I had a couple of comments on my last post with questions about the actual pitch so I thought I would share my strategy and how I framed it.

First, I made sure I knew who I was pitching before I sat down. Meaning I either knew information about clients or information about genres they have stated interest in. This may sound like a given, but I can’t stress enough how receptive the agents were to my stating knowledge about their clients or their interests. I have also read books by clients of two of the agents I pitched. That came in handy.

So, here’s how it went. I sat down, smiled, introduced myself, shook their hand and asked how they were doing. I didn’t just want to sit down and blurt out my pitch…okay, so I sort of did want to do that because I was so nervous. But I wanted to be friendly, make eye contact, smile, be polite, etc. Because even if they don’t like the pitch or the idea, making a personal connection is always a good thing.

Then, I told them why I chose to pitch them. “I decided to pitch you because you are the agent of [author], and I’m a huge fan. Plus, my work is in the same genre so I thought you might be interested.” Every time I mentioned a client’s name, instant connection. Their faces lit up, they smiled. For the ones where I mentioned only genre from reading their bios, they also seemed pleased I did my homework. But the ones where I mentioned actual clients seemed to make better impressions.

Then, I told them the genre, word count and title of the novel. And then I launched into my pitch.

The actual pitch was three sentences and about 20 seconds long. Some may say this is too short. Some may say this is too long. I tried coming up with the one sentence pitch, but I couldn’t get a sentence that properly conveyed my story. So, I went with three sentences. It hit all the high parts of the main plot thread. I didn’t want to go longer because I didn’t want to ramble and watch the agent’s eyes cross from confusion and/or boredom. Plus, I supplied quite a bit of information in those three sentences, and I didn’t want to overload it. One writer told me his pitch was 5 seconds. One author told me his was about a minute. So, I was somewhere in between.

Once I was done, I smiled again. I think I had a permanent grin on my face the whole time I was there. The nerves and excitement of it all had me very bubbly and goofy. The agents then asked me questions as soon as they heard the pitch. I mentioned those in the previous post.
I have to say that every single agent was very nice. They seemed to genuinely want to hear the pitches. They were nice about turning people down. Friendly, funny, willing to answer questions. I’d feel honored and lucky to be represented by any of the ones I met.

I also want to mention that the one sheets and the sample chapters did not come in handy. I did see others with one sheets, but I didn’t notice any agents taking any materials with them. The business cards, however, did come in handy. I handed out several of those to fellow writers and a couple of agents.

Anyway, I hope this information helps for anyone who is planning on attending a conference with pitch sessions. It’s a little scary, but I think it’s worth it. If anything, you get to meet some great people, make connections and have a tremendous experience. It’s a little slice of the publishing world. It’s overwhelming and amazing. I’ll do it again if I don’t get an agent this time around.

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Filed under: agents, conferences, pitch, writing