I’m going to make a confession straight out of the gate: I really don’t like marketing hooks that use words like “mastering.” They’ve always seemed a bit cheesy to me, and worse than that, they tend to minimize the work that goes into mastering anything. But if you’re looking to capture eyeballs and increase conversion rates, more often than not, they manage to do the trick.
And that’s exactly what your One Sentence Pitch is intended to do. It’s a hook. It’s not a showcase for your literary brilliance, nor can it ever be the perfect encapsulation for the breadth and depth of your work. What it is, is the attention grabber you will need to get your query past the slush pile and onto the agent’s desk.
When I first started this process, I was a little “precious” when it came to the idea of the One Sentence Pitch. As in, how could I possibly be expected to distill my, 90k-word, 350-page, manuscript—the one that I bled over and sacrificed for—into a single sentence written in an annoying sales pitchy style? (And do it in a way that didn’t get me laughed out of the room.)
I think my reticence can probably be traced back to the fact that, for the longest time, I held on to this romanticized ideal of what the publishing world was all about. In my mind, it was populated with the likes of legendary editor Maxwell Perkins, the literary agent Georges Borchardt and a host of equally glamorous intellectuals who congregated in the Oak Bar drinking martinis and talking about Kant. A world filled with people who would not only understand that my magnum opus couldn’t be captured by a single, reductive sentence, but who would likewise be horrified that I was even asked to try. (For expletive’s sake man, isn’t that what the marketing department is supposed to do?)
It took a while for me to fully let go of this idealized image and accept that publishing is a business no different from anything else. Similar to the industries I’ve worked in, publishing is driven by product release dates and critical paths, its success measured with targets and bottom lines. Agents are the publishing equivalents of VCs—the size of their portfolios have limits, which means they can only take on a solidly good bet. Equally, publishers are restricted by marketing budgets, timelines, and logistics, and can only release a limited number of new products (aka books) in any given year.
Seeing it through a business lens versus that of a “sensitive artiste” has enabled me to better understand the querying process by likening it to my own experience with recruiting for a highly coveted job. The minute you post that thing, you are flooded with resumes you can’t possibly get through without applying a filter or two. This is what it must be like for literary agents, the best of whom can receive up to 2000 unsolicited queries in any given month.
If I take this analogy a bit further and think about how the recruiting process has changed over the years, I can now see that Mastering the One Sentence Pitch is even more crucially important than what I initially thought. Back when resumes were physical things, (like manuscript submissions) there was something about that tactile connection—the physical act of opening the envelope and releasing its contents, the feel of the paper stock the cover letter and resume were typed on—that made it harder to ignore. That process changed a bit when we made the shift to email—a little more detachment, a lot more volume, but generally speaking, the contents were the same—a cover letter, a resume, both of which (for the serious contenders) I took the time to read.
But now that we’ve transitioned to using job application software, that process has gotten much easier to detach from, and also—if I’m being totally honest—more prone to snap judgments. Not simply as a mechanism to handle increasing volumes, but because of the nature of the form itself. If an applicant has underestimated the importance of the submission form (thinking that it’s only a box to tick versus an important requirement) their application likely won’t make it past the Guardian at the Gate.
Applying this same perspective to the querying process, it is clear that acing the Online Query Form (for the agents who use this software) is the first test you will need to pass before you graduate to the next. And just as I have done when bombarded with resumes, an agent using this platform (which requires the One Sentence Pitch) is likely to make some snap judgments of her own. (Not because she is a diva or a meanie, but simply because she doesn’t have the time for anything else.)
So here’s what I want to leave you with in today’s installment of Mastering the One Sentence Pitch: Make sure you give this exercise the time, attention and care it demands. And make sure yours is crafted in a way that leaves an agent who has read it, with no other option than to learn and read more.
Mastering the One Sentence Pitch
I run into this online grant submission. Often times I get 100 characters for my one sentence pitch to funders and I'm indignant. How in the world am I to encapsulate the entire grant, statement of need, outcomes, process into 100 characters or less!