At a vendor show a few years ago, I had a friend help me booth. Not because book sales were so busy, but because between talking to folks it gets boring and there’s no one to get lunch and no one to watch things while I run to pee.
So this teenager comes to my booth and gets all excited to see books, especially fantasy novels, and starts telling me how she’s writing a comic book. I made encouraging noises, I do like to see other writers and give the young ones a smile and a nod. But then my booth buddy says:
“What is your book about?”
with a big, customer-service smile on her face.
I almost punched her.
Because then we got treated to a disjointed, too-excited thirty-minute info-dump on all the crazy details of this kid’s book (bless her), with no actual plot premise or put-together thought of who or what the story was actually about.
I knew that was going to happen, because that’s how I used to explain my stories when I was that age. It’s awful. If you’re doing that, please stop. I learned better, you can learn better.
I watched my booth buddy’s eyes slowly get wider and wider, and her customer-service smile slowly grow more manic as this kid just kept rambling on and on. I didn’t even have to keep encouraging her, my booth buddy had put a quarter in the kid and couldn’t get off until the ride wound down.
When the kid finally left (didn’t buy a book, but hey, that’s the name of the game), my friend looked at me and said, “holy shit.”
“Never ask a neophyte what their book is about,” I said. “They have no elevator pitch.”
She didn’t know what either of those things were, so I got to give a little lecture on the definition of neophytes and elevator pitches. Being a nerd, I liked that.
She has not asked ANYONE what their book is about since.
She’s been a great booth buddy.
