What's your book about?
Think you know everything there is to know about the elevator pitch?
Hello Awesome Authors! What’s your book about?
Whether you love or hate that question (and I used to HATE it), you’d better be prepared to answer it (I wasn’t) …and I mean in twenty seconds flat from start to finish.
When we are looking for an agent or publisher, it’s called the elevator pitch (ever been to a writer’s conference and found yourself in the elevator with one?).
I didn’t create an elevator pitch for my first book, because I had never heard of an elevator pitch. I was blissfully ignorant and fortunate to have an inside track to an agent (someone else actually pitched the book for me). Though, in the end, at my first few author interviews, the “inside track” worked against me, when I was blindsided by that totally unexpected and generalized question, “What’s your book about?”
I had naively believed all interviewers prepared by researching the authors and books they were going to talk about on their shows. I thought my interviewers were going to know what my book was about and ask specific questions for me to answer.
Instead, they all invariably began with the same non-specific question, “What’s your book about?”
You see, the elevator pitch—which every author should create early on—should answer that question. It should be short, sweet, and specific. It is long-lived. It never loses its usefulness—ever.
The elevator pitch is a marvelous tool to use in author interviews, because I guarantee, “What’s your book about?” will be one of the first questions asked. Every time. And you will hopefully have hundreds if not thousands of people sitting on the edges of their seats with bated breath, awaiting your answer.
And then, of course, there are those awkward moments during random introductions when proud friends or relatives start boasting about you being an author. That happens a LOT. Wow! You unexpectedly are gifted with the chance to gain new readers and fans. Because guess what their first question is going to be?
My first published book was about Christian response to domestic violence. I assumed the title said it all (and remember, before it was published, it never occurred to me to craft an elevator pitch for that book). So, imagine my chagrin, when interviewers, instead of asking me precise and intelligent questions about the topic (which I naively expected them to do), began every single interview with that frustratingly ambiguous, “Tell us what your book is about.”
My book contained the words “Domestic Violence” clearly in the title. Right there on the cover for all the world to see. What’s my book about?!? I wrote an entire book answering that ill-defined question. Duh! You already know the answer that! Let’s talk about particulars. Ah, the naivete of first-time authors. I managed to get through the first few interviews without stammering and without saying “Domestic violence…Duh!”
I quickly realized that was always going to be the leading question in every interview (will write about interviews in another article), so, in short order, I crafted a short and succinct answer.
Now, I could have said, “My book is about this and this and this and that, and this and this and this and that.” But that would have been too long of an answer. Too many “facts.” Probably boring. And still not an answer the question to my or anyone else’s satisfaction. Definitely would not have relayed the purpose of the book—which is what we want our readers to grasp. For certain, that answer would not have sold any [or many] books, which was the entire purpose of the interview.
The perfect answer to that question should have been printed on the back cover of the book, which, sadly, it wasn’t.
Are we getting an idea of how important and versatile our elevator pitch is?
What I came up with was the following: My book is about Christian response to domestic violence or abuse. It’s about saving lives. It’s for anyone experiencing these things and also for anyone they might turn to for help.
Three sentences that I felt conveyed to listeners and potential book buyers what my book was about.
What is your book about? Leave your one to three sentence elevator pitch in the comments. Remember, if you can’t do it in a few sentences, it’s not an elevator pitch.
Jocelyn Andersen is an author and book editor who writes and speaks about a variety of topics. Her work has been featured in magazines, newspapers, radio, and television. A few of her seminar topics are: “Author Branding & Platforms” and “Leveraging: How to Get the Most from your Author Platforms.” She is the author of several non-fiction books and is currently working on her first novel.
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