How to Pitch Your Book to Editors

emilykaygoodman
Apr 29
5 min read

There’s a lot of advice out there on how to write a pitch for your novel; keep it simple, don’t give away the twist, focus on the central concept. The problem is, these vague rules often lead to flat, misleading pitches and, ultimately, rejection. Even when the story itself is strong.

And that’s the frustrating part. It is a good story. But the person reading your pitch isn’t an average reader; they’re someone who sees hundreds of good stories a day. They need to know how to sell yours, and you need to captivate them, instantly.

So how do you convey all this, straight away, in a query letter or elevator pitch? This step-by-step guide will show you how to open your pitch so that it actually grabs an agent or editor’s attention.

Step 1. Understand Your Story

Use the 3 'Ps': People, Place, and Plot

Every book is set in a place, features some people, and follows a timeline that charts certain events. When a book defines these things well, a classic is born.

Don’t believe me? Let’s play a game. I’ll name a classic, and you time yourself to see how long it takes to remember the main characters, setting and plot.

Romeo and Juliet – GO!

Unfamiliar with it? Try Star Wars, Frozen, Hound of the Baskervilles, Goldilocks, Breaking Bad, The Handmaid's Tale…

Easy to remember, well-defined, encapsulated details you can instantly put your finger on.

Let’s try another game, this time we will work backwards. I’ll tell you the people, place and plot, and you try to remember the name of the story, OK? Ready?

Grumpy old miser and his patient employee; Victorian London; He gets visited by three ghosts at Christmas.
A very poor kid and an eccentric industrialist; A chocolate factory; A bunch of kids with bad habits are eliminated one by one in a test to see who should inherit the factory.
An orphaned boy and his two best friends; Partly Privet Drive, mostly Hogwarts; The boy learns how to harness his inherent talents at a school, preparing him for the ultimate beatdown with the guy who killed his folks.

These three 'Ps' are what make up your elevator pitch. Write them simply, understand your essential elements, and you have a nutshell description of your story.

Now we need to shape this information into a pitch.

Step 2. Understand Your Elevator Pitch

Let’s work with one tale to use as an example for this – Romeo and Juliet. So first, we establish our 3 ‘Ps'.

People: Romeo and Juliet

Place: A politically fractious Verona

Plot: Romeo and Juliet fall in love, despite being from two warring families; they secretly marry, then die tragically, ultimately reconciling the families.

Understanding Impact

Pain grabs attention. Attention, when focused, heightens emotion. So we first need to identify the story's pain point. With our teenage lovers, it’s easy; it's their death. The ultimate sacrifice.

The “Right” Hook

A boxer uses the element of surprise. When he decides to KO an opponent, he doesn't create a big fanfare, do a huge run-up, and leap into the punch, does he? The element of surprise helps you to deliver the blow unguarded. A hook needs to be exactly that: a swift right hook to the jowls.

So, avoid phrases like “This is a story about…” as none of these run-up words has any impact. Try instead;

“Romeo and Juliet fall in love in a world that won’t let them survive it.”

Inherent to this are the people, the place and the plot. The conflict is visceral. But let’s do more. Let’s look at the word order.

Begin with Your Strongest 'P'

Here is an elevator pitch for the first Hunger Games book.

“In a dystopian future, a teenage girl volunteers to take her sister’s place in a televised fight to the death, and becomes the symbol of a rebellion she never meant to start.”

Notice how in this elevator pitch, place is mentioned first. That’s because the three 'Ps' rarely have equal billing. They are all essential, but one is always the star. In any new world, the reader must understand the world first before they can understand the peril. Sometimes, the place is so important that it reads in the title. Think of books like The Salt Path or Girl on a Train, where the place is crucial to the plot.

In Romeo and Juliet, our dear hearts belong to the characters; we care that their lives are fabled tragedies. We lead with them.

In a thriller, you might lead with the plot. For example, an elevator pitch for the novel Gone Girl might read like this;

“When his wife disappears, a husband becomes the prime suspect, but the truth behind their marriage is far more disturbing than anyone expects.”

In this pitch, the place, or world, is the emotional landscape of their marriage, and so this more conceptual representation of habitat is left to third-place billing. The disappearance and blame are central to the plot, so they get top place.

Step 3. Understand Your Opening Paragraph

When it comes to synopsis writing, we have a great list of dos and don’ts available for download, so please do follow that more general advice on how we prefer submissions to Axe River Books.

This section teaches you how to make your synopsis opening compelling. It’s about proposing a book that you a) know inside out and b) understand why it is interesting to potential buyers.

Understand the Climax

The climax of your story is what happens at the end. At the end of Romeo and Juliet, both teenagers die, resulting in the Montagues and Capulets reconciling.

Name the Escalating Obstacles

To reach that end, a series of obstacles stood in the way of this reconciliation. Fights, marriage, exile and eventually, tragedy mark the plot points in a timeline. So an opening paragraph in a synopsis may read something along these lines;

"It takes the tragic deaths of the young lovers Romeo and Juliet to finally end the feud between the two warring political families of Verona. Despite generations of violent conflict, the pair, one from each family, fall in love and are forced into a secret elopement. After Romeo kills in revenge for the death of his friend, he is exiled. Juliet creates an elaborate opportunity to reunite with him, but the plan fails, and both young lovers end up dead. When the miscommunication between them is finally aired by their allies, both sides realise the senselessness of their fighting."

Have you Covered the Basics?

As a publisher, I will be asking the following questions:

What's the genre?
What's the theme?
What's the climax?
Who’s the hero?
Who’s the villain?
What are the stakes?
What is the jeopardy?

I can answer all these questions from that one paragraph. Your next job is to flesh out the important details after the heavy lifting has been done with this opening gambit.

Conclusion

Incidentally, these details – the people, place and plot, the hook, climax and obstacles – are nearly always summarised in the opening paragraph of the story. So, it doesn’t just help you write your pitch submission, but it will inform your writing itself if you follow these guidelines. For example, here is Shakespeare’s opening of Romeo and Juliet:

Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;

Whose misadventured piteous overthrows

Do with their death bury their parents' strife.

In these words, we get all the details we need to invest our time.

My job as an editor is to see the same thread of knowledge run between the elevator pitch, the opening paragraph of your synopsis and the first paragraph of your story. If I see the story details tally in each of these places, I already know that the story will be worth considering because the construction is sound.