I've always been a big fan of "How To" books, especially ones like "Shaking the Money Tree" and "Writing Down the Bones," where a highly accomplished professional shares insider tricks and tips that I am able to use to solve a pressing problem.

Well, I recently had to pitch an idea for a new book. The subject (Citizen Journalism) was new for me, and I didn't know how to communicate my passion for the book and the importance of the subject. Then a friend told me about "Selling Your Story In 60 Seconds." I read the book in one afternoon, and using what I'd learned was able to pitch the idea successfully, four days later.

"Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds" is surprisingly well written and easy to read. Whether you are pitching a book, a script, or pitching an idea during fund raising--this book is essential.

This book on how to sell your story has an interesting perspective and will make you think of important facets of marketing your story you probably would not have thought about. Worthwhile.

I have only recently taken to casting a more forgiving eye on the contributions to creative writing made by the Hollywood crowd. I used to limit my research to books by John Gardner and other literary luminaries, Writers Digest Books, etc., mostly out of a suspicion that (1) screenwriting was so different from prose that I had little to learn, (2) Hollywood is a fleecing ground rife with self-anointed gurus, and (3) the one Hollywood executive I ever met was a certifiable flake.

This was a bigoted and unhealthy attitude, and I have suffered for it.

I have recently read Story by Robert McKee, The Anatomy of Story by John Truby and now this little gem from Michael Hauge: and all three men are dyed-in-the-wool Hollywood types. I will keep my following remarks limited to Mr. Hauge's book, but just let me say that McKee and Truby should be regarded as mandatory reading for any novelist who wants to see the light of publication! I would also say the same for The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri.

Mr. Hauge's book is a small treasure for novelist's and short-story writers for the same reason it promises to escalate a screenwriter's odds of getting "the deal"; it is a superbly written and easily understandable introduction to the concept of DISTILLING THE MOST TANTALIZING ASPECTS OF A LONGER WORK INTO SALIENT MARKETING CONCEPTS. I felt compelled to use all caps (normally very childish), because as I have a little history in the subsidiary rights department of a large NYC publishing house, I know from first-hand experience that this skill/art of encapsulating a story's emotional core is why some people have staggering careers as literary agents and editors and why most people quit publishing so that they can pay their rent on time.

Fact: Everybody in publishing who read Jonathan Livingston Seagull absolutely loved it...and rejected it! Then one day the legendary Amanda Urban said: "It's Kahil Gibran with wings!" And that was the launching of the marketing strategy for a book that went on to collect dust on the NYT best seller list. Books are not bought because they're good. They're bought because they can be appropriately marketed according to a favorable P&L (profit & loss) sheet. Great books are rejected every day in NY. Books that read like they were composed by lesser apes routinely make the top of the NYT best seller list. You know this to be true. Marketing makes or breaks a book (or movie concept). If you can't advertise it, nobody will buy it no matter how wonderful it is.

All you wannabe novelists out there...you know what a query letter is? Well, in Hollywood they call it a pitch, and it's an oral delivery of what in NYC publishing is called a query letter! It's a very carefully constructed BRIEF letter that sells the sizzle, not the steak. And no previously unpublished novelist has a chance--not a chance!--of seeing his/her first novel get read if he can't write a query letter that convinces a deliriously overworked and underpaid editor or agent to read a story by some virgin who has never appreciated just how easy it is for a first novel to fail miserably, not because the novel is badly written or the story is poorly structured. It's because the author relinquished all marketing strategy to a publishing house that relegates all first novels to low-level underlings while their prime talent devotes its time to the Stephen Kings and John Updikes in the stable. I watched this happen every day at one of the biggest nine pub houses in NY!

Fewer and fewer pub house editors "edit" as they did in the days of Max Perkins. More and more first authors are contracting freelance editors to clean up their work even before it's submitted. And with that comes the decline of marketing strategy done by industry professionals in-house.

I'm sure you're beginning to see where I am going with this. Here's the bottom line. If you want to give your first novel the best chance of surviving the rounds with agents and editors, you have to provide, along with the mint condition manuscript, your own high-energy query letter to convince them that their precious time won't be wasted by reading the accompanying 25-40-page chapter synopsis. And if your synopsis is a crisp and lean skeleton of the story structure, then, just maybe, some poor agent or editor with barely a private life of their own will devote untold hours slugging through your 350-page manuscript.

Got it?! When people tell you that there are tens of thousands of first novel manuscripts floating around Manhattan, dammit, they are not kidding! An editor or agent wants to know in the time it takes to read a single-page query letter if this huge manuscript is a total waste of time.

Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds is pure dynamite for novelists. You're going to pay at least $15 in postage to mail your novel to NYC, right? Spend that $15 right now getting and memorizing Mr. Hauge's 170-page book, and it's that much less likely you'll get a form rejection letter in the mail in two months.

Just how long can you afford to go on living in the ranks of the unpublished?

I attended 2 of Michael's seminars at Screenwriting Expo '06 and this book contains the same "special" quality of Michael's in-person class: He wants you to succeed. The book is an Instruction Manual for understanding, crafting and marketing your story. The material is digestible for beginners, valuable for all levels of writing, simple and thorough. There is a nice balance of "Do" and "Don't" advice. The "Executives on Pitching" Section provides confirmation and flavor to the meaty material that precedes it. This book is not simply a compilation of quotes and buzzwords. Michael has command of his craft and endeavors with the heart of a mentor to infuse it in his readers. 2 thumbs up :)