57 min

How To Pitch Your Book To Agents, Publishers And Readers With Kate Harrison The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

    • Books

What is the best way to pitch your book to an agent or publisher? What's the best way to write a sales description that pitches your book to a potential reader if you're independent? How can you use the pitch technique to write a book that stands a better chance of selling? All this and more in today's interview with Kate Harrison, author of Pitch Power.



In the intro, I mention the new FindawayVoices promotional pricing tool and BookBub's audiobook ads.

Today's show is sponsored by IngramSpark, who I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 39,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries and more. It's your content – do more with it through IngramSpark.com.



Kate Harrison is the bestselling author of 13 novels and seven nonfiction books, which have sold over a million copies and been translated into 25 languages. She was formerly a TV producer at the BBC, and her latest book is Pitch Power: Discover what Makes Your Book Irresistible & how to Sell It.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript below.

Show Notes



* Why learning how to pitch a book is relevant even if you’re independent

* Why the emotional tone of your book is a key thing to understand

* How every step we take writing a book contributes to how we’ll pitch it in the end

* The difference between hooks and tag lines

* ‘Reverse engineering’ a book’s hook once it’s written

* Tips for keeping book descriptions fresh across a series

* Tips for how to pitch your book to an agent if you want to get published

* How to finding comparison (comp) titles and authors to help with pitching your book

* The balance between starting fresh with a new pen name or continuing with an established platform



You can find Kate Harrison at kate-harrison.com and on Twitter @KateWritesBooks



Transcript of Interview with Kate Harrison

Joanna: Kate Harrison is the bestselling author of 13 novels and seven nonfiction books, which have sold over a million copies and been translated into 25 languages. She was formerly a TV producer at the BBC, and her latest book is Pitch Power: Discover what Makes Your Book Irresistible & how to Sell It. Welcome to the show, Kate.

Kate: Thank you, Joanna. I am so excited to be here because I listen to the podcast every week. It's going to be quite freaky being here as a guest.

Joanna: I'm glad to have you on the show because, of course, you are incredibly well-published in many ways. But we're not going to talk about publishing today. We're talking about this book on pitching, which is fantastic.

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing in the first place.

Kate: I absolutely loved writing as a kid, but being an author wasn't a real job, not the kind of thing anyone I knew did. So, I became a journalist, and then a TV reporter, and producer.

And then I finally entered what I call my beanbag days, which were developing new ideas for programs at the BBC. So,

What is the best way to pitch your book to an agent or publisher? What's the best way to write a sales description that pitches your book to a potential reader if you're independent? How can you use the pitch technique to write a book that stands a better chance of selling? All this and more in today's interview with Kate Harrison, author of Pitch Power.



In the intro, I mention the new FindawayVoices promotional pricing tool and BookBub's audiobook ads.

Today's show is sponsored by IngramSpark, who I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 39,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries and more. It's your content – do more with it through IngramSpark.com.



Kate Harrison is the bestselling author of 13 novels and seven nonfiction books, which have sold over a million copies and been translated into 25 languages. She was formerly a TV producer at the BBC, and her latest book is Pitch Power: Discover what Makes Your Book Irresistible & how to Sell It.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript below.

Show Notes



* Why learning how to pitch a book is relevant even if you’re independent

* Why the emotional tone of your book is a key thing to understand

* How every step we take writing a book contributes to how we’ll pitch it in the end

* The difference between hooks and tag lines

* ‘Reverse engineering’ a book’s hook once it’s written

* Tips for keeping book descriptions fresh across a series

* Tips for how to pitch your book to an agent if you want to get published

* How to finding comparison (comp) titles and authors to help with pitching your book

* The balance between starting fresh with a new pen name or continuing with an established platform



You can find Kate Harrison at kate-harrison.com and on Twitter @KateWritesBooks



Transcript of Interview with Kate Harrison

Joanna: Kate Harrison is the bestselling author of 13 novels and seven nonfiction books, which have sold over a million copies and been translated into 25 languages. She was formerly a TV producer at the BBC, and her latest book is Pitch Power: Discover what Makes Your Book Irresistible & how to Sell It. Welcome to the show, Kate.

Kate: Thank you, Joanna. I am so excited to be here because I listen to the podcast every week. It's going to be quite freaky being here as a guest.

Joanna: I'm glad to have you on the show because, of course, you are incredibly well-published in many ways. But we're not going to talk about publishing today. We're talking about this book on pitching, which is fantastic.

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing in the first place.

Kate: I absolutely loved writing as a kid, but being an author wasn't a real job, not the kind of thing anyone I knew did. So, I became a journalist, and then a TV reporter, and producer.

And then I finally entered what I call my beanbag days, which were developing new ideas for programs at the BBC. So,

57 min