In 2006, almost three hundred thousand books were published. With that many titles in print, it’s important to take advantage of every opportunity to make your book stand out. One way to do that is to use a technique called a memory hook or in this case a “book hook.” Basically a “hook” is a quick, memorable sentence or turn of phrase you can use to describe your book. In business, sometimes a memory hook is referred to as an “elevator speech.” It’s a 60-second description that you could say in between floors if someone asked you about your book.
In the case of some non-fiction books, the subtitle of the book can be descriptive enough to be used as a memory hook, or at least to indicate who the book is written for and the benefits of reading it. For example, our book Vegan Success has a subtitle of “Scrumptious, Healthy Vegan Recipes for Busy People.” If you are a vegan who is short on time, you can quickly identify the book as one that might have recipes you would enjoy. If you are a meat-eating gourmet chef, you’d probably opt for a different cookbook.
Having an easy to remember hook is also helpful if you are going to be interviewed on radio or TV. In that case, many people use rhymes, repetition, puns, alliteration, verses, lyrics or humor to make the hook more memorable to listeners. The goal is to get their attention and keep it long enough for them to understand what your book is actually about.
If you don’t feel particularly inspired, I recommend checking out a book called POP, Stand Out in Any Crowd by Sam Horn. It’s the best book I have ever read about coming up with fun, creative phrases to describe books or other products. POP stands for Purposeful, Original and Pithy and the book argues that memorable phrases have those characteristics in common. I also like the fact that Horn took her own advice in titling her book about dealing with difficult people. The title is Tongue Fu and she calls it “martial arts for the mouth.” It’s definitely memorable.
Here are three tips to create a memory hook that works:
1. Try adding sensory words into the phrase to make it more descriptive. Appealing to the senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell or touch can help lodge a phrase into someone’s mind. For example, a brownie cookbook might be best when you want the “fragrant scent of chocolate to fill the air.”
2. Rearrange a phrase or do a play on words with a well-known expression. Consider a cliché like “two wrongs don’t make a right.” A book on writing tips might change it to “two wrongs don’t make a writer.”
3. Use rhyme, alliteration, or other word play. For example, a book hook I could use for our book Happy Hound: Develop a Great Relationship with Your Adopted Dog or Puppy could take the word adoption and rhyme it with “option” for phrase like, “it’s the book for dog owners who chose the adoption option.” For our adopted cat book, Happy Tabby, I could use a play on the word cat, like “read Happy Tabby to avoid a cat-astrophe in your house!”
In an increasingly cluttered world, it is a good idea to add some spark to your marketing message with a memory hook. After all, if you had enough creativity to write the book in the first place, you should have enough left over to write a few good words to describe it.