Any opportunity you have to get in front of an agents or publishers and tell them about your book is a precious opportunity, no matter how brief the encounter. Don’t waste it. Make the moment memorable (for the right reasons) by crafting a series of brief, targeted talking points about your project.

Qualities of a Good Pitch:

1. It’s brief: A good pitch starts with a single sentence, known as a logline or hook. Prepare one or two additional sentence-long talking points about your project based on the book’s synopsis.
2. It gets to the guts of your book: By boiling your pitch down to a single sentence, you are forced to get to the heart of the story or message. The hook should be the book’s compelling central idea and will be used to sell your idea again and again.

The elements of a pitch are slightly different for each genre, but the purpose is the same—to convey the meat of the project in as few of words as possible.

A fiction or memoir logline contains the following elements:

1. Protagonist: Name your hero/main character.
2. Core conflict: Lay out the main issue of your book (only use relevant subplots for additional talking points if the agent or publisher asks—for example, they may ask if there is a love interest in the story).
3. Differentiating factor: Explain to the agent or publisher what sets your book apart.
4. Setting: Establish the time period, location, or specific subgenre, if applicable.

Here is a sample logline taken from the copyright page of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins:

"In a future North America, where the rules of Panem maintain control though an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss's skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister's place."

This logline hits all the elements listed above; we see that

1. The main character is a sixteen-year-old named Katniss.
2. The main conflict is that Katniss must compete for her survival against other teens.
3. The story is different because of the idea of children fighting each other as a means of entertainment.
4. The setting is a future dystopian North America.

If you would like additional examples, read the blog post “Writing a Logline” from Query Tracker.

A nonfiction logline is slightly different from a fiction logline. A typical nonfiction hook will contain

1. Genre: Whether stated or implied, the agent or publisher should be able to surmise the book’s genre—business, new age, health, etc.
2. Key problem addressed: Are you helping women with weight loss, new parents with discipline skills, business managers with communication skills?
3. Promise: How does the book solve the problem? Are you teaching people how to be more assertive, how to eat better, how to delegate?
4. Differentiation: What makes this title different from its competition?

Here is a sample logline for the upcoming title Briefcase Essentials by Susan Spencer:

“A woman’s guide to discovering the 12 natural talents that can help her achieve success in a male-dominated workplace."

We see that

1. This is a business book that deals with success in the workplace.
2. The problem addressed is women competing in male-dominated industries.
3. The promise is to give women 12 tools to help them find success in a male-dominated workplace.
4. The book is different in that it encourages women to embrace their natural abilities rather than try to adopt masculine traits.

Again, you can refer to the examples in Query Tracker or look on the copyright page and back cover of comparable titles for ideas on how successful authors and publishers have crafted their pitches.

As you develop your pitch, avoid the following mistakes:

1. Don’t talk about the process: Although the journey has been the most exciting and rewarding part of your writing experience, it is not relevant to the agent or publisher’s decision-making process. Refrain from explaining how you developed your characters or where you got your ideas. Those topics are better reserved for author interviews.
2. Don’t pounce: Take the time to open up a natural conversation if at all possible (if you’re pitching roundtables or attending a crowded conference, you may not have this luxury). Building rapport before the pitch makes the agent or publisher more receptive to your message.
3. Don’t verbally vomit: Stick to short, one- to two-sentence talking points that make them respond with “Tell me more.” People lose interest during long-winded pitches. Pause, take a breath, and if you see their eyes gloss over, stop.
4. Walk away when you’re ahead: Once you hear the magic words “Send it to me,” say thank you, stop talking, and move on. You’ve done your job, now congratulate yourself and end the conversation before you undo the progress you’ve made.

Again, the pitch is not a retelling of the whole story. It is a brief statement depicting the core idea of your book. When you’re competing against hundreds of other writers, a well-crafted pitch can make or break your chances of connecting with a potential agent or publisher. Take the time to do it right. Practice saying your pitch out loud. Test it on a couple of friends. Whittle it down until it contains only the barest essentials. You’ll be glad you did.

Say you’ve written a book or are still in the process of writing it. How do you use your existing content to create more value for your readers? Or maybe even use that same content to create useful products to compliment your book? Ancillary materials, like reading guides and workbooks, are one way to leverage and monetize the content you’ve already created. Here are a few basic categories these types of materials fall into.

Content chunking and social media

Pulling out nuggets of useful content from your book can be an easy way to create material for blogs and social media. Blog posts are an excellent marketing channel for sharing a top-ten list, how-to steps, a high-level exploration of a concept, or tips/recommendations for common problems. You can also submit articles to content syndication websites to generate more online exposure. A few such sites that include free services are e-Articles, Article Alley, ArticlesBase, and there are also paid services like iSnare.com or RcpLinks.com.

Nonfiction and business authors can include content chunks in how-to PowerPoint presentations and then upload the presentations to SlideShare.com, the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. Authors who redistribute bite-sized pieces of book material over the Internet—whether through blogs, video-sharing sites, or PowerPoint presentations—build brand awareness and instantly boost their visibility online.

Workbooks

Workbooks can be a great tool for books that present a step-by-step approach to improvement or that instruct the reader to perform a number of activities (typically health/fitness, business, self-help, etc.). Authors of books like these can create workbooks in line with the content, incorporating any activities mentioned in the text and building from there to create a comprehensive resource for readers to use as they apply the concepts in the book.

By including a bonus workbook with every book purchase, you are offering readers an incentive to buy the book through your website instead of Amazon and giving them exclusive, value-added content. If you instruct seminars or workshops, you can independently sell workbooks to attendees or include them within the cost of registration.  Alternatively, you can post an abridged version of the workbook on your website or use the workbook as a reward to readers who signed up for your newsletter or RSS feeds. Emailing readers a PDF of your workbook is another great way to thank your customers!

Author Q&As

Author Q&As are typically included in the backs of books, along with reading group guides. All you need to do is prepare a list of questions and answers that are relevant to your content and audience. By sharing personal details and revealing the creative process behind character creation or plot development, you encourage a higher level of reader engagement. As a bonus, an author can leverage the Q&A as a part of the book’s publicity campaign. Many publicists include an author Q&A within online and print media kits to inform print, radio, and TV media contacts of potential angles for interview questions and human-interest stories.

Reading group guides

Reading group guides are discussion questions presented in the back of the book or on the author’s website. By including reading group guides, you encourage the adoption and, ultimately, purchase of the book by interested book club members. If you’ve already printed your book, you can add a reading group guide to your website or the next printing of the book.

Self-Assessments

Self-assessments are a great tool for engaging readers and establishing yourself as a subject-matter expert. These assessments can be presented as part of the book but are typically more effective online, and you can use them to capture customer data, evolving trends, or industry opinions. Self-assessments may take the form of a quiz or survey and you can embed charts, graphs, and real-time survey results into your website to give fans statistics about the data they’ve provided.

How do you incentivize readers to complete the self-assessment? Consider holding a book giveaway on Twitter or Facebook where each completed assessment counts as a contest entry.

Training guides

A training guide is typically a separate publication that is paired with a nonfiction book. It should offers a week-by-week or half-day seminar approach to implementing the author’s content, and it can be intended for individuals or organizations. Training guides usually include concept summaries, points to consider when implementing the concepts, and activities for groups and individuals.

Authors can use training guides in several ways: as the foundation for the author’s own training or coaching program, as one component of a training package, as a bonus readers receive when they buy the book, or as an add-on the author can sell.

*Disclaimer—This post is not legal advice and is not meant to substitute for the knowledge and experience of a lawyer or agent. This post is intended to serve only as a basic introduction to your rights as an author. Always refer to a certified lawyer for any questions you have regarding your contracts before you sign any agreement.

When it comes to legal issues dealing with your book, it can be daunting to wade through the different types of rights available to you as an author. Here we want to give you a brief breakdown of those rights and differentiate between copyrights and other author rights.

As soon as you write anything, from an article to a book, you have a copyright to that work. However, the only way to have 100% ownership and proof of that copyright (and, most importantly, to be able to defend it in court if an infringement issue pops up) is to register your title with the Library of Congress. You can do this for $35 and the website has lots of great information on copyrights and what they entail.

In addition to your copyright, your created work also automatically comes with a bundle of rights that you can keep or sell at your discretion. There is an abundance of different author rights; a literary agent or lawyer can fully enumerate them, but a sampling is listed here:

• First North American Serial Rights: This is the right to be the first to print something throughout all of North America
• Electronic rights: This is the right to publish only in electronic form
• Hardcover or paperback rights: Rights specific to each format
• Foreign rights: The right to publish in foreign markets
• Language rights: The right to publish in another language (can be domestic or foreign and can be sold separately or bundled with foreign rights)
• Exclusive rights: The exclusive right to publish across all formats, languages, etc. This right can be held for a specific time period or indefinitely
• Film rights: The right to adapt the book to film

The major distinction between a copyright and an author right is that your copyright is something that always remains in your control. While you can sell different author rights, your copyright is always yours and cannot be sold.

It is important to remember that if you publish through a traditional publisher, you often are not allowed to reprint anything from your book without giving the publisher some form of payment and/or getting their consent. This includes using excerpts on your blog, Twitter, Facebook, in presentations, etc. Which rights you sell to the publisher will depend on your contract, but once they own those rights, you will have to buy them back if you are in any way dissatisfied with the publisher’s services. You can also wait for your rights to revert back to you, but with the advent of digital technologies, some publishers can keep titles on backlists indefinitely, so often buying back the rights becomes your only option. Also, you oftentimes forgo any further creative control over your content when you sell your rights, which is certainly worth considering if you are trying to build a brand.

Your options when publishing your book are not limited solely to traditional publishing, of course. There are self-publishing routes and independent publishers to consider as well, so if you wish to maintain all your rights, you will want to explore these avenues.

Following are a few resources to explore for more information about rights:

• Writer Beware: Information on legal issues concerning authors
• Mark Levine’s book Negotiating a Book Contract: A Guide for Authors, Agents, and Lawyers
• Publishers Marketplace/Publishers Lunch: Information on agents and current deals being made

Hopefully we’ve been able to give you a good introduction to rights that clear up some of your questions. Again, working with a literary agent and/or lawyer is the best way to know what rights you have as an author, and they can help you fully understand how to approach the keeping or selling of those rights.

If you have already written a book, or even if you are just considering writing one, you may have asked yourself what it is that publishers are looking for. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula a writer can follow for guaranteed publication. What works and doesn’t work varies by genre, publisher, and other factors outside of the writer’s control. Still, there are some basic elements every publisher considers when evaluating a potential project. Those elements are: content, market, competitive titles, and author platform. We will cover each element in basic terms for the purpose of this post, but we do provide greater details on each of categories in our free white paper “What Publishers Want.”

Content

Though certain elements vary between fiction and nonfiction, any book, no matter what the genre, must be compelling, marketable, and memorable.

Compelling: It must be a topic that people are interested in.

Marketable: There must be a significant number of people interested in the topic.

Memorable: The writing should be good and should stick with the reader.

Market

Publishing is a business. In order for publishers (and authors) to make money, they need to sell books. So, when publishers look at a project they ask themselves: What is the market for this book? Who would be interested in this topic? How many people constitute that segment of the population? How often do they buy books and for what reasons? You need to be able to answer those questions before you even start writing.

Competitive Titles

The next thing publishers consider is your competition. This is key for many reasons. First of all, it shows them who your market is and the size of your market’s demand. If books on your topic are doing well, they are more likely to consider your work. Second, publishers look at how your book differs from the competition. If you provide enhanced content, an innovative approach, new research, or a more user-friendly voice, then they will be more likely to consider looking at and possibly acquiring your book. However, if your book is too similar to an existing one (especially one that has done well), or if your content is weak or poorly executed in comparison, then a publisher will be less willing to consider your project.

Platform

We discussed this in great detail before, and we can’t stress enough how important it is when evaluating your potential success as an author. Publishers need to know that you have identified your audience, that you are speaking to the needs and wants of your audience, and that you are continually and actively engaged with them even before you have a book.

Understanding how your book measures up in terms of content, market, competitive titles, and platform is essential to your publishing efforts. Weakness in any area can be improved upon, but too many issues in one or more categories can seriously hinder your chances of being published.