There are two pitch parties coming up next month: PitMad and LatinxPitch. I’ve already participated in a couple parties, but I have more polished manuscripts to work with now. I’ve been doing even more research than usual on how to create strong pitches and participate in these events. Thought I’d share what I’ve learned and some resources.
What’s a Pitch Party?
An event on Twitter where you create tweets that pitch your completed, polished manuscripts. Most pitch parties take place over 12 hours (usually 8-8 or 9-9 EST), which gives you a lot of time to participate. All parties have rules you need to follow. Usually, those rules focus on how many times you can pitch the same manuscript and how many times you can pitch during the event.
To take part in a party, you need to use the correct hashtags when creating your tweets. For example, #PitMad or #LatinxPitch. You also should include genre and author hashtags, like #PB for picture books, #SF for Science Fiction, and #POC for person of color. Each party will have its own list of hashtags that you can use.
The goal of a pitch party is to get an agent or editor to like (heart) your pitch tweet(s). If they do, you can then query them and let them know that they had liked your party pitch. That personalization can help get you to the top of their query pile. Some agents and editors are also closed to unsolicited queries. So, a like at the party is enough to make your query “solicited.” Learn more about terminology here.
Note: Some participants try to get their tweets seen more often by doing a RT for RT plan with other participants. So, you retweet my pitch, I’ll retweet yours. I’m not a big fan of this approach, as it clutters the party hashtag and your profile. I only do this strategy with aspiring authors whose pitches I would have RT’d without the promise to do so; I keep a Twitter List of these participants to make their pitches easy to find. My main goal is to comment on pitches I like, rather than RT them. It’s a great community-building strategy, without the clutter.
What Should Be in a Pitch?
Pitches come in all forms, but there are some requirements:
- Can’t be more than 280 characters, which is the length of one tweet
- Needs to include the official party hashtag
- Needs to include genre hashtag(s)
What else should be included in the pitch?
- Who’s the MC? (main character)
- What’s their conflict?
- What’s at stake if this conflict isn’t resolved?
- If there’s space, include comps (Title A x Title B)
Other than these elements, matching the voice of the pitch to the voice of the story is a really great extra strategy. If your story is funny, include humor in your pitch. If it’s high fantasy, give a sense of the worldbuilding.
There are a lot of resources for creating a strong party pitch.
Check out this LatinxPitch post.
And this Manuscript Wish List post.
And this The Write Prompt post.
What’s My Strategy?
There are various ways to approach a pitch party. I’ve taken part in two so far (PitMad and PBPitch). Only received hearts from a very new publisher and a publisher that looked like a scam.
[Update from Future Erika: I received an editor like during PitMad (another PitMad, not my first one). I held off sending my query until seeing how LatinxPitch went. At LatinxPitch, I received an agent like, an editor like, and an editor retweet. I’m waiting to hear back from the agent before sending my manuscripts to the editors. Update from Future Future Erika: Received three likes from one agent and six editor likes during DVPit. Sent my query to the agent. PBPitch is next…]
My strategy this month is to spread out my pitches as much as possible.
I have 4 manuscripts I plan on pitching. For PitMad, I can pitch each one 3 times; for LatinxPitch, I can only pitch each one twice.
PitMad: I plan on posting my first pitch for each manuscript at the very beginning of the event. The first ten minutes. After that, I’ll spread out my 2nd and 3rd pitches for each manuscript throughout the event. I won’t post on the hour (9 AM, 10 AM), since that’s a standard of scheduled tweets. Instead, I’ll tweet across the hour (9:07, 10:23), so hopefully the hashtag will be moving at least a bit slower.
LatinxPitch: Since I can only post once in the morning and once in the afternoon for each of my manuscripts, I plan on taking a slower approach to pitching. I’ll pitch my first manuscript at the beginning of the event, but then slowly pitch the others throughout the morning. Then do the same in the afternoon. I assume this party will be much slower than PitMad, so I’ll be on the lookout for agent presence in the event when posting my pitches.
IMPORTANT: Make sure to pin your best pitch to your Twitter profile. That way, anyone who goes to your profile can quickly find your best pitch. To pin, just click the ellipses icon on your tweet and select “pin” in the options that appear. Also, don’t delete your tweets immediately after the event ends. For two different pitch parties, I received editor likes after the event ended. The same night, but after the deadline.
I recommend using TweetDeck during the events. That way, you can schedule your tweets to automatically go out. And, you can watch different feeds at once. For example, I have one feed that only shows party tweets that have at least 1 like. That way, I can get a sense of agent presence and interest. Also, PitMad moves at a dizzying pace of dozens of tweets and retweets a second. So, I only watch #PitMad #PB, so I only see PB pitches. Much easier on the eyes.
Best of luck to my fellow pitchers! If you have your own tips, feel free to share them in the comments.