Agents/writers/publishers on Twitter occasionally do a pitch day, where you have to pitch your novel in less than 140 characters and use a certain hashtag. Agents will then come along, favourite or reply to the ones they like and ask for you to send them something.
Now, you obviously don't need a request from an agent to be able to send them something - you just send them something according to their guidelines. What is nice about pitching on Twitter is that you can at least tell if your pitches are working (if you get a request) and that you know the agent is interested in the first place.
So far they seem to be very heavily leaning towards YA, as has been pointed out before, and very US-ified, which again, has been pointed out before. But, always worth having a punt, right? Plus you can watch the feed and see what others are pitching (and baffle yourself over people's terrible grammar and nonsensical pitches) and see what people seem to be writing at the mo (lots of zombies, I fancy).
The first one I did was for Entranced Publishing - an ebook publisher. I got a request for a partial from an off-the-cuff pitch I decided to do because I saw springs doing it. I sent it off, got a reply from the publisher asking a question about the synopsis ('it doesn't sound like it has a happy ending - does it?' and 'is there much romance?') and I replied honestly. There's not a lot of romance (all right, hardly any) and Entranced are romance publishers really. She never came back to me to say ok, thanks but no thanks, but that's fair enough.
Now on Friday a few of us had a go at PitMad. You do your pitch and add the hashtag and hope an agent comes along, likes the sound of it, and requests something.
My pre-written pitches weren't going down well at all, so I fired off one off the top of my head and got an instant 'favourite' which, from this particular agent meant send the query and first ten pages.
So I check her guidelines, have a look at the other authors she's repping and send off my query and ten pages. I see on the agent's site it says 'no response after a month means no.' I'm more than happy about that, it means I don't have to worry, or do any chasing.
But then she starts Tweeting comments on the queries she's reading. And that's interesting, you can see her thoughts... but then you start wondering 'is that me?' 'Is that mine she's talking about?'
She posts things like 'great writing, great twists and turns. Request' and then 'great writing, but too much dialogue' or 'this one's brilliant, but too slow.'
I think, if you have time to comment on the queries on Twitter, you have time to reply to that person you've just tweeted about telling them the same thing. So now I'm sat here thinking mine's very dialogue heavy, was she talking about me? And thinking about re-writing, when she might've just thought mine was flat out crap.
A little bit of feedback goes a hell of a long way.
Now, you obviously don't need a request from an agent to be able to send them something - you just send them something according to their guidelines. What is nice about pitching on Twitter is that you can at least tell if your pitches are working (if you get a request) and that you know the agent is interested in the first place.
So far they seem to be very heavily leaning towards YA, as has been pointed out before, and very US-ified, which again, has been pointed out before. But, always worth having a punt, right? Plus you can watch the feed and see what others are pitching (and baffle yourself over people's terrible grammar and nonsensical pitches) and see what people seem to be writing at the mo (lots of zombies, I fancy).
The first one I did was for Entranced Publishing - an ebook publisher. I got a request for a partial from an off-the-cuff pitch I decided to do because I saw springs doing it. I sent it off, got a reply from the publisher asking a question about the synopsis ('it doesn't sound like it has a happy ending - does it?' and 'is there much romance?') and I replied honestly. There's not a lot of romance (all right, hardly any) and Entranced are romance publishers really. She never came back to me to say ok, thanks but no thanks, but that's fair enough.
Now on Friday a few of us had a go at PitMad. You do your pitch and add the hashtag and hope an agent comes along, likes the sound of it, and requests something.
My pre-written pitches weren't going down well at all, so I fired off one off the top of my head and got an instant 'favourite' which, from this particular agent meant send the query and first ten pages.
So I check her guidelines, have a look at the other authors she's repping and send off my query and ten pages. I see on the agent's site it says 'no response after a month means no.' I'm more than happy about that, it means I don't have to worry, or do any chasing.
But then she starts Tweeting comments on the queries she's reading. And that's interesting, you can see her thoughts... but then you start wondering 'is that me?' 'Is that mine she's talking about?'
She posts things like 'great writing, great twists and turns. Request' and then 'great writing, but too much dialogue' or 'this one's brilliant, but too slow.'
I think, if you have time to comment on the queries on Twitter, you have time to reply to that person you've just tweeted about telling them the same thing. So now I'm sat here thinking mine's very dialogue heavy, was she talking about me? And thinking about re-writing, when she might've just thought mine was flat out crap.
A little bit of feedback goes a hell of a long way.
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