Feb 3, 2016 Posted by Jessica Toman

Don’t Strike Out on Your Pitch

If I was completely honest, I’ve been afraid of the pitch since my first conference. Before that I never heard of it. I learned that attendees paid to have 5-10 minutes with an agent, yet after I still didn’t really get it. I figured if an agent or editor read my work and they liked it, then that’s all I needed. I cheered for agents that allowed a sample chapter and dreaded the agents that wouldn’t even allow sample pages (I usually dodged them). But a good manuscript isn’t enough, that query, specifically the pitch is important, and probably at least part of the reason I didn’t get a lot of requests. So what is a pitch? When I first began to ask around, I heard such things as “pretend you’re in the elevator and have until the next stop to get the agent to ask for your manuscript.” Oh that’s it, sell all 80,000 words in a sentence or two. Then I heard from some it should be a comparison between popular books or movies, set up as _____ meets _____. I read a lot, but I couldn’t think of the perfect comparison (Check out this for comparisons: http://www.rachellegardner.com/finding-comparable-books/ ). Then of course my queries were falling flat. I was frustrated. One favorite website, www.kidlit411.com had a link to an article called The Art of Pitching: A Story in a Sentence by Lynda Pflueger (http://www.amazon.com/Get-Literary-Agent-Complete-Representation/dp/1599638010). She wrote that pitch is “a carefully crafted, short, verbal statement that will make an editor or agent want to know more. It should be concise and compelling. Its purpose is to intrigue and inform. Think of it as a type of advertisement.” As writers we need to advertise ourselves because with 150 queries a week, why will an agent read my sample pages over another? The pitch makes a difference. The pitch shows marketability. An agent/editor looks for it in your query and asks about it at a conference. It’s worth making time to practice and perfect pitch. Fortunately, I stumbled across more help when I found a blog post on Kidlit.com (http://kidlit.com/2014/06/02/secrets-to-a-good-logline/ ), called Secrets to a Good Logline and purchased Get a Literary Agent by Chuch Sambuchino (http://www.amazon.com/Get-Literary-Agent-Complete-Representation/dp/1599638010 ). I learned some dos and some don’ts. Do be specific and do aim to elicit emotion. Don’t reveal the ending and don’t go into the subplots or unnecessary details. I also learned I could do a one sentence seller without going... read more