Welcome to the Year of Fearless Writing!

Puzzle pieces

If you’ve been following along with the Year of Fearless Writing, you know that we’ve been giving you pieces to a book-shaped (anthology-shaped, chapbook-shaped, longform essay-shaped… you get the picture) puzzle for the last few months. This month, we’re pulling it all together and getting you set up to send out a pitch-perfect pitch.

You’ve got your submissions spreadsheet. You know which publishers or publications are a great fit for your work. You have a short bio on hand, and you’ve got your summary. But how does it fit together?

CAUTION: Every pitch is different, and every person you’re going to pitch in your life will have slightly different requirements. In fact, a pitch for the same project, to three people, will probably need to look three different ways. Always refer to the available documentation from the person you’re pitching! Treat this month’s post as a general guide only.

What is a pitch?

First of all, let’s get some definitions on paper, so to speak. There’s a difference between a pitch, a query, and a submission.

Pitch: You’re approaching somebody (possibly a complete stranger, possibly somebody in your network) with an idea for a story, essay, article, or book. “I want to write this, and I want you to publish it.”

Query: You’re approaching somebody who has said, “I want to buy/sell things (articles, books) like X,” by saying, “I have written such a thing, and I want you to buy/sell it.”

Submission: Somebody has asked for a specific thing, you have tried to produce that specific thing, and now you’re giving them the chance to see if it’s exactly the thing they want. The thing can be as broad as “a science fiction story,” or as narrow as, “a fairy tale retelling in exactly this many words that includes a witch and a candlestick.”

We talked a little about anthology and contest-style submissions earlier in the Year of Fearless Writing, and we hope you’ve already got a good handle on them. In this post we are focusing on pitches and queries, and for the purposes of preparing them it makes sense to treat them as nearly synonymous. (Another way to look at it is to say that a query is a pitch for a completed piece.) You’ll most often see us using pitch to refer to long and short nonfiction, and query to refer to long fiction (short fiction is usually handled via submissions).

How complete should your work be?

One thing that differentiates pitching nonfiction from querying fiction is the state of completeness of the project. The following is a guide. Always refer to the website or other documentation from the person you’re querying for what they require.

Magazine articles: Usually you are pitching an idea—something you have not yet written. In essence, you are asking the magazine to compensate you for the time it takes to write the article.

Nonfiction books: The book usually does not need to be complete before pitching it to a publisher or agent, but you will probably need to include certain information:

• The table of contents (indicates the scope of the book)
• A summary of the book’s eventual content
• A sample chapter (demonstrates your writing style and skill)
• Your bio and credentials (establishes why you are the right person to write this book)

Fiction books: In most cases, agents want your work of fiction to be complete and in the best possible shape before they see it. (The same, of course, holds true for submissions of shorter works.) This is especially true for genre writers and for new (debut) writers. What you need to include will vary, but before you begin sending out queries, you ought to have handy:

• The complete book
• A sample chapter or chapters
• A summary
• Your bio

Who do you pitch?

Who you pitch to will depend on the format of your work (article/short story vs book-length work) and the genre (not just nonfiction or fiction, but all the subgenres of each one, like memoir or horror).

Articles and short stories

This might sound basic, but pitch your article to places that publish the genre and length of work you are interested in writing. Magazines and web publications usually have guidelines posted online that will tell you what they are (and sometimes, what they are not) looking for. They will also have the contact information for the editor or editors that accept unsolicited pitches and queries.

If you have (or once you make) a relationship with an editor, you’ll have an easier time pitching to the same publication again. And if you’ve networked your way into a group that includes magazine editors, see if you can trade a favor in and have one of them skim your pitch, especially if they work for the publication you want to pitch. Don’t expect unpaid work, though: compensate them in cash or in kind.

Book-length works

There are two main places to pitch (or query) books:

• To the publisher. Make sure the publisher accepts unagented submissions first! Otherwise, your pitch will be rejected out of hand.
• To an agent. Agents are like temp agencies: they work on your behalf to match you with prospective publishers. Having an agent lets a publisher know that somebody is willing to vouch for the quality of your work. Each agent is different; do your research to find out who will be as excited about your work as you are.

Start by looking for publishers that publish in your genre and/or agents that are accepting queries in your genre. Check out a publisher’s or agent’s “Authors” page—they often list their clients. Look for books that are similar to yours. Start with a list of at least ten publishers or agents that seem like a good fit, but don’t stop there: you need to be ready to turn around and send your query to the next agent on your list until you finally get that bite! It can take a long time, so whatever you do, don’t stop writing in the meantime. Prospective agents may want to know what else you are working on, but more than that, your next book might be more marketable than the first one. There’s no rule that says you can only pitch one book at a time.

What goes in your pitch?

There are dozens of sites out there that dive deeply into the anatomy of a good pitch or query letter, but it all boils down to this:

Do your homework

Read the submission guidelines carefully. Every publisher and agent has their own preferences, and you want to follow their guidelines exactly, or you’ll risk a form rejection. They will tell you what information to include (sample pages? summary? CV? attachments or in the body of an email?) and how to format it (margins, font type and size, headers and footers, etc.). This isn’t a time to be cute or creative. Do exactly as the publisher or agent asks. Remember they read hundreds of pages of manuscript a day; make it easy on them so they can take it easy on you.

Check your content

While every agent, editor or publisher will have their own favorite nuance and order, here’s the basic structure of a pitch:

1. Hi, I am ___.
2. This is what I’ve written/want to write.
3. This is why you love it.
4. This is why I’m the right person to write it.
5. Thank you for your time.
6. PS: here’s my sample.

That’s it. An introduction, a blurb or brief summary, your bio, and a gracious thank you. Agents and publishers receive thousands of queries a year. They read them fast and archive them faster; don’t make their eyes glaze over when faced with a giant wall of text.

For a deeper dive into the anatomy of a query letter, check out these resources:

• Jane Friedman: The complete guide to query letters  – Jane gives a great, detailed overview of a typical query letter.
• Writers Digest: How to write the perfect query letter – This article includes an analysis of a successful query letter paragraph by paragraph.
• Query Shark – This blog takes apart poorly written queries and gives suggestions for putting them back together, all with a generous helping of humor.

Calendar your follow-up

Once you’ve sent your query, it’s time to go back to your submissions spreadsheet—you do have a submissions spreadsheet, yes? Note the date you sent your pitch, the expected response time, and any notes you might have, such as if/when to follow up or whether a non-response should be taken as a rejection. Usually this will be described on an agent or publisher’s site. For more frequent publications, like magazines or websites, you’ll need to make the call about what’s a reasonable amount of time to hear back in. You’ll need to pitch your article somewhere else before it goes stale, if it’s responsive to a recent news item or piece of media.

A note on rejections

Rejections happen to all of us, and they suck. They totally suck. [Ed’s note: also they are the literal worst.] Still, there are two things you should never do when you get one:

Do not respond to the agent or publisher. Do not argue with their decision. And definitely don’t tell them why they’re the worst and they’re too stupid to appreciate you. It will never help you, and in the end you will almost certainly ruin any chance you may have had to work with this person (or other people: editors talk to each other) on future projects. The only exception to the no-response rule is if you receive a personal rejection (not a form letter) with feedback, in which case it is appropriate to write a brief thank you. This will help make you memorable and appear gracious and easy to work with. Treat this rejection like gold: it’s saying that even though they couldn’t publish this piece, they believe in your work.

Do not, under any circumstances, badmouth an editor, agent, or publisher in public. It’s unprofessional, for one thing, but also it’s a small field; industry professionals talk, and they will blackball you. Do not gripe on social media, even in a closed Facebook group. Remember that editors and publishers are also writers; they might be in the same Facebook groups you are. Your best (and most professional) bet is to assume that anything you say on social media is going to reach other editors.

What’s your fallback plan?

Whether you are pitching an article to a magazine or a novel to an agent, there will come a point where you might just need to set the project aside. Be prepared with a fallback plan. Do you make another round of edits before sending it out again? Do you self-publish? Or do you just move on to the next project? These are all legitimate options.

But how do you know when it’s time to reevaluate your pitch? With magazine articles, if you’ve been pitching the same thing for more than three months, it’s probably no longer timely—unless it’s an evergreen topic. (But consider, also, that evergreen topics are also everpresent. That is, your take on the subject will have to be unique to pique a publisher’s interest.) For books, you might need to take a long hard look at the market. What was hot three years ago when you wrote your vampire-mermaid paranormal romance might just not be interesting anymore. Or you might need to publish something a little more commercially accessible before a publisher is willing to take a chance on your thousand-page tome. Keep that beloved book on the back burner until you’ve proven yourself in the market. While there are JK Rowlings out there who just keep pitching that first book until it finds a home, there are also Andrew Vachsses and Jim Butchers, who ended up publishing their first-written novels well after a later series was successful.

Your current project does not have to be your last—or your only—project. Keep on writing, keep on pitching. You’re only going to get better from here.

You can do this

Your assignment for this month is to write a pitch for your #1 project.

Use the template we gave you above or refer to the specific list of actual requirements from your dream agent or bucket list publication. Don’t forget to adjust your pitch for the market you’re interested in—check out last month’s post for some help cleaning up and targeting your summary or description of your work. Feel free to share in the Coffeehouse and ask for feedback.

Bonus points if you actually send out your pitch, but you’ll have to tally those yourself because we’re not going to make you report back. It’s scary enough just hitting that “send” button; you don’t need us looking over your shoulder!

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