Creating An Elevator Pitch For Your Author Platform

We talk a lot about needing an "elevator pitch" for your book. It's the concept that if you were stuck on an elevator with a publisher, agent or anyone who could help you sell your book, how could you, in thirty seconds, convince them to consider your book. That's the approximate time you have from the time the elevator doors close to the time they reopen and person steps off.

You obviously don't have time for a full blown presentation of your book, so you have to tell the whole story in just a couple of sentences. You must give just what is absolutely necessary to tell them what your book is about and why people would buy it- no "clever" mysterious cliffhanger; just the facts. Remember, the elevator pitch is not intended to get them to buy or read your book. It's intended to get them interested in your book enough to want to help you market, represent or publish the book.

As an author, however, have you spent any time thinking about the elevator pitch for your author platform? Chances are that you will have opportunity to pitch your platform more than you will your book, and your platform can be the thing that ultimately sells more books and even catches the attention of an agent or publisher.

Your platform is what you create to catch the attention of people about you and your expertise. Are you an expert on ornamental plants? Do you have a blog that helps people find, nourish and keep those plants alive? Perhaps you offer a newsletter that sends out monthly tips. Of course, you want people to know about your book, 101 Tips To Be The Envy Of Your Neighbor's Eyes With Ornamental Plants, but what about your blog talk radio program, your blog, or your newsletter?

This is where your elevator pitch comes in for your platform. Consider these elements for your platform elevator pitch:

• Your Expertise- What is the area you are known for? Example: I'm an experienced marketing expert for people looking for ways to market their books, products or services.
  
  
• Your Resource- How do you share your expertise? Example: I have this blog, Marketing Tips For Authors, and my free video tips newsletter.
  
  
• Benefits- What can someone gain by visiting your resource? Example; My blog gives tips, ideas, and teaches new concepts to people who may not be familiar with what marketing is really all about. My videos walk people through some of the more technical aspects of marketing their book.
  
  
• How To Find You- Where can people go to find your resources? Example: People can find my blog and my videos at MarketingTipsForAuthors.com. A business card with this info is perfect if you are speaking face-to-face with someone. You don't want them to commit the location to memory, you just want them to have a resource listing how to find you. You want to point out that the card has everything they need to find you.
  

So, here is how I may pitch my platform:

My name is Tony Eldridge. I'm an experienced marketing expert and an author who helps other authors find low cost/no cost ways to market their books through my free blog and video tips found at MarketingTipsForAuthors.com

This elevator pitch gives the essentials and opens the door for further conversations about what I do without trying to pack everything into a log, confusing pitch. Consider this (feel free to skip ahead to the next paragraph when you get the point):

My name is Tony Eldridge. I am a marketing expert who spent years marketing products for a million dollar company. It was my job to find new customers for our in-house training videos through traditional and guerrilla marketing activities. One thing I was able to help our company do was grow our subscriber list from 70,000 to well over a half a million targeted subscribers with an unsubscribe rate of less than 1%. I wrote novel, the award-winning action/adventure that New York Times best selling author Clive Cussler calls a "first rate thriller brimming with intrigue and adventure." I used my marketing experience to help me market my novel and after helping other authors learn about marketing, skills most authors have never thought much about developing, I created a blog called Marketing Tips For Authors, where I share some great low-cost/no cost ways that they can use to market their book. I even created a newsletter where subscribers can get videos that walk them through some of the more technical aspects of marketing their books online. I offer a free sample that anyone can watch before they subscribe to the video newsletter and when then subscribe, they get instant access to over 45 minutes of free video tips. My blog and my video newsletter can be found at MarketingTipsForAuthors.com

Whew!

There is a lot of good information packed into the last paragraph, but it's definitely overload. If I tried to use that as a pitch on an elevator, the person would be banging on the floor button in an attempt to speed up the ride. They would undoubtedly be long gone before I finished my pitch.

Pitching your platform is a worthy activity to prepare for. Think about how you can pack a lot into a compact, powerful punch that helps to position you and your expertise in a way that makes people want to check out your resources. A nice side benefit for you as an author is that the more exposure people have to you and your platform, the more they will come across your book.

After saying all this, you still need to prepare your elevator pitch for your book. You never know when you will take a ride on an elevator with the Jerry McGuire of the literary world.

Tony Eldridge