Two of the agents I pitched to this weekend wanted to read more. That’s fantastic – keep your fingers crossed they want a full manuscript!
What’s the secret to a good pitch? I’ll give you some tips and tricks I picked up over the years for pitching your book.
- Finish Your Manuscript! Unless you have a non-fiction book, you must have a complete manuscript ready to send off to that agent or editor. They don’t want to hear “I’m almost done” because that means you haven’t even gotten a first draft, much less edited the thing.
- Know your genre. Agents need to know who they’re going to be pitching to, so you need to know what genre you’re writing in. If you can’t decide, they’re not going to be able to sell it because nobody else will know where it belongs either.
- Know your comparative titles. In other words, if your book was in your local Barnes & Noble, what would it be sitting beside? Which other books are similar – not exactly like! – so they’d be shelved with yours?
- Have an approximate word count. Round it off to the nearest hundred words.
- Have an elevator pitch. You should be able to give the gist of your plot within three to five minutes. This is the part where you hint at the ending instead of actually telling it. You’re trying to entice the agent or editor to say, “Tell me more.” Give the main character (maybe two) and the main conflict, then tell enough of the plot to catch their interest. If asked for more, go over the main “beats” or plot highlights.
- Be prepared for rejection. The editor I pitched to said my book was too long for his tastes. One agent said mine was “high” sci-fi and he only handled “low” sci-fi. Your book isn’t going to appeal to everyone, so prepare for a “no.” It’s not personal, so don’t automatically put the poor agent or editor on your hate list. They know what they’re comfortable selling – and you don’t want someone handling your book unless they absolutely love it and are willing to go all out to sell it!
Here’s my pitch in case you’re curious:
EARTHBEAT is a 107,000 word adult science fiction novel about the velyr, a hive-mind designed for life on a desert planet. They had the perfect society — until they were hit by a strange disease. Individuality. The afflicted couldn’t be cured, so they were exiled to a far planet. Unfortunately, that planet was already inhabited by humans.
On the home world, LONTANO was a voice for the society’s artificial intelligence. He can “talk” to any electronic device using his cybernetic Augmentation. On Earth, he creates music. When he helps rescue a strange velyr running from trouble, Lontano and his boyfriend become targets for the military group after that stranger. But is the group after another experimental subject — or the extermination of all velyr?
