Author Tip: How to Perfect Your Elevator Pitch

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Ah, the elevator pitch.

A surprisingly giant hurdle for many authors.

In theory, it seems like it should be easy. An “elevator pitch” is a concise yet impactful summary of your book. It got its name from the idea that your pitch should be short enough to deliver in the time it takes you to ride with someone in an elevator. Once they get off on their floor, your time is up.

Sounds like a simple feat, right? After all, you already summarized your novel in the book blurb printed on the back cover or inside jacket sleeve. Isn’t this basically the same thing?

Not exactly.

Selling your book face-to-face with a potential reader is a very different experience than silently waiting for them read the back of your book and hoping that’s enough to sway them into a commitment.

I’ve done more than 150 in-person book signings and events since releasing the first novel in my award-winning fantasy series in 2018. But it took me years to hone my elevator pitch until I was comfortable delivering it. In this post, I’ll share some tips that helped me finally nail my sales pitch down and achieve a high success rate.

Note: there are different types of elevator pitches. This post is intended for fiction authors who are pitching their book to a potential new reader, NOT pitching a manuscript to an industry professional such as a literary agent or book publisher. Some of these tips might transfer to various situations, but keep in mind the overall tone, goal, and recipient of the pitch.

Find Your Comfort Zone

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My best piece of advice is to be yourself. If you’ve crafted an elevator pitch that you’re uncomfortable saying, that’s going to negatively affect your delivery. There’s more at stake than just feeling self-conscious. From a sales perspective, if you’re not confident in your own work, a reader isn’t going to be inclined to take a chance on your book.

Every author has their own self-defined comfort zone. Here’s an example: I was chatting with an author colleague in his booth at an event earlier this year when a customer approached. I’d never heard his elevator pitch, so I hung back to observe. He started his sales pitch by handing her one of his novels and saying, “I promise this will be the BEST book you’ve ever read in your entire life.”

I was stunned by his direct approach since he’s always softspoken and humble when talking to me as a colleague, so I wasn’t expecting his sales pitch to go in that direction. While that method wouldn’t have worked for me, it did for him — he made the sale.

My elevator pitch is very different than his. I would not be comfortable making such a bold claim right off the bat, especially without having a conversation with the potential reader first and knowing what kinds of books they like to read. Even if they told me they enjoyed my particular genre, I would still be extremely uncomfortable asserting such a level of arrogance that, of the hundreds of millions of books out there in the market, mine was the absolute best. That’s just not my style.

That experience incident clearly illuminated the stark differences in our sales methods and comfort levels. That doesn’t mean one of us is right and the other is wrong. We wrote very different books; naturally, we’d sell them differently, too. I understood that I had to find my own words, tone, and strategy. I couldn’t just copy another author’s successful elevator pitch and tweak it to fit my book; I had to explore my own limits and identify my comfort zone.

Learn to Speak Confidently

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Confidence goes a LONG way. If you’re an introvert like me, that takes time and practice.

I didn’t have a background in sales when I started selling my books at events. I did have experience working in customer service, which didn’t exactly bring the right skillset to the role. My soft, sweet, apologetic voice wasn’t assertive enough to close the deal.

In my case, the best move I made was recruiting a longtime friend to assist me at events. She’s much more extroverted than I am, and she had the sales background that I was lacking, so I paid attention to the way she talked to people about my books. I noted certain word choices and phrases she used, and I started to incorporate that language into my elevator pitch.

The more I talked to people over time, the more comfortable I became. I was selling a LOT more books when I was confidently greeting people and engaging in conversations compared to my early days when I sat, quiet and shy, behind the table and passively waited for people to walk up and start talking to me (and then tripping over my words and rambling through an unplanned sales pitch).

Take Cues from Your Listener

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In my experience, my elevator pitch is more effective when I start it as an open conversation instead of immediately pushing the customer to make a purchase.

When someone approaches my booth and is showing interest in my books lined up across the front of the table, I engage them by saying, “Hello. Do you like books?”

Most of the people who were drawn straight to the books (rather than my art displayed on my other table) reply, “Yes.” In some cases, they’ll say, “No, but my friend/family member does.”

My follow-up is: “Awesome! What genres do you like to read?”

How they answer that question determines how I tailor my elevator pitch. My series features elements of supernatural, paranormal, sci-fi, and fantasy stories. If the person tells me they only read smut, I know I’m not going to sell them on my books, so there’s no need to waste their time (and mine) going through the pitch.

If they mention that they like thriller books, for example, I’ll lean into that and tell them that my first book is more suspense than thriller while focusing on the cat-and-mouse relationships and character viewpoints shifting between the primary fugitives and the people hunting them.

If they say they read a wide variety of fiction, then I’ll mention how my series blends several different genres by taking place in two different worlds — the Human Realm, which has dystopian undertones along with sci-fi and paranormal fantasy, and the Ghost Realm, which is a high fantasy setting that has more supernatural and mythological elements. That means, if they enjoy different genres, there’s a good chance they’ll appreciate the diversity of my series.

I let the potential customer lead the conversation so I know the best way to pique their interest. This is much more effective than jumping right into the rehearsed pitch and potentially missing the mark by failing to focus on the themes, genres, and elements the reader is most interested in.

And, by engaging in a back-and-forth discussion before pitching the book, the listener feels like they’re part of a conversation, not the recipient of a sales pitch.

Highlight the Genre & Stakes

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The purpose of the elevator pitch is to explain your book in just a few sentences. You have a brief window of opportunity to snag a listener’s attention.

If you don’t provide enough details, they won’t know what your book is about and whether they should invest in reading it. But if you provide too much information, they’ll lose interest and tune you out.

Even if you fail to communicate anything else, make sure you mention two critical pieces: the genre and the stakes. These are your most important selling points.

Highlighting the genre helps readers with a more precise niche preference decide if they’ll be interested in your story. For some readers, this isn’t very important because they enjoy a wide variety of content. But other readers can be very particular about what they like and don’t like.

What are the stakes? What details (without revealing spoilers) draw your readers into the story and compel them to read to the last page? What will make them feel like they need to add your book to their collection?

Keep It Short & Snappy

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Your primary elevator pitch should be only a few sentences. It’s okay to have more topics on the backburner for cases where you have a highly engaged listener who has time to spare, but you should plan to keep your pitch short to start.

It’s up to you to find that ideal sweet spot between providing enough information in an engaging, concise way without overdoing it. When you’re nervous and/or unprepared, it’s easy to start rambling, and that’s a slippery slope.

Figure out the primary key points that you want to hit and build your pitch around them. Remember to keep it simple. You’ll be delivering this pitch to a lot of different people with different backgrounds, experiences, and education levels that you don’t know about, so use basic language and genre-specific buzzwords that will resonate with your target audience. In most cases, less is more… as long as you’re strategic.

This can be trickier than you realize! From a personal standpoint, I acknowledge that I’m a wordy writer. Although I’m not as worried about word count as many authors are, keeping my books down to a manageable size is often a challenge for me, so paring down my elevator pitch wasn’t easy.

Delivering a short, snappy pitch isn’t going to happen by chance; you need to put some serious thought into the topics and words that deserve a spot in the limited space of your elevator pitch. What is worth saying, and what needs to be cut?

Lead into the Book Blurb (Without Paraphrasing It)

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Your elevator pitch should NOT be a retelling of the blurb on the back of your novel. (By the way, if you’re struggling with your book blurb, I also have tips for that.)

The overview on the back of your book should be a standalone, plot-centered introduction that conveys important information about the story without necessarily saying it outright. For example, my book blurb doesn’t outright say that the novel is a paranormal YA sci-fi fantasy story, but the words I chose (half-ghost hybrid, Shadow Guards with supernatural abilities, young fugitives, Rip between Realms, lab-family, ghost hunter, etc.) clues readers in to what kind of book it is.

The elevator pitch should be much more direct. You don’t need to adopt your third-person omniscient narrator voice; this is you as the author having a face-to-face conversation with your reader. You can talk openly about the genre, the acceptable age range for your target readers, popular works that are similar, sources of inspiration, and other topics that wouldn’t be appropriate to include in the book blurb.

If the listener seems to be interested and engaged after I’ve completed the elevator pitch, but they still haven’t committed to making a purchase, I’ll finish my pitch by handing them a paperback and saying, “This is the first book in my series if you would like to read the back.”

The book blurb and elevator pitch should complement each other but stand apart as separate pitches. If my elevator pitch was a rephrased version of my book blurb, then it would be a waste of time to encourage the customer to read the back of the book. Likewise, some people prefer to grab a book right away and read the back before they have a conversation with me, so it would be a waste of my time and theirs to summarize exactly what they had just read.

Let your two main selling tools — the blurb and the pitch — work together for maximum impact.

Don’t Be Afraid to Mention Relevant Achievements & Qualifications

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This one is hard for me, but I’m getting a little more comfortable about mentioning my achievements when pitching the books.

All three of the novels published in my series so far have been recipients of the Literary Titan book award. When my assistant is pitching the books, she doesn’t hesitate to tout, “With only three books published so far, it’s already a three-time award-winning series!” Or she’ll introduce me as “three-time award-winning author Sara A. Noë.”

But when I talk like that about my own work, I feel like I’m being braggy. (I acknowledge that this is also very much a gender issue; when male authors bring up their accomplishments, it’s perceived as rightfully earned confidence, but when women do it, it’s sometimes perceived as arrogance.)

I’m working on overcoming that mindset, which has been drilled into me ever since I was a little girl. However, I still take a more passive stance than my assistant. Instead of boldly saying, “I won these awards,” I usually focus on the books and the readers instead of myself: “So far, the books have been very well received by readers, and all three of them have received awards from Literary Titan.”

Adopting passive voice helps me feel more comfortable when I point out the books’ (and by extension, my) accomplishments. Women have to walk a finer line in this regard than men due to societal perceptions. I like to think that things are changing for the better, but I still try to balance confidence and humility, which is hard when you’re selling your own work.

Still… if you have any awards, achievements, or relevant qualifications, don’t be afraid to bring them up in a way that feels natural. They’re selling points! They help to affirm that your books are worth reading and you were the best person to write them.

Have Comparable Works in Mind to Mention if Needed

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I don’t recommend using the “if you like this book, you’ll love my book” method. I’ve seen many booktokers say that’s an instant turnoff for them, whether the author says it out loud or plasters that tagline on the cover.

But there will be instances when a potential reader specifically asks you to compare your work with something else that they’d recognize. In that case, it helps to have a prepared answer so you aren’t fumbling to think of a response.

Comparing your work to someone else’s can be difficult, and it has to be done carefully. This is especially true if your book follows a commonly repeated plot line and/or well-known genre tropes. After all, if you tell someone that your book is essentially a retelling of Peter Pan, why would they want to read your book if they already know Peter Pan? There needs to be a differential factor that helps your work stand apart while still echoing positive similarities.

My series is a mesh of inspiration from various sources, and I’ve found that connecting very different comparable works tends to be effective if this topic comes up in the elevator pitch so you can highlight the similarities as well as the differences. Instead of saying, “You’ll like my book if you enjoy Marvel stories,” I tell potential readers, “Imagine a mashup of Danny Phantom, The Darkest Minds, X-Men, and Stranger Things, but the Upside Down is more like Narnia.”

This usually results in raised eyebrows as the person recognizes one or more of those examples and ponders how such a combination could have occurred.

But I don’t start with that. I don’t like shoehorning my book into a box because it really doesn’t fit neatly into just one category. It blends multiple genres and doesn’t follow a standard plot line, so it’s not fair to unintentionally evoke preconceptions by comparing it to other works. I use this method only if the listener wants specific examples.

Repeat, Repeat, Repeat!

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Trust me when I say that the more you deliver your elevator pitch, the easier it will become. I stumbled and struggled for quite a while in the beginning while I played around with which information to highlight and how to deliver it with ease and confidence.

Even now, after several years of doing events, I can tell when I’m out of practice. I have a couple of months off in the winter where I don’t have any events after the holidays, and I definitely notice that the elevator pitch is a little rusty when event season starts up again.

If you’re not comfortable with your elevator pitch, keep practicing!

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