The Five-Sentence Pitch

Someone will ask what your book is about. The answer you give in the next ten seconds will determine whether they ever read it.

It happens at the grocery store. At church. At a family gathering, a cousin you haven’t seen in years says, “I heard you wrote a book — what’s it about?”

The author opens their mouth. And nothing clear comes out.

They start at the beginning. They explain the backstory. They describe the characters, the research, the years of revision. They watch the cousin’s eyes glaze over. By the time they finish, the cousin nods politely and changes the subject.

The book just lost a reader. Not because the book failed. Because the author couldn’t say what it was in the time it takes to pour a glass of water.

Belief Is Not Enough

I remember when Ruthann Crosby brought me Miracle in the Glass. There were no illustrations. No artist attached. No immediate pull saying, “This one’s going to be a winner.” Truth be told, it wasn’t a book yet.

But Ruthann had something better than a strong pitch — she had belief. She believed in the story’s message. She believed it needed to be in the world. And more importantly, she believed she could make something of it.

She did. She found an illustrator. She built the book. And then she did something most authors will not do. She took it to her community — personally, directly, one conversation at a time. She sold hundreds of copies within the Jewish community through direct connection and personal effort. The book never became a bestseller for us. But it became a success for Ruthann because it fulfilled its purpose.

Here is what Ruthann understood. Belief gets you out of the chair. The pitch gets the book into someone’s hands. You need both. Belief without words to carry it dies in the room. The pitch is how the author’s conviction travels to the reader.

What a Pitch Is and What It Is Not

A pitch is not a summary. It is not the table of contents recited from memory. It is not the story of how you came to write the book, however moving. It is the answer to a simple question — why should I read this? — delivered in the time a person is willing to listen.

Five sentences. No more. Who you are. What the book is about. Who is it for? What it does for the reader. Where to get it.

Each sentence earns the next. The first identifies you. The second names the book and its subject. The third tells the listener whether this book is for them. The fourth gives them a reason to care. The fifth tells them what to do next.

This is not a sales script. It is a conversation compressed to its essentials. The same conviction driving the writing now drives the introduction. The voice is the same. The purpose is the same. The only difference is the length.

Why Most Authors Resist

Authors resist the pitch for the same reason they resist the practical work in general. It feels like selling. It feels reductive — how can three years of writing be captured in ten seconds? The temptation is to explain everything, to do justice to the complexity, to make sure the listener understands the depth of the work.

The listener does not want depth. The listener wants a door. The pitch is the door. Once they walk through it — once they pick up the book — the depth is waiting for them inside. The pitch does not replace the book. It invites the reader in.

I wrote in The Power of Authors what I have learned across six decades of publishing: books don’t sell books. People sell books. A good book doesn’t find readers on its own. It’s the author who has to step up, introduce it, talk about it, believe in it enough to share it — one reader, one event, one bookstore at a time.

The pitch is how you step up. Five sentences. Practiced until they feel natural. Delivered with the same conviction you brought to the writing.

Try yours on someone today. Not tomorrow. Today. The first version will not be the one you keep. But the one you keep will not arrive until you speak the first one out loud.

The Power of Authors by Evan and Lois Swensen explores what it means to write with purpose — and why the author who can say what their book is for in five sentences reaches further than the one who needs five minutes.

The Power of Authors is available from Amazon or your favorite bookseller: http://evanswensen.com. If you’d like an autographed copy, you can order it here: http://bit.ly/4pgmzjM.

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