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For those who are wondering what on earth to do with Twitter, here’s a novel approach: pitch your book!
Pitch parties like #PitMad and #PitchMAS make use of Twitter’s hashtags to call attention to your 140-character hook and alert editors and agents to your manuscript’s availability. Those who are interested in what you have to say will favorite your tweet to indicate that you should contact them (via email) with a partial manuscript or query for further reading.
Think of the whole process like speed dating for books: You can hook up with agents and editors online, quickly gauging their interest in your book, and moving on from rejections more swiftly. Better yet, authors who successfully pitch during these online parties get to skip the slush pile altogether!
Some important things to keep in mind when pitching on Twitter:
- Make sure you pitch a completed novel that you’d be querying about anyway. Agents and editors only want to read about and vote on pitches for complete manuscripts.
- Be sure to use the hashtag for the pitch party you’re attending, or else agents and editors won’t see it.
- Vary your pitch’s wording up to three times throughout the day, to hook more readers.
- Literary Agent Carly Watters also urges writers to “include your book’s motivation, crisis and secret.”
So what does a good pitch look like? Here’s Carly Watters’ example, using Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland: Girl abducted by rabbit from family picnic to fight war in magical dimension. When put on trial for her life, will she wake up? #PitMad #YA
For more information on how to pitch your books on Twitter, check out http://bit.ly/1KGhYg4.
For information specifically related to the #PitMad event (which is open to all genres and takes place on December 1), go to http://www.brendadrake.com/pitmad/.
Interested in #PitchMAS? Head to http://pitchmas.blogspot.com for more info.
