Readers can’t buy your book unless they know it exists, and it’s your job to let them know that your amazing book is out there and ready for them to find. A big way you can make a good first impression is knowing what your book is about. Yes, you’ve written it, so you know everything that is going on in it, but can you succinctly explain what it’s about…without hemming and hawing…stuttering…taking way too much of someone’s time? That is where creating an Elevator Speech will help.
The next biggest way to announce that your creation is out there works when you aren’t even around: printed info that you can hand out or make available for folks to grab later. We’ll cover both of those right now.
Elevator, Blurb, or Logline
If you have only 30 seconds…as the elevator moves from floor to floor…to tell someone about your book, you need to have a quick, yet complete, summary of your book…ready to go. That’s the idea behind an Elevator Speech. You’ve prewritten it to include enough information to catch someone’s attention, yet it leaves out enough to keep their curiosity up. Once you’ve perfected it…and practiced it in front of a mirror until you’re tired of it…you’ll be ready to tell anyone, any time, all about your book.
When used on the back cover as a blurb, you can also add quotes from well-known folks in appropriate fields, either praises about the content of the book or compliments regarding your expertise in writing it. When done right, the back cover can entice potential purchasers to open up the book and start reading…right there in the store aisle.
Though similar to a Synopsis, an Elevator Speech differs in content and audience. A Synopsis includes a brief, but complete, version of your entire story…including the Climax and Resolution…and is intended for Acquisition Editors or Agents. They don’t want to be entertained…rather they need to know that it is a finished product and has a satisfactory ending, so they can evaluate the marketability. Elevator Speeches, on the other hand, usually stop just shy of the Climax, often barely hinting at the Darkest Point. They are for prospective readers who need to be convinced that they must read the whole thing.
If you shorten it even more, you can use it as a Logline. Often only one sentence long, a Logline captures the main character, the central conflict, and the stakes involved, along with a key concept that makes your book distinctive.
Printed Material
You can’t always be around when readers are looking for something to read, but instead of trying to find them, let them find you. If you can put your info into their hands, then you can sit back and let them come to you. Putting your contact info…and enough of a hook…on different kinds of items can work wonders for your sales. You can use something as small as a business card (though there’s not much room for your pitch) or a bookmark (more room…for a picture, too), as big as a postcard (cover picture and a blurb), or even as huge as a poster (plenty of room for all kinds of info).
Business cards can be handed out whenever you meet with readers…and they will remember you when they get home. Bookmarks are always useful to readers and can be offered to interested folks. Postcards can be mailed as well as being available for folks to pick up when they wander past your table at the book fair. Posters that can be seen across a room will attract attention, drawing folks to come over to see what all the fuss is about. (Imagine a 3 foot by 5 foot poster of the picture to the side…now that draws a crowd every time he sets it up!)
Any type of handout you use should include some basic info: your name, your site (and QR), the book’s name, and the Logline or Tagline. On the larger ones, include your book’s front cover, so they’ll recognise it when they go shopping. You can also use a scene from in the book in addition to the cover to draw more attention.
QR Codes
We’ve mentioned QR codes in more than a few postings, but we never detailed just what they are. Let’s rectify that deficiency now. The abbreviation QR stands for Quick Response—a method of encoding information (such as a URL) in printed material that can be scanned by a smartphone.
Sharing your URL in print is fine, but folks often balk at having to type it all in or even just searching for your site. Putting it on your business card as a QR code eliminates that issue…they can just scan it with their phone, and it will take them directly to whatever page you’ve encoded. That’s a key point…because you pick the page they are sent to, you can have multiple similar pages and different QR codes on different items pointing to each one. That way you can see which handouts give you the best return for your investment—you can do your own A/B testing.