Thursday, January 18, 2018

To What Floor Does Your Elevator Speech Take You To?



Authors need an elevator speech.  They will use it to summarize an upcoming book, a current one, and their writing brand.  So just what needs to be done to get it right?

At the very least, the elevator speech is factual – it’s an abbreviated summary of your writing career and books.  It’s a way to encapsulate your core message.  It must be brief – say it in 20 seconds.

Your elevator speech should reveal key benefits of your solution to an issue.  Highlight what you bring to the table.  You essentially must answer the unstated question:  Why am I interesting, important or entertaining?

Your elevator speech showcases who you are and why one should read your book.  It seeks to differentiate your voice, your story, your history.  But it doesn’t merely delineate accomplishments or sound like a resume.  It’s your advertisement, your chance to give shape and depth to you as a writer.

Imagine being a voice in someone’s ear while in a bookstore.  What would you whisper that would make one feel like they want to take your book off of the shelf.  What would lure them in?  What would get them to be curious to want to know more?

The process of crafting an elevator speech will:
·         Force you to achieve a true clarity of yourself.
·         Help you understand the value that you offer.
·         See why you are better/different from other authors.
·         Tend to shape your marketing efforts.

The best elevator speech says something memorable with an economy of words.  It sells without sounding like a commercial.  It describes in a way that colors and shapes things.  It helps you transform not only how others see you but how you see yourself.

6 Great Blogs for Indie Authors


Source:  www.BookWorks.com


The printer is the friend of intelligence, of thought; he is the friend of liberty, of freedom, of law; indeed, the printer is the friend of every man who is the friend of order – the friend of every man who can read.  Of all the inventions, of all the discoveries in science or art, of all the great results in the wonderful progress of mechanical energy and skill, the printer is the only product of civilization necessary to the existence of free man.
--Charles Dickens

“The introduction of printing into England is undoubtedly to be ascribed to William Caxton a modest, worthy, and industrious man, who went to Germany entirely to learn the art, and having practiced it himself at Cologne, in 1471, brought it to England two years afterwards.  He was not only a printer, but an author; and the book which he translated, called the Game and Player of the Chesse, and which appeared in 1474, is considered as the first production of the English press.”
--William Keddie, Anecdotes Literary and Scientific

“William Makepeace Thackeray wrote his great novel Vanity Fair, for Colburn’s Magazine, it was refused by the publishers, who deemed it a work without interest.  He tried to place it with several of the leading London firms who all declined it.  He finally published it himself in monthly parts. The first volume of Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales was declined by every publisher in Copenhagen.  The book was brought out at the author’s own cost.”
--William Andrews, Literary Byways

“There are many of the forces of Nature which tend to injure Books; but among them all not one has been half so destructive as Fire.  It would be tedious to write out a bare list only of the numerous libraries and bibliographical treasures which, in one way or another, have been seized by the Fire-king as his own. Chance conflagrations, fanatic incendiarism, Judicial bonfires, and even household stoves have, time after time, thinned the treasures as well as the rubbish of past ages, until, probably, not one thousandth part of the books that have been are still extant.  This destruction cannot, however, be reckoned as all loss; for had not the “cleansing fires” removed mountains of rubbish from our midst, strong destructive measures would become a necessity from sheer want of space in which to store so many volumes.

“The Invention of Printing made the entire destruction of any author’s works much more difficult, so quickly and so extensively did books spread through all lands.  On the other hand, as books multiplied, so did destruction go hand in hand with production, and soon were printed books doomed to suffer in the same penal fires, that up to then had been fed on manuscripts only.”
--William Blades, The Enemies of Books

“Of all forms of theft,” says Voltaire, “plagiarism is the least dangerous to society.”  Not only that, it is often beneficial.  In mechanics all inventions are plagiarisms.  If inventors had not borrowed ideas from their predecessors, progress would come to a standstill.  Shall I refuse to own a timepiece because my watchmaker is not original?”

--William S. Walsh, A Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities

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Brian Feinblum’s insightful views, provocative opinions, and interesting ideas expressed in this terrific blog are his alone and not that of his employer or anyone else. You can – and should -- follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels much more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2018. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s Independent.  This was named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogsand recognized by Feedspot in 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs.

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