Elizabeth Bluemle, co-owner of the Flying Pig bookstore in Shelburne, VT (@FlyingPigBooks) writes for Publishers Weekly’s bookselling blog, ShelfTalker. In today’s post, she whimsically reflects on the unique ability of “selling a book based on a single sentence uttered to a receptive ear. It’s a rare and delicious triumph of communication, a gift given by the booktalking muse, and it delights customers as much as it delights booksellers.” She writes with such engagement, you’ll enjoy reading it in full. Here’s an excerpt:
Sometimes, a book provides you with that magical line—often its first sentence—and all one needs to do is read it aloud to a customer and the book is sold. For instance, Frances Marie Hendry’s marvelous Quest for a Maid begins with this stunner: “When I was nine years old, I hid under a table and heard my sister kill a king.” That’s all a kid needs to hear to want to read that book. The same is true of Avi’s True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, which starts thusly: “Not every thirteen-year-old-girl is accused of murder, brought to trial, and found guilty.” The reader is hooked like a pike on a piece of year-old Velveeta.
Ms. Bluemle hits the very essence of good marketing: crafting an enlighteningly fast and distinctive communication device that grabs the consumer and doesn’t let him/her go.
The key to the one-liner is that it has to lure the reader with something irresistible, something intriguing or powerful or magical or mysterious that invites a deeper relationship with the book. It also has to be sincere, enthusiastic, and heartfelt. I’m sure the expressions on our faces that sell books as much as the words we use. People can see it in your eyes when you’ve loved a book, lived it, want to share it with others.
Every author should take this to heart and develop the perfect one-line descriptor of their book that forces the hearer to say, “I must know more!”