Friday, February 3, 2012

The 25 Word Pitch: Grab them On The Go

Nicola Martin on her Help! I Need a Publisher! blog shares an article on “Pitch Your Book In 25 Words.” Learning how to create a short blurb appropriate for the back cover of a book is an excellent skill that will help you create a concise summary to present to an agent or editor or to use when promoting the book yourself. This works well for both fiction and non-fiction books.

Though it is too late to participate in Nicola’s offer for you to send in your pitch ideas, you will learn a great deal from reading the comments connected with her article and see some of her comments and suggestions.

She offers a few tips on how to begin:

To get you started, here are some tips for hooks - tips, not rules, but do be careful about how and why you would break the rules.

• Focus on the main character only
• Include the conflict/goal/problem
• Make us care by highlighting what the main character will lose if he fails - the stakes

Take your present work and give it a try. This is a difficult process for many writers, but learning how to grab an editor, agent or reader with 25 words is a skill that will serve you well. As Nicola says, “pitch it to us and make us desperate to read it.”

To read the full article and comments go to: http://helpineedapublisher.blogspot.com/2011/09/pitch-your-book-in-25-words.html

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