Sound-Biting the Great American Novel

Thank you for posting!

Great article, Dale! And as you know, I just got a request for a full based on a 50 word pitch (plus an interesting tag line). I thought I'd die before I got the pitch to 50 words, but it helps an author to know how to do that. Consider the tag line on the front of a book - do you think some editor wrote that? Nope. Chances are, it was the author. When a reader is in a store, selecting what to buy, you sometimes have no more than that single line on the cover to convince the reader to pick it up and turn it over and read the blurb on the back. And that blurb is likely not a lot more than a hundred words or so. And that's all you get to convince a reader to open a book and glance at the first couple of pages, and from that, decide whether or not they are going to plunk down their money (or more accurately, transfer their money from their pocket to yours).

So, why should an editor or agent give you more than that to sell it to them, when they are transferring a larger wad of cash, and investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cover art, gallies, ARCs, advertising, etc.

If you can't sell the editor in a short pitch, you'll never be able to sell it to the reader either.

Dale, I agree with Pat about the blurb. The blurb alone tells me whether or not I want to open to a random page and read some of the prose itself. I don't just go for the first few pages because I know those have honed.

It is the movie trailer of books, no? Hopefully, it's not the best the book has to offer, but I've read a few of those two. Why I just didn't stop, never mind.

Your story is great Dale, but unique. Which means it's going to take longer to find the person who sees what you do and knows that it is a good call.

Pat S.: You're probably right about not being able to sell to the reader either without a nice sound-bite blurb. Our attention spans are shrinking and something new has to catch our attention in a hurry. That's true at every level of the publishing industry, from agents to publishers to the people stocking books at books to readers.

I actually thought that the 50 word pitch contest you entered was a good idea, and in at least your case they got a good book out of it. If you get published via that route I will totally cheer you on. If I had a book that would have fit in the contest I would have entered too. I probably wouldn't have done well because I haven't figured out what works in the way of blurbs yet, but it was a good exercise. If I found some way to get published through a 50 word blurb I would take it in a second.

In other words, given the glut in the market at so many levels it's inevitable that books, movies, TV shows that can be promoted by a quick sound-bite will predominate. The term is 'high concept' and it's spreading. It has to because it's the only way to stand out in the glut. Unfortunately, in movies 'high concept' has led to movie theatres being filled with fluff because most movies that can be described in a sentence aren't very deep or very original. I think that's already happening in books. It doesn't always lead to bad books or shallow books, but that's the tendency. I guess the key is to either figure out some aspect of a book that is sound-bite-worthy, or to start with a sound bite and find some way to turn it into something of substance without losing the initial sound bite.

We live in the world we live in. That doesn't mean I have to like every aspect of it. Let's face it. I buy books based on covers and blurbs too, so I guess I'm part of the problem.

If we didn't buy based on covers and blurbs it would be random picking or critical reviews. Random picking doesn't make much sense and critical reviews only ever publish a small amount of what is available. Often pushing established authors over new ones.

Vivian: I actually buy mostly on word of mouth or on the reputation of the author. On the rare occasions I buy something without those things I do buy via cover catches my eye--->blurb looks good--->back cover sounds interesting. So I guess I use the same process I'm criticizing. On the other hand, I find that I end up reading considerably less than half of the books I buy using that process. I usually know I'm not going to want to finish a book within a couple of pages. I would probably save a lot of money if I added a "read three pages before I buy" step to the ones I outlined. Not sure how all of that relates to the topic.