I am writing this post with a full and happy heart on the bus ride home from New York City where I just did a two minute pitch at the Jewish Book Conference for my soon-to-be-released Accidental Soldier: A Memoir of Service and Sacrifice in the Israel Defense Forces. I’ve been practicing my pitch since February when I first registered for the conference almost everywhere – in the shower, with my kids, on the bus to work… everywhere.
You name it. I did it.
But it’s a totally different experience when you pitch in front of a large crowd – in this case, 200 people who represented the various Jewish Community Centers among bookstores, festival organizers, bookclubs nationwide. These are the decision makers, the game players so to speak.
They are the ones who will decide whether to fly me out to various venues around the country to talk about my book’s message of courage during their upcoming programming year. (The book officially releases on June 14th to be exact)
So this brings me to my main point.
If you want people to know about your book, the best way to get the word out is to speak about it. There’s something about taking a book off the “Amazon hinges” and connecting with an audience. Social media can only take you so far.
People get to see and hear your voice. You get excited. They feel your passion for your book. And then word spreads.
I call this organically building a platform. Back to basics. Social media can only supplement that spoken word realm.
I stood on that stage and gave that pitch every ounce of my being. There was that strong warrior woman of my Israel Defense Forces past who I thought I had only wrote about in the form of a memoir but today, I brought her back. To New York City. Where the Story began.
It was a homecoming.
As you read the pitch I gave below, can you see why it was so important for me to engage my audience with my message?
“It was an accident I got inducted in the Israel Defense Forces. I had no idea what I was getting involved in. My mother, daughter of a Holocaust survivor, child prodigy, Julliard graduate who played alongside Leonard Bernstein, was terrified I’d get blown up by terrorists. She thought I was throwing my future away. But I wasn’t scared. I saw my service as a ticket to freedom.
I wanted to prove to my Israeli father that I can could be my own person away from my mother’s fears and paranoas of Israel.
So I dropped out of college and found myself in the middle of the desert with a bunch of immigrants who ridiculed and bullied me. Aerogram after aerogram, my mother pleaded me to come home.
I got my entire company punished because I arrived late for an inspection. I struggled to complete an eighteen kilometer march for our green beret in basic training. I held down an entire camp during one of Israel’s worst snowstorms in history with just one other Russian girl from my company. Mind you, that’s a great way to bond.
As a lone IDF soldier, it was hard to stay courageous, but I managed to earn the best soldier award from then president Chaim Herzog. And I got to hear my mother say, “Dorit, you’re a really good kid.”
Danny Ayalon, former ambassador to the US says this about Accidental Soldier: A touching and courageous journey of the female immigrant experience that many readers will sympathize with.”
Have faith: The magic didn’t happen with the pitch.
But AFTER the pitch.
Groups came up to me to ask about all kinds of questions ranging from how did it feel to write my memoir to how did it feel to come back to the States? One woman flew after me wanting to know if I had additional copies of the book. Her group already received their review copies, but she wanted the one copy I had to give it to four other groups in her area who wanted a speaker to talk about an Israel type experience. Wow!! Talk about instant booking!
At a busy café in midtown Manhattan, I sat with my publicist, who called the experience “mind-blowing.”
As I’m writing this, I still cannot believe what happened today.
I blew up that room. Faces lit up. People looked up as I spoke instead of peering over their thick books of numerous author profiles and copious notes.
So if you want to be known as an author, do these three things:
1.Write a killer book.
2.Hire a killer editor.
3.Speak. Speak. Speak.
I know of no other way to spread the word. And it begins with having the courage and the faith to put yourself out there.
By the way, if you know of an organization or group that needs a motivational speaker to talk about issues relating to courage and faith, I’m your gal. Let’s talk.
Connect with Dorit