Can You Pitch In 140 Characters?

Can You Pitch In 140 Characters?

By Brad R. Cook

Have you ever heard of Pitch Madness?

What is the madness you ask? Pitch Madness is a sort-a-new phenonenom on Twitter. Brenda Drake @brendadrake organizes the madness a couple of times a year now. You can find out more here – http://www.brenda-drake.com/pitmad/ – or check out #PitMad.

Pitch Madness is chance to pitch your book to everyone at the same time. Agents, editors, and other writers scan through these pitches throughout the day and if an agent favorite’s your pitch then you submit!

As I tweeted that day – the madness of Pitch Madness is trying to get any work done during #PitMad

How Pitch Madness Helps –

You get to put your pitch out there and try to hook and agent, it’s kind of like going to a writer’s conference pitch session without the expense – but having said that this is no substitute for querying and pitching

You get a feel for what everyone is writing. I love to troll through and spot new trends in what people are writing. Does that mean they will turn into the trends of publishing? No, but it is another window into this crazy industry.

You get the best log line out of this process – once you have your book condensed into 140 characters

Warnings About Pitch Madness –

Do not try to do anything else on #PitMad days, you will undoubtedly sit in front of your pc or phone staring at Twitter, posting to twitter, retweeting other awesome ideas, or responding to the other writers and readers who love your idea.

At the end of the day a sinking feeling may overtake you from the rejection of not being favorited by an agent, and worse, you’ll see your friends who did get a nod to submit. However this is not a rejection of your work, only your pitch, or maybe the agent who reps your genre didn’t see your tweet. Don’t get discourage, go and traditionally query your top agents.

One of the hardest things a writer will do is condense a book into 140 characters. A synopsis is hard enough, trying to get 200 pages down to two, but try getting 200 pages into 140 characters.

In case you were wondering, this sentence is about 140 characters long, there isn’t a lot of letters to say anything. Don’t forget #pitmad

If you want to partake of Pitch Madness, and why not it is a lot of fun, keep checking in with Brenda Drake, and the hashtag #PitMad

Good luck with your pitches!

Brad R. Cook is a historical fantasy author and President of St. Louis Writers Guild. Please visit www.bradrcook.com , follow me on Twitter @bradrcook  https://twitter.com/bradrcook , or my tumblr page Thoughts from Midnight http://bradrcook.tumblr.com/

St. Louis Reflections http://www.stlbooks.com/B009271-1211-51/Review.aspx