The visual pitch

Something a little different this week.

I’ve jabbered a lot in the past about the importance of nailing your elevator pitch: making sure that your basic novel concept is one that people feel the need to pick up and explore.

I think that’s not just commercially important. I think it’s artistically important too. It’s key to any genuinely great book.

I’ve also always said that the elevator pitch – that basic concept – is FOR YOU. It’s a mother with 100 daughters. The daughters arise anywhere your book concept touches the world. So, for example:

• Your query letter
• Your book blurb
• A two-line pitch on social media
• A conversation with an agent at our London Festival of Writing.

But also, for example:

• Your text itself
• Your opening page (and what it hints at in terms of the future)
• Choices you make about what and what not to include.

But also: 

• Your book cover
• Your website
• Your Twitter profile (I’m not going to call that company by a stupid name just to please an erratic billionaire)
• Your Facebook ads (ditto). 

Today, I thought it would be interesting to pick up the very last of those. Here, for example, is a Facebook ad for one of the Fiona books.

What’s the elevator pitch for that book? Well, all my pitches have two layers, I guess. There’s the series pitch (“Detective who used to think she was dead”). And there’s the individual book pitch, which in this case is something like “Dark religion + kidnap + remote Wales village”. That’s the pitch if you pick out the central ingredients. If you want a more conventional pitch, then “Woman, wearing bridal white, found dead in a country churchyard. Who is she? And why is she here?” 

I hope you feel that the image above connects adequately with the pitch. It’s not that they say the exact same thing, but they live happily together – like lemon and mint.

Nearly all my ads use the same colour set – yellow and white text, dark monochrome image – because that basic mixture says noirish crime, with strong hints of seriousness. (Yellow and black together convey danger – it’s one of the standard colour sets of warning signs and crime tape.) Also, of course, the more consistency in the ads, the more casual users start to notice the brand on repeat viewings. 

Here’s another ad for the same book: 

That’s a more direct expression of the elevator pitch, but they’re both playing on the same basic turf. At the moment, both ads have roughly the same link click-through rate, so I can’t yet say which one will come out on top. 

Or take another example, this time for the ($0.99) series opener. 

Here, the elevator pitch is all about my damaged detective – who’s kinda nuts and used to think she was dead. The ad that’s worked best so far is this one: 

The actual image there is pretty much bog-standard: tough, crimey woman + moody landscape. But the ad text tells you who that woman is: “Brilliant, quirky, damaged, fascinating.” 

Again, that’s not a direct statement of the pitch, but it’s certainly a very clear echo. It makes you want to know more… and when you get to the actual book sales page, the basic offer expands from that exact starting point. The journey from ad to book page, to “look inside”, to purchase, should all be very clear, very consistent. 

Another ad that has done well is this one: 

That ad offers a landscape – a somewhat foreboding, Welsh-looking one. That establishes genre (moody, Celtic noir, crime), but it doesn’t say much directly about the pitch. But again, “Wales’ strangest detective” slaps the elevator pitch right there, up top. 

Both those ads have done better than one that uses a really positive review as its central element. Take this ad, for example: 

That ad has done OK… but it’s not been any kind of star performer. And I think that’s because its relationship with the elevator pitch is just too murky. OK, so Fiona Griffiths stars in some crime books. We’ve never met anyone like her. But… what? She’s super-girly? She’s a klutz? She’s half-robot? She speaks Ukrainian? She mostly works as a part-time hairdresser? 

In terms of ads that really deliver readers – that is, ads that command the user’s attention from first sight through to completion of purchase – it’s been my experience that the pitch matters. That’s why your original concept matters so much, even before you’ve started to write a word. It’s why that concept matters so much when you’re selling, not just with the text you deploy, but the image composition too. 

That’s it from me, my furry companion. May the grass lie softly for you and the air taste sweet. 

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FEEDBACK FRIDAY – Explanations 

Do you have any visual material for your book? If so, let’s hear your pitch and see your visuals. That’ll be fun! 

If you don’t have anything available yet (and you really don’t need to), then just give us your pitch and sketch out for us what a book cover or Facebook ad might look like.

When you’re ready, log in and post yours here.

Til soon. 

Harry