How to Sell your Work II

Previous chapter asked you to pin down your target audience and your unique selling point. This chapter is more about the specific content of your book and the marketing text you’ll add.

I like to go in several stages:

• First a one-liner that summarizes the book (the “logline”)
• Then several lines
• Then a paragraph
• Then a few paragraphs
• Until you finally have a 1 or 2 page summary of the full book (the “synopsis”)

You can do it in this order (if you already have a great one-liner hook from which to start). Or you can do it in reverse (if you already have a general plot and want to whittle it down)

Of course, the synopsis isn’t going to be part of the marketing. You’ll typically send it towards publishers or literary agents when you send your manuscript. More on that later.

If you do this, you’ll be forced to figure out what your story is actually about. You must separate the spice on top from the actual dish. You must decide which storyline or idea is the most important, and which are only worth a mention when you have enough space.

Typically,

• The one-liner is used for pitching, internally with publishers, or as a shorthand for selling your book.
• The paragraph is your (online) marketing text next to the book cover.
• Multiple paragraphs are the blurb on the book cover (or a longer pitch).

To be honest, most people cheat with the one-liner. It’s actually two or three lines smashed into one. There’s no clear threshold here, it’s more about the general idea: selling why somebody should read your book in as few words as possible.

Mistake: marketing doesn’t work like you think

What do most people do when you ask them to market something? They add things they think marketing should be. They add hollow words like “an exceptional novel” and “rated highly” and “the best read of this year”.

People have this ingrained idea that marketing is all lies and the same buzzwords repeated over and over.

It’s not. Because people “know” this, they see right through that bullshit.

It also doesn’t mean anything. In the previous chapter, I established that no book is for “everyone”. That a clear target audience is needed. So … if you say a book is “the best thing you’ll ever read”, what does it mean? Nothing! Because you don’t know if you’re the actual target audience! For you, it might be the worst thing you’ll ever read.

Don’t add hollow words or phrases. Don’t try to embellish your book here and there.

Your job is to pitch the actual book and include potential reasons why somebody might want to read it.

Mistake: obvious statements

You’re writing about the most important parts of a novel. There is no need to add statements like “in this novel …” or “of course, there are also other characters …”

People know that this one paragraph isn’t a summary of the whole book. Of course they do!

• If you only have one paragraph, stick to the main protagonist and the main storyline of the book.
• Leave out anything that is obvious or irrelevant, and don’t repeat yourself.
• Phrase sentences as simple present, with no uncertainty (“you will read about …” or “the hero might just be in danger …”)

Also notice how the second version is more specific. It actually gives details instead of general, cliché statements about danger or great evil. It also provides a potential hook: why would one egg destroy the world? Is Hank the bad guy here, or the ghosts?

Writing the Logline

I like the approach given in the Save the Cat (writes a novel) book. It structures the logline in a way that matches what I’ve come to learn about good story structure. It does so using a few “beats” of its “15-beat structure”. (For more details, check my article about it in the Storytelling course: Beat Sheet.)

For our purposes, I’ll just explain the beats you need to know.

• “Break”: the moment our protagonist is forced to leave their old (comfortable) world and embark on the adventure into a new (and unknown) world
• “Midpoint”: the moment halfway the story that suddenly raises the stakes and changes the trajectory. (This moment prevents the “muddy middle” problem, where books are aimless and slow around their middle part.)
• “Theme Stated”: a moment near the start of the story where the theme (the lesson the protagonist hopefully learns) is stated or shown.
• “All is Lost”: the darkest point of the story, where all seems lost and the hero defeated. (Usually people act out of fear of reaching the bottom of this pit.)

Now the logline becomes a simple formula.

On the verge of a stasis = death moment, a flawed hero Breaks; but when the Midpoint happens, they must learn the Theme Stated before All Is Lost.

What does “stasis = death” mean? It means that doing nothing is no option. Standing still—stasis—would mean the hero loses, dies, or falls even further.

It’s a crucial thing that many stories forget. They introduce an interesting world and conflict … but no reason for the protagonist to actually act and do it now. They forget urgency and risk. Hence, a good story should start with the realization that if the main character does nothing … their life will end.

Let’s see some examples from my own work. Obviously, mild spoilers! (I advice you to figure out the loglines to your own stories and to books/films you’re consuming, as a practice.)

Of course, this is a strict template. For your book, you want to rephrase this in a more natural and fitting way. You might also add or remove parts. Especially if part of the logline becomes part of the actual marketing, you want to break away from this template!

I didn’t actually use this logline template before writing the stories above. (I only learned about this specific one later.) The three stories I picked are very different from each other, but the template still fits like a glove. That’s why I recommend it.

Also, writing these examples showed me how my older work does not fit as well. (Wildebyte Arcades and Saga of Life are both quite recent works of mine.) I tried to give an older example, but they usually didn’t have one of the beats. For educational purposes, I’ll still give one of those “failed” loglines.

I have plans to rewrite that first novel one day, because there are certainly good elements there. But the logline reveals missing parts, such as a clear structure and midpoint, and a clear personal risk for Karan if he doesn’t act.

As you see, the logline is really two (or three) sentences. But it’s just short and efficient enough to count it as a one-liner, if you want.

Marketing Blurb

The logline is great for pitching. Both in a business sense and when simply explaining your latest project to friends and family. (Nothing as shameful as the question “so what’s it about?” being answered with “erm, well, there’s this guy, and there are dragons, and I can’t really explain it”.)

But you won’t put this on the back of your book, or in the description at the online book store.

That’s usually one or two paragraphs, which answer a few more questions. Common options are …

• Add information about supporting characters
• Add information about the most important subplot
• Add information about the world and unique setting (if applicable, especially speculative fiction)
• Add information about a recurring mystery or problem (nothing as strong as people’s need for answers)
• Add information and praise about your previous work (if you have actual impressive credits)

Short & Sweet

I am of the opinion that these should be short and sweet. If I pick up a book in the store and the blurb at the back is four dense paragraphs of text … you’ve lost me already.

It shows, to me, that you do not know how to write efficiently and that you do not know what your story is actually about.

That’s a great test.

• Improvise a book cover template. (Grab an A4 paper and fold it in half to get front/back. Or install some graphics software and open a document.)
• Now, in a readable font at a readable size, write your blurb on the back.
• See how much you can fit before it becomes a wall of text or consumes the full back. I like to keep plenty of margin on the sides and to make sure the blurb only covers the top half.

This shows you what is too much (or too little).

Simple Sentences

The logline above is a bit dangerous, because it might convince you that blurbs should be really long sentences which explain everything. They shouldn’t. If your description starts with a long sentence that has five parts, you’ve also lost me.

Try to start with a short sentence. Keep longer sentences for later, once you already have somebody’s attention. (People only read the last half of your blurb if they are intrigued by the first.)

Remember the “credits” system! At first, a potential reader does not have enough credits to read a long sentence or jump straight into reading that first preview chapter. They barely have enough credits to read one or two short sentences of marketing blurb—so make those count. Make those earn credits for a longer read.

Conclusion

Those are all my general tips for how to view your book as a product to market and publish.

• Know your target audience and conform the book to their wishes
• Know your unique selling point and put it front and center
• Be able to summarize your book at many different lengths (one sentence, three sentences, paragraph, …)
• And use that to pitch the book or get your marketing blurb
• Use the “credits system” as a way to remember this. Readers give you only one credit at the start, so make sure the first pieces they see increase the number of credits you get.

Keep all these things in mind from the start. It gives you a great handhold when writing the actual book, as you already know the killer one-liner you’ll use to sell it. (Which also motivates you to not mess it up and deviate from it too much.)

You can refine as you go and finalize these texts when the book is actually done. But completely inventing the target audience and unique selling point after writing the book … isn’t a great idea.

Next chapters will dive into how traditional publishing works, including tips for the specifics such as a query letter.

The chapter on self-publishing (and related skills) come after that.