Craft the Perfect Elevator
Pitch for Your Writing
By Mary Kole
Mary Kole is a former literary agent, freelance editor, writing teacher, author of Writing Irresistible Kidlit, and IP developer for major publishers, with over a decade in the publishing industry.
An elevator pitch is essential whether you’re a writer seeking publication or a published author looking to promote your work. An elevator pitch is a 30-second (give or take) memorized blurb about your project that you can use to introduce yourself and grab the attention of editors, agents, and other important industry professionals. You’ll also need to have an elevator pitch on hand when people invariably ask: “What’s your book about?” Crafting an effective elevator pitch takes time and practice, and here’s how you create a good one.
Know Your Audience for the Elevator Pitch
When formulating your elevator pitch, it’s important to tailor it specifically to your target audience. Think about what your listener might be looking for. Ideally, you will have done some literary agent research before heading to the writer’s conference (or whatever the opportunity is where you will get to pitch), and you know what your target is seeking. If you are telling your elevator pitch to a literary agent or publishing house editor, are you talking to someone about a genre or project that they represent or publish? What topics are they interested in? The success of your elevator pitch begins long before you open your mouth.
The more specific you can make your elevator pitch, especially if you can tailor it to each recipient, the better. After all, if you're pitching your steampunk novel to someone who only works with romance novels, you’re wasting your time. And theirs.
Your Elevator Pitch Should Highlight What Makes Your Work Unique
What makes you stand out among other writers? Do you have any awards or accomplishments? Are there any unique aspects of your writing or project that set you and your work apart? It's important to include whatever makes you unique in your elevator pitch. That way, you will make an impression on your listener, and the agent or editor target of your pitch will know exactly why they should be interested in working with you.
The same thing goes for your project. What is the category? What makes the story interesting? Are you expressing your premise in a way that makes it sound intriguing? Are you able to concentrate on your novel’s conflict and stakes, or an especially fascinating part of your protagonist and their story? If you’re working on nonfiction, are you able to isolate sales hooks for yourself, and convince listeners that there’s a big market for exactly the information you’re selling? These are all components of a successful elevator pitch.
Elevator Pitch Practice Makes Perfect
Once you have a strong foundation for your elevator pitch, it’s time to start practicing. The reason it’s called an “elevator pitch” is because you should be able to deliver your spiel in the time it takes to ride an elevator. You need to introduce your story’s title, category, genre, and the highlights of the novel (or the main bullet points of the nonfiction work) in two to three sentences.
Once you’ve written a few drafts of the elevator pitch, it’s time to take it on tour and see how it feels to speak it. Practice delivering the speech in front of friends and family until it feels like second nature. You never know when an opportunity to deliver the perfect elevator pitch will arise, so practice as often as possible! Don’t forget to be confident in what you say, but be friendly and approachable—no one likes a bragging writer! And remember that part of a successful elevator pitch is knowing when to stop talking. Open yourself up to questions or comments from your audience. An elevator pitch feels like a one-way street, but you should encourage some dialogue as a way of gauging your listener’s response.
Conclude the Elevator Pitch With A Call To Action
Finally, end the elevator pitch with a call to action. Ask them if they would like more information, or whether you can send a writing sample. Make sure to finalize how they want the materials sent (most will tell you to follow their submission guidelines, but some agents and editors have special instructions for writer’s conference attendees, for example). You can prepare a business card and hard copy of your manuscript, but don’t be offended if agents and publishers don’t want to take your stuff with them. If you’re all at a conference, you don’t want to impose on their limited luggage space, for example.
Crafting an effective elevator pitch for yourself and your writing is a great exercise, even if you don’t plan on pitching. If you’re able to distill your work into a few short sentences and talk about it with confidence, you are focusing yourself and getting closer to your goal. If you can’t figure out how to summarize your book, that’s feedback in and of itself. You might have a story problem, not a pitch problem.
With these tips in mind, go out there and create the perfect elevator pitch today. Good luck to you, no matter whether you’re pitching today or a year from now. Keep this vital skill in your back pocket—much like your elevator pitch itself.
Click here to purchase Irresistible Query Letters, my book on query letters, including over forty examples with comprehensive notes on each one. There’s a ton of submission advice, best practices, and insider information in these pages, and you’ll really enjoy seeing what other writers are doing in the slush.