So you’re headed to a writing conference and have a chance to pitch to an agent.

Congratulations. I’m going to my first conference this summer, Writer’s Digest 2022, and understand the nerves. Oh, the anxiety!

I’m going to compile the best strategies and advice I’ve found for preparing to pitch to an agent.

Next month and next post: an update with how it went and what I learned.

Let’s do this, people.

Advice From the Industry

You don’t want advice from me, here. I’m a mere tadpole in this game.

So what’s on tap is a curated collection of advice from the frogs, the industry veterans.

To start, we’ll look at advice from Janet Reid, the literary agent who runs The Query Shark.

The Query Shark is a blog by Reid where she critiques query letters. It’s a public archive and very useful.

You can peruse the archives yourself, which I recommend, but you’ll also find a good distillation of her advice here.

But we’re more focused on in person pitches than queries. I bring up Janet because there’s definitely a correlation between a strong query and a strong pitch. Both will allow you to get to the meat of your story and shine light on the other.

I bring up Janet because she’s been helping revise my query letter for the last year (yes, year) and I mentioned I was going to the 2022 WD Conference.

She was quick to point out the difference between a written query and a pitch.

Pitching and querying are related but they are NOT the same. A good pitch is VERY SHORT.

Two or three sentences about your book.

Then give the agent this info: The book is finished, the word count is X, and it’s (category).

THEN STOP TALKING!

Each agent will want to know something different. You can’t predict what they want to know so give them a chance to ask questions.

More than once I’ve seen authors so nervous they just yammered on, then time was up and I didn’t even get a chance to ask if the book was finished.

Janet Reid

This leads into some of the other advice I’ve read: a good pitch should evolve into a conversation.

I.e, it should flow and be natural.

It’s a back and forth, almost a team effort. Let the agent tease out what they want.

This wonderful advice begs the question: what should those two or three sentences be?

You may be aware of the logline, a Hollywood term that’s been creeping into the publishing world.

A logline is a one to two sentence summary of your story that also hooks the reader/listener.

You can find a good overview of the logline here. The main goal is to entice the listener into requesting the full story.

On a technical level, you want to introduce the main character, the set up and the central conflict in your story.

Now that we have a vague idea of what our pitch will look like (we’ll discuss more later), let’s break down the steps we can follow to prepare for our conference pitch, beginning to end.

Preparing For the Conference

Step by step, let’s go over of what we’re doing to get ready. Preparation is the name of the game.

Know the Structure of the Conference

A simple start: you need to know what the pitch session is going to look like so you can prepare accordingly. How many agents will there be? How many attendees?

Know how much time you’ll get with each agent. Three minutes, five minutes, ten? How long does the session last?

For example, I know the Writer’s Digest Pitch Slam session lasts one hour, and that people typically get six minutes with an agent – three minutes for their pitch, three minutes for feedback (typically).

So, if I have twenty minutes left, and there’s four to five people in my line, I may want to find a shorter line.

Vet Each Agent Thoroughly – And Prioritize

Know whose going to be attending. Also, know all you can about the agents attending. Know what they’re looking for, what their dream manuscript is, what deal they’ve made, the name of their firstborn (ok, you don’t need to know that).

Know why they might want to represent you. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement, after all.

Going off the last scenario, if I have to move to another agent, I’m not going to move to any old line. I’m moving to my next available, preferred agent. If I’m in line for my pick #3 but won’t make it, and #4 doesn’t look too good either, I’ll hop over to my #5 choice.

Maybe don’t tell the agents how callously you’ve ranked them, though.

Acquire and Prepare Your Materials

This includes your pitch but we’ll go more into that in the next step.

First, ensure your manuscript is polished and ready to go for when you get a request.

Second, adopt that mindset: I will have my manuscript requested… I will have my manuscript requested…

Don’t rest on your laurels, though.

Third, design and order business cards. Don’t be the person to hastily scribble down your email on a piece of scrap paper when an agent requests contact info.

My card looks like this:

But there’s plenty you can do with it.

It can have flair, a little humor, but it should be professional. Link to your own website and get a business email.

Write and Practice Your Pitch

We’ve gone over the logline which is what we’re going to use as inspiration for our own pitch.

I’m a firm believer in keeping this short, a la Reid’s advice.

I plan to take no more than 1 minute for my actual pitch so I can maximize the conversation time afterwards, as well as ask/answer questions.

I’d follow the same formula for writing your pitch as you would a larger story.

Write it, revise it, let it sit, revise it again, let it sit, etc.

And try and get feedback on it. Your conference may have a facebook group you can use.

Here’s my working logline:

‘High school graduate and ex grocery clerk extraordinaire, Basil Roper, embarks on his long awaited trip abroad, but his journey becomes a struggle to find meaning after being upended by a drug addict in Amsterdam.’

This is a rough go of it, because I want to publish this damn article. But it’s a start.

It also took me 15 seconds to read aloud.

I will probably follow it with this:

‘The book, Infinite Elephants, is upmarket fiction complete at 90,000 words.’

Then I’ll engage in a dialogue with the agent.

UPDATE: if you’re curious, my revised pitch, sprung from the logline, is below:

‘High school graduate with a degree in barely scraping by, Basil Roper, longs to escape suburbia and his dead end grocery job through travel. But the global adventure he scrimped and scrounged for becomes a struggle to find meaning in his life, as well as a struggle to uphold a precious friendship, after it’s upended by a samurai-sword wielding crackhead in Amsterdam.’

This version is not as succinct, but gives the main character in my character driven novel a little more motivation and backstory. I also added an external conflict and changed ‘drug addict’ to something more enticing.

This version takes me about 22 seconds to say aloud, 30 with my novels info.

Be Ready For Questions

And have questions ready to go.

You want to be an engaged, receptive partner in the pitching process, and half the benefit of your time with these agents is getting an insider’s view about the industry.

Prepare questions you may want to ask the agent if time allows.

Things like, How hands on are you with your clients? What does your editorial process look like? Any books I should read? And so on.

But an agent is also going to ask questions about you and your work, and you should be prepared to field these questions.

I’m a strong believer in a faux pitch session for practice. I did one with my mom (love you, mom) and it helped tons. She hit me with questions I wasn’t ready for. If that had happened at the actual conference, I may have faltered.

Here’s an important article on questions an agent may ask you.

Think about your work, though, and try and guess what might come your way, specifically.

Know your work inside and out and believe in it. No one can answer these questions like you can.

And… Voilà!

Get your travel plans squared away, polish and practice that pitch, and ship out to the conference.

There may be a workshop to help with your pitch before the event. Look into that.

Lastly, take a deep breath.

It’s all going to be alright.