Why Use a Strapline to Pitch Your Novel?

What is a strapline?  At it's simplest, it's a short phrase that encapsulates your novel, often with the format X meets Y. The idea is taken from the film industry where the most famous is for Alien: Jaws in Space.  I like Eoin Colfer's strapline for Artemis Fowl: Die Hard with fairies.

But some people think they're maybe a bit facile, maybe a bit trite, maybe a bit contrived.  Their novel can't be summed up in just a few words.  And of course, they would be right.  However, think of it this way...

A novel goes through a chain of readers on its way to actually hitting the shelves.  First the agent, then the editor, then marketing, then sales, then the book buyer.  As the book goes through each stage the person selling the novel onto the next stage will have read less and less.

  

You'd expect the agent and editor to have read the lot, and in depth, marketing will have skimmed it, sales might have only looked at the first chapter and the book buyer...well, Waterstones caused outrage a few years ago at a seminar where they revealed that of the four criteria that decided whether they were going to support a book or not, none were related to the quality of the actual words inside the cover.  

So the strapline is for them.  It's an easy way to pigeonhole a book for people who probably aren't going to read it but are going to make important decisions for its future.  

How to create one? Think of the two or three most important elements of your book, then think of a very well known book or film that sums up that element.  I was trying to do one for Kissing Mr Wrong for this post and came up with: Birdsong meets Outnumbered.  Birdsong to me says WWI and Outnumbered says a wry look at contemporary families.  

It's worth a try - at the very least it makes you think about the essential elements of your book.