What Does it Take to Sell a Book in 2026?
Why we need secondary and tertiary hooks in genre fiction
Every book needs to have a hook, but in today’s crowded market, genre fiction needs multiple entry points.
As a literary agent, I meet with multiple editors a week. And editors of genre fiction have been echoing this statement: For books to stand out in this market, they need to have multiple hooks.
Many of the books that stand out today have a secondary—and sometimes even a tertiary— hook. If your primary hook is the one-sentence pitch that highlights the plot and core conflict of your story, your secondary hook highlights the specific, sticky detail that makes us lean in and say, “Ooh! Tell me more!"
Think of these second and third hooks as “bonus features.” They offer an additional entry point into the book, something that makes it exciting or different from other books in the market.
These extra hooks are also tools that can help an editor rally their team in an acquisitions board. The sales team can also take them to booksellers as well to get them excited about a book. All in all, different departments on your publishing team can use them to fight for your book and get it placed.
I understand that when I say “secondary and tertiary hooks,” it might sound like something abstract and unclear. But we don’t have to reach far to understand what this looks like in practice. Just think of how we naturally talk about the books we love.
If you’ve ever been part of a book club and tried to pitch your pick to your friends, you probably emphasized a secondary hook (à la “It’s X, and it’s also got Y!”).
When I pitched FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK, the romcom by Elissa Sussman to my book club, I told them, “It’s about an interviewer who spends a wildly exciting and confusing 48 hours with her celebrity crush to write a profile about him. And it’s inspired by the real-life story of a whirlwind interview between a journalist and Chris Evans!”
You best believe we read it.
Some of us still remember that 2011 Chris Evans profile in GQ and how salacious and absolutely bonkers it was.
Secondary hooks as marketing hooks
Your second hook does not have to be about the plot of the story per se (though of course, it can be). It can be any bonus marketing hook that you’d use to describe the book. That “and here’s this other cool thing about this book” layer to your pitch– what you’d reach for to get your friends and family to want to read it too.
Sometimes, that extra hook is in the premise. Sometimes it’s in the setting, the inspiration of the book, or even in the reference to a beloved comparative title or art form. Whatever it is, it’s something that can be used to market the book and differentiate it from all the other titles that it would be competing with.
Let’s look at a few examples from a few different genres:
HOW TO KILL A GUY IN TEN DATES by Shailee Thompson (Horror, romcom)
Cinephile Jamie goes to a speed dating event where, one by one, people start getting murdered by one of the other attendees. And it seems the murderer is trying to woo one of the daters by making her a real-life Final Girl. And in the middle of this speed dating massacre, Jamie finds herself in a love triangle with two of the other survivors!
HOW TO KILL A GUY IN TEN DATES subverts tropes in a way I haven’t seen before. It’s both a horror and a romcom. Its title is clearly playing on, or drawing from, an exciting comparative: the iconic movie How To Lose a Guy in Ten Dates. Of course, it’s got an interesting premise, but it also turns it on its head with the main character having to both survive her own slasher massacre and find the right match.
LOVE, WITCHES, AND WAHALA by Christine Cowan (Forthcoming cozy romantasy)
A witch must grapple with an ancient curse that will erase her family's magic and doom her beloved bakery forever unless she finds her soulmate. In an effort to force fate’s hand, she brews a love potion that accidentally gets added to her puff puffs and bewitches all the men in Kamalu Lane to fall in love with her. And it’s set in Nigeria, so you know the wahala is real!
LOVE, WITCHES, AND WAHALA is a forthcoming book (the first in a series of standalones!) from my client, Christine Cowan. When this book first came to me, I knew it was going to have the hooks to stand out in a competitive romantasy market. The setting alone was something I hadn’t seen before in this genre, and was so unlike anything I’d read. I knew that would give it an edge with readers. Add in the joyous celebration of Nigerian food and pastries, and you can count me in!
AFTERTASTE by Daria Lavelle (Horror)
Kostya can taste ghosts’ favourite foods— but can’t see them. He realizes that his life’s purpose might be to reunite grieving loved ones with the people they lost through food. When Kotsya cooks a dish, he’s able to bring back the ghosts. As Kotsya moves up the culinary scene, his ambitions tamper with the Afterlife, and the only person who knows Kotsya must be stopped is clairvoyant Maura, who is falling in love with him. It’s a ghost story, a love story, and it features mouthwatering food writing!
The concept of this book is already hooky. AFTERTASTE is a very fresh take on a ghost story. But add in the romance and the food writing, and you’ve got three entry points for this book.
TOO OLD FOR THIS by Samantha Downing (Thriller)
A serial killer is visited by an investigator years after she’s retired from murder. Now, she must decide if she’ll commit one more murder. Except she’s old now, and getting away with murder was hard enough when she was young.
An elderly serial killer who spends her time playing bingo? Now that’s something I’d like to see. We have the classic thriller trope of serial killer vs investigator with a juicy will-she-get-caught thread, but there’s also an added hook: the main character is an elderly woman, someone we typically don’t suspect of... Well, killing people.
A secondary hook that honours the book
Of course, the secondary hook has to be something that works with the narrative and feels in line with the intentions of the book, the themes it handles, and the audience’s expectations. Which is it say: It must match the tone of the book, and can’t be there just for the sake of creating buzz. Otherwise, it risks misleading the audience (at best) or coming across as cheap (at worst). Nobody wants to be Blake Lively pushing “wear your florals” as a marketing entry point for a project about domestic abuse.
Each of the examples above has an additional hook that works for it’s book’s subject matter. A Chris Evans marketing hook is hot for a romcom. The Nigerian setting and puff puffs are alluring in a cozy romantasy. An elderly serial killer is different for a thriller. These are all ways of thinking about a story outside of its plotline, and more so in terms of its sticking-power for an audience.
Bookselling in a crowded market
I also think that part of the reason we’re seeing more editors and agents asking for genre-bending or genre-blending books, or books with a light speculative bend, is because those books inherently have a secondary hook baked into them— they are already well-positioned to compete in a crowded market. HOW TO KILL A GUY IN TEN DATES is the perfect example of that.
This doesn’t mean that you have to write a genre-bending book in order to sell (look at the other non-genre bending examples for reference). But it does mean you need to think about what entry points differentiate your book from what’s already out there.
There are plenty of other romance novels, horror novels, thrillers, etc. Many of them rely on the same tropes. What’s new, fresh, or exciting about yours?
Because I am a fan of beating a dead horse, I’ll say this again: the market is very crowded. There are a lot of books out there. And a lot of books coming out still. That’s why we’re at a stage in book marketing and book selling where we’re asking about multiple entry points.
Publishing is a business, and we all want to work on books that will move copies.
But, as always, there are exceptions. This doesn’t apply to every genre under the sun or every book under the sun. Plenty of books (whether in genre fiction or otherwise) don’t have a secondary hook, and still go on to do well.
Still, for those of you who might be thinking, “Well, my book has a good story, and that’s all that matters,” I hate to have to tell you that that’s the bare minimum.
Of course, we all want to read good stories. Truthfully, that’s just the entry ticket. We expect that. So in an overcrowded market, it makes sense that agents, editors (and readers!) are looking for that extra thing to catch their attention.
Sticky pitches have lasting power, and they travel between readers and consumers. They’re memorable. They’re attention-grabbing. And we are, after all, living in an attention economy.
So I’ll leave you with this question: If you had to pitch your book in one sentence, and then someone asked you to share one more cool thing about it that isn't the plot, what would that thing be?
