend,
grasping fading days in greed,
and as I now near my end,
I see the underlying need
for another heart who’s tried to learn
of the things I see from here,
and who in grace will kindly turn
and help me face my deepest fear,
and that is why I wrote this book,
that it may be your inside look.
It’s not my book to write; I have not the skills nor the energy. But it’s a book that needs to be written.
As my life becomes a gyre whirling about the mystery, with sleep no longer a balm but terror, I find the deepest fear…
What comes next? Not Heaven vs. Hell, but Heaven vs. nothing.
Though I am what I presume to be a devout Christian, and have had there-and-back experiences, the dark of night raises the primal fear, and I have to fall back on process.
1. The existence of a Supreme Being can be postulated by the utter unlikelihood of random Creation. I mean, the odds against a useful strand of RNA a hundred amino acids long forming by accident are 4 to the hundredth power. Don’t take those odds to Vegas.
2. The archeological historicity of the Bible is a big help, that the stories that bring hope happened in real places, and involved people whose identities can be at least inferred from recent excavations.
3. The anecdotal evidence of a life beyond this one, such as included in Raymond Moody’s ‘Life After Life’.
That’s my Big Three; there are other pegs.
Things that are not useful are the quoting of selected Scripture (the Bible, to me, is narrative-and-character driven), and the playing of ‘spiritual’ music. Van Halen gives me more hope.
The absolute worst ‘comfort’ is saying, ‘Well, if nothing comes after, you’ll never know’. (That’s the problem!)
I was hesitant to write this, because, well, it’s embarrassing. Maybe y’all will think me something of a pious fraud, talking a good game, but when the whistle blows, not so much. There’s a lot of competition in faith.
But I hope someone will, on reading this, be inspired, find a pathway into frightened hearts, and maybe the key to that Malibu mansion given you by monumental sales.
‘Cause after all, pretty much everbody dies.
Thank you, Andrew, for all the poetic “inside looks” you’ve shared from the hard places of your experience. You show us things we don’t yet know we need.