pitching szn
or: why your elevator pitch is crucial for getting your book noticed
I’m going to say something that, depending on where you are in your author journey, will either make you nod vigorously or flip me off and slam your laptop shut.
Most “I don’t know how to market my book” problems are not marketing problems. They are clarity problems in dressed up in marketing clothing.
Look, I know. I KNOW. You came here for tips on Instagram captions and grid strategy and Reels and Canva and here I am, telling you the call is coming from inside the house. But, to quote the Rolling Stones, you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes etc etc.
first: the test…
Before we go any further, let’s do a litmus test. Out loud, to nobody except yourself and the ghosties in your house, finish this sentence:
“My book is about _____.”
You get one sentence. No subordinate clauses. No “well, it’s KIND of like...” No “it’s hard to explain because...” No “it’s a bit of a genre-bender so...” Just the one sentence. And….go!
So? How was that?
If you nailed it: congratulations, you can skip the rest of this post and go work on your captions in peace. Godspeed, have a lovely day.
If you didn’t - if you fumbled or said three different things or you ended up giving a synopsis instead of a pitch or if you defaulted to “it’s a romance about two people who...” then stay with me, bestie.
why this is the actual problem
Marketing is, at its core, the act of telling the right person about the right thing in the right way at the right time. You cannot do step three if you haven’t done step two. And “the right thing” is your book, more specifically your book reduced to its most essential, most compelling, and most click-worthy version1.
If you can’t describe your book in one sentence, here’s what happens:
Your captions sprawl, because every post is trying to do the work of explaining what the book is
Your cover briefs are vague, because you don’t know what’s emotionally central and so your cover may or may not actually live up to your story
Your comp titles are off, because you’re comping the plot and not the vibe
Your copy doesn’t convert, because you’re hedging in every direction2
Creators don’t pick it up, because they don’t know how to pitch it to their audience in a single line
Every single one of these reads, on the surface, like a tactical marketing problem. I need a better caption. I need a better bio. I need better comps. But the upstream cause of all of them is the same: you have not yet decided, and said it with your whole damn chest, what your book is.
And until you decide, no amount of caption tweaking is going to save you.
why this is hard
I want to acknowledge something before we go further: the reason most authors can’t pitch their book in one sentence is not laziness or bad writing. It’s that you wrote the entire book, and now you know everything about it, and reducing 90,000 words to 15 feels like a betrayal of the highest order.3
You feel the main character’s grief and the side-character’s redemption arc and the secondary found family frienships and the way the setting echoes the theme and the specific line of dialogue in chapter twelve that broke you. All of it is the book, so when someone says “what’s it about,” every option feels like leaving something out. And so you say all of them or you say none of them or you say “well...”
Here is the hard truth: a pitch is not the book itself. A pitch is the doorway to the book - you’re inviting someone in to actually take part in your world. Its job is to make a stranger want to step through. The doorway is not the entire house - it’s small and sometimes non-descript, but when opened can unveil more than you could’ve thought possible about the inside.
Your book can still be the rich, layered, and multi-threaded thing you wrote. In face - it IS all of that and more. The pitch just doesn’t have to carry the weight of all of it.
what a pitch actually has to do
A working one-sentence pitch does three (and only three) things…
It’s your genre marker: It signals what kind of book this is for readers…the shelf, the lane, and the audience. (Romance? Romantasy? Cozy mystery? Speculative?)
It gives you a very specific hook. It tells me what makes THIS book different from every other book on that particular shelf. Your unique differentiator. Your value proposition.
And it names the emotional tone. It hints at how the book is going to feel for readers… funny, devastating, sweeping, claustrophobic, slow-burn, lush, etc.
That’s it. That’s literally the whole damn thing. That’s all she wrote. It does not have to summarize the plot or introduce a character by name or set up the world. Remember: doorway, not the whole house4.
the formula (insomuch as there is a formula)
There are dozens of pitch frameworks out there and most of them work just fine for what you need. A quick google or chat with your agent will help get you a good and solid framework. But, in a pinch and if you’re trying to do this exercise right now, this is one that you can hang your proverbial hat on at any time:
[Genre/comp shorthand] about [specific, weird, or memorable hook], where [emotional promise]
So for example:
A grumpy-sunshine contemporary romance about a wedding planner who gets stranded with the brother of the bride, where the slow burn will fill you with so much tension you’ll be yelling at your book for them to JUST KISS ALREADY (and then they do)
A dark academia fantasy about six magicians forced to share a haunted house for one year, where everyone is in love with the wrong person and someone is definitely going to die
A cozy mystery about a retired food critic who solves murders by their suspect’s preferred breakfast order, where the body count is high and the recipes are real
Let’s break down what each of these does:
Slot 1 is doing tons of work for the algorithm AND the reader’s brain. “Grumpy-sunshine contemporary romance” tells me where to shelve it before I’ve even heard the plot, and we immediately recognize it as something familiar
Slot 2 is the doorway. It’s the specific weird thing only this book has…the unique selling proposition. It’s what what makes the reader go “hmmm”
Slot 3 is the emotional promise or the feeling I’m going to get from reading. It’s also where you can deploy a little of your own voice.
Three LOOKS THAT’S IT5.
how to actually find yours
If you sat down to write your one-sentence pitch right now and got stuck, here’s what to do instead.
Step 1: Write ten bad versions
Genuinely bad ones. Don’t try to make them good, instead try to make them exhaust the space. Use every angle, every framing, and every comp shorthand that you can think of. Write the one that’s too plot-heavy then write the one that’s too vibey then write the one that’s too funny then write the one that’s too literary. The point is to get out of “trying to write THE pitch” and into “trying to write ANY pitch.”
Once you have 10 that you absolutely hate6, move onto step 2.
Step 2: Highlight the words and phrases that recur
Across your ten bad pitches, you’ll notice certain words come up over and over. Highlight them and put them off to the side. These are the words your subconscious already knows belong to this book, because, remember that you know your book best of all. Keep them because they matter.
Step 3: Write a clean version using only the highlighted words
Use the formula: genre marker, specific hook, then emotional promise and use the words that surfaced in step two. Don’t reach for new ones just yet…the ones you already wrote down across multiple attempts are the ones that are true to the book. New words are usually you trying to sound smart or add that additional flavor of color we simply don’t need right now.
Step 4: Test it on a stranger7.
I don’t mean your beta reader or your critique partner or your mom who thinks you’re brilliant or your best friend who would help you bury a body. I’m talking about someone arms length from this book and who maybe has some opinions - maybe at a party, maybe at a book club, maybe to someone who is a reader but doesn’t read what you normally write.
Read them the pitch and then watch their face. You can do it as creepily and intently as you’d like, I’m not here to tell you how to live your life.
You’re not looking for them to say “oh wow that sounds amazing” (they will, because they’re polite and if they don’t well then…good luck to them in life). You’re looking for them to ask at least one follow-up question. Follow-up questions mean the doorway worked, they want to step through and learn more.
If they nod politely and say “that sounds nice” then your pitch is too vague, and you have to go back to step 1 (I’m sorry).
the part that’s going to sting
Sit down for this next part because it may hurt.
If you’ve been writing this book for two years and you genuinely cannot pitch it in one sentence, that is not a marketing problem. That is the book telling you something is off. Maybe it’s that the book has two halves that don’t agree with each other. Maybe it’s that you wrote it before you knew what it was about, and the discovery has made it confusing. Maybe it’s that you have three books trying to be one.
This doesn’t mean the book is bad and should be thrown into the trash and lit on fire. It just means that there is something that needs to be dev edited or relooked at or maybe reframed. Clarity will outweigh marketing 100% of the time, all day every day, in terms of importance to a book’s success.
So before you spend another month tinkering with your Instagram strategy: do the pitch work. Write the ten bad versions, find the words, test the doorway.
Then and only then focus on your marketing tactics. They’ll work way better when there’s a clear book underneath them.
LOVE YOU MAKE GOOD CHOICES!
xo Ada
Don’t yell at me about trope marketing and how it’s so overdone. I HEAR YOU but…I also hate to be the bearer of bad news because you will never be able to fully rid yourself of it.
The only time you should hedge is when you’re investing for retirement and you’re like 59 and want to retire next year. Also probably other times, but I’m not a financial advisor.
It’s a little like “Sophie’s Choice” but less sad and dramatic.
All I keep thinking about is vampires right now because of the whole doorway/need to be invited in thing
Does anyone remember Jenna Marbles? What a simpler time the internet was back then. But I digress.
And you will hate them all, I promise
But like…stranger danger and all that