A 30-second verbal summary of your book designed to hook a listener's interest before the elevator doors open.
An elevator pitch is a brief, spoken description of your book that you can deliver in about 30 seconds. The name comes from the idea that if you stepped into an elevator with a literary agent, you'd have until they reached their floor to make them want to read your manuscript. A good elevator pitch includes the genre, the protagonist, the central conflict, and what makes the story unique. It should sound conversational, not like you're reading off a card.
You will get asked 'What's your book about?' constantly - by agents at conferences, friends at parties, and strangers who notice you typing furiously at a coffee shop. Without a prepared elevator pitch, most writers ramble for five minutes and lose the listener. Having a tight, practiced answer makes you sound like a professional and, more importantly, keeps people interested enough to want to read the actual book.
'A great white shark terrorizes a beach town, and the police chief has to kill it before it kills the tourist season.' Simple, vivid, and impossible to ignore.
'In a dystopian future, a teenage girl volunteers to fight to the death on live television to save her younger sister.' Every word earns its place in that sentence.
'On their fifth wedding anniversary, a man's wife disappears, and everything points to him as the killer. But nothing is what it seems.' That last sentence is doing heavy lifting.
Set a timer for 30 seconds and pitch your book out loud. Record yourself on your phone. Listen back. Did you cover the genre, the protagonist, and the central conflict? Did it sound natural or robotic? Revise the wording and try again. Repeat until it sounds like something you'd actually say to a friend, not something you memorized from a notecard.