{"id":943,"date":"2020-01-19T01:08:53","date_gmt":"2020-01-19T06:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/?p=943"},"modified":"2024-07-18T09:26:19","modified_gmt":"2024-07-18T13:26:19","slug":"aint-no-party-like-a-twitter-pitch-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/aint-no-party-like-a-twitter-pitch-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Ain’t No Party Like a Twitter Pitch Party"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Image via Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Update 7\/18\/2024<\/strong>: OK, a lot has changed since I first wrote this piece. Twitter isn’t actually called Twitter anymore, but\u00a0the new name is stupid and I refuse to use it. Several of the pitch parties I listed at the end either don’t exist anymore or have moved to other platforms; if one of them intrigues you, Google it to see if it’s still around and where it might be taking place. That being said, new pitch parties are still springing up even now, so I think most of the advice in this piece is still relevant.<\/p>\n

(This piece\u00a0presumes you already have a Twitter account and a basic idea of how likes, retweets, and hashtags work. If you don’t, this Wired<\/em> article<\/a> will help you get up to speed. It also presumes you’re a writer interested in getting an agent and\/or a publisher for your work.)<\/p>\n

I know, I know: Social media is a pox on humanity, and Twitter is a big part of why. Yes, it can be messy as hell. It can be shamelessly abused.\u00a0It\u2019s got problems.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But Twitter has been invaluable to my writing career so far. I truly don\u2019t know where I\u2019d be right now without it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I got an account early on in Twitter\u2019s existence, but didn\u2019t quite embrace it at first. But when I started actively pursuing publication, I gave it a second look. A lot of writers I like\u2014Neil Gaiman and Cherie Priest, for example\u2014hang out there and post regularly, and not just about their upcoming works. (Cherie Priest has some seriously<\/em> cute pets.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As I met more fellow writers on Twitter, I learned\u00a0about mentoring programs like Pitch Madness and Pitch Wars<\/a> and applied\u00a0to them. When I was accepted to Pitch Madness,\u00a0I learned a lot about pitching and writing queries. And Pitch Wars changed the course of my career.<\/p>\n

Know what else happens on Twitter? Twitter pitch parties.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Huh? What\u2019s a pitch party?\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Glad you asked! If you have a manuscript ready to put in front of agents and editors and can sum it up effectively in 280 characters or less, pitch parties can be an excellent way to hop over the slush pile and have an agent and\/or editor ask you<\/i> for your query and sample pages. Anyone whose work (or identity) fits the criteria for a given event can participate.<\/p>\n

During a pitch party, agents and editors check out the event’s\u00a0designated hashtag and \u201clike\u201d any pitches that intrigue them. If you get a like from an agent or publisher, congratulations\u2014you’ve been\u00a0invited to send them your query and whatever else they request.\u00a0Even better, some agents and editors who are closed to queries will still participate in pitch parties and make requests.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So, do\u00a0these actually work for anyone?<\/b><\/p>\n

Oh yes.\u00a0I\u2019ve had\u00a0several agent and editor requests for different manuscripts over the years. And during #SFFPit in the summer of 2019, I connected with Parliament House Press; they ultimately made an offer of publication on my novel Tidepool<\/i>.<\/a> I don\u2019t know the exact stats, but plenty of writers have landed agents and publishers this way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no guarantee of success, but you\u2019ll never know if you don\u2019t try.<\/p>\n

Sounds great!\u00a0Soooo…what’s a pitch?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Think of the book jacket blurbs meant to entice readers, only pared\u00a0way down to fit Twitter\u2019s 280-character limit.<\/p>\n

Here’s the\u00a0Tweet that got me the request from Parliament House for\u00a0Tidepool<\/i>:<\/p>\n

Gender-flipped Lovecraftian dark fantasy meets American Horror Story: Sorrow Hamilton\u2019s search for her brother leads her to an ocean town and a deadly discovery. And the town\u2019s denizens\u2014human and otherwise\u2014are hellbent on making sure Sorrow never leaves. #SFFPit #A #DF<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Namechecking Lovecraft and AHS gave agents and editors an idea about what to expect. Many participants work at least one\u00a0author, book, TV show, or movie into their pitches.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although you don\u2019t have to do this, I put my MC\u2019s name in there because\u2014if I do say so myself\u2014it\u2019s a pretty cool name that tended to make people go Ooooh!<\/i> when I\u2019d talk about the book. If there’s anything about your book you think is especially unusual or attention-grabbing, try to include\u00a0it in\u00a0the pitch. Never forget that agents and editors are going to see tons of pitches that day, and a lot of them start sounding same-y after a while. Anything<\/em> you can do to stand out is helpful.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I also mentioned what\u2019s motivating Sorrow (her beloved brother is missing), and the big conflict she faces in the course of the story. If you can work\u00a0your MC, their goal, and the story’s stakes (what will happen if they don\u2019t<\/i> achieve their goal) into 280 characters, you\u2019re well on your way to an effective pitch.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Because this was #SFFPit, which\u00a0is for science fiction and fantasy, I added the following hashtags: #SFFPit #A #DF<\/b>. #SFFPit was the pitch party itself, #A stands for adult genre (as opposed to middle grade or young adult), and #DF stands for dark fantasy, Tidepool\u2019<\/i>s particular flavor of fantasy. Those hashtags are critical; without them, agents and editors won\u2019t see your pitch at all or know your genre or subcategory.<\/p>\n

And yes, the required hashtags\u00a0will cut even further into your already dinky 280-character limit. Sorry.<\/p>\n

(Don\u2019t worry: you don\u2019t have to memorize all those letters. Pitch party homepages will list all the\u00a0pertinent hashtags.)<\/p>\n

No, crafting a Twitter pitch is not easy. Like, at all<\/em>. But being able to sum up your work concisely is a skill you\u2019re going to have to call on again and again as you look for representation and publication, and pitch parties are good practice for this.<\/p>\n

And hey, it could be harder; the very first pitches I crafted had to fit Twitter\u2019s old 140<\/strong>-character limit. Oy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of the larger pitch parties offer practice days to post pitches\u00a0and get feedback from other writers before the big day itself. If you are new to pitching, I strongly suggest you try these out if they\u2019re available.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Twitter Pitch Party DOs and DON\u2019Ts.\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

The DOs.\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

First and foremost, DO have a manuscript that\u2019s revised, polished, and ready to send to an agent or an editor, and have\u00a0your\u00a0query and synopsis ready too. You never know what someone will want to see.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

DO check out a pitch party’s homepage to see what types of works qualify and what their specific rules are.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

DO create\u00a0a few different pitches. Aside from the fact that Twitter won\u2019t let you post identical Tweets, it\u2019s a good idea to vary your pitches and note which ones get the most retweets and\/or likes.<\/p>\n

DO look at an agent or editor\u2019s Twitter feed if they like your pitch. They\u2019ll tell you how to submit your query and\u00a0whatever other material they want to see.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

(And you might even get a surprise. I was baffled when an agent who only repped MG and YA kept liking one of my adult horror pitches during #PitDark; when I checked her Twitter feed, she mentioned she was branching out into some adult genres. Glad I looked!)<\/p>\n

DO research any agent or editor you\u2019re considering. Nobody can control who shows up to these events, and unfortunately there’s no way to\u00a0stop unscrupulous agents or editors from liking pitches. Do your due diligence, people.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

DO send any agents or editors you want to work with the requested materials ASAP.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now for the DON\u2019Ts:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

DON\u2019T pitch agents or editors directly. They will not appreciate it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

DON\u2019T “like” other people\u2019s pitches; that\u2019s for agents and editors, and it can be a letdown for writers to see that none of the likes they\u00a0got were from publishing professionals. Retweeting is generally considered the best way to show support.\u00a0(Personally, I’m not terribly bothered by\u00a0non-agent likes. But others are, so be careful with that heart button.)<\/p>\n

DON\u2019T feed the trolls. Because this is the Internet and some people can\u2019t help but suck out loud, someone might show up and snark about\u00a0your pitch or use the event hashtag to Tweet verbal vomit about agents and writers in general. This doesn’t happen a lot, but if it does, block these idiots and move on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

DON\u2019T submit to any agent or editor you don\u2019t want to work with, whether they\u2019re legit or not.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

DON\u2019T despair if your pitch gets no likes. Twitter pitch parties are extremely popular\u2014and busy. Agents and editors can\u2019t possibly see all the pitches that go flying by, and a lack of likes doesn\u2019t mean your novel is hopeless.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And that leads me to my final point:<\/p>\n

DON\u2019T substitute Twitter pitch parties for cold\u00a0<\/span>querying. Some agents and editors don\u2019t participate in pitch parties at all, and even the ones who do are never going to be able to catch everything they might be interested in.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been bad about that in the last couple of years, and in 2020 I\u2019ve resolved to get better. I\u2019ll still be a pitch party animal as I search for an agent, but I\u2019ll supplement it with plenty of traditional querying. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

OK, I\u2019m sold. What pitch parties are out there?<\/b><\/p>\n

The following is a by-no-means-exhaustive list of Twitter pitch parties throughout the year; some take place several times a year. New ones crop up all the time, and defunct ones are sometimes resurrected. Hope you find at least one that suits your work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

#PitMad<\/a>:\u00a0For all writers and genres. I don\u2019t know if this was the first pitch party, but it\u2019s definitely one of the biggest.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

#DVPit<\/a>: For self-identifying, historically marginalized and underrepresented authors & illustrators.<\/p>\n

#PitDark<\/a>: For literature with a dark bent. (Not surprisingly, I really like this one.)<\/p>\n

#SFFPit<\/a>: For works of science fiction and fantasy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

#KissPitch<\/a>: \u00a0For works of romance or women\u2019s fiction.<\/p>\n

#IWSGPit<\/a>: Hosted by the Insecure Writers Support Group; I don\u2019t believe there are any genre limitations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

#FaithPitch<\/a>: For works\u00a0of Christian fiction and nonfiction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

#PBPit<\/a>: For picture books.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Good luck! If you have any questions or something to add, please let me know in the comments or visit me on Twitter, where I go by @insomnicole. If you want to read more writing from me, please sign up for my mailing list<\/a>. I won’t spam you, but you will get a short story of mine just for signing up!<\/p>\n

Thanks, and happy pitching.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Update 7\/18\/2024: OK, a lot has changed since I first wrote this piece. Twitter isn’t actually called Twitter anymore, but\u00a0the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[40,11,19,15],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=943"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2094,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions\/2094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}