If you’re thinking of pitching your book anytime soon, like my pal EJ Murray, you’re going to need to learn a few things first. Here are my best tips & tricks for pitching your book.

1. Finish your manuscript! Nobody wants to get to the end of a pitch, decide they’d love to read more, and hear “Oh, I’m nearly finished.” That means you don’t even have a first draft, much less a decent edited copy to send them. If you have a non-fiction manuscript, you can get away with a decent proposal and around 10,000 words, but for fiction, you’ll need a completed manuscript.
2. Know your genre. Your agent is going to be pitching as well – they’ve got to sell your book to the publishing house. In order to do that, they (and you) need to know what genre it’s going to fall into, so they can pitch to the right editors and publishers. If you don’t have a clue, they won’t either, and they won’t be able to sell the book.
3. Know your approximate word count. Round it off to the nearest hundred words. This is important because each genre has an average word count and if you’re way over or way under, they probably won’t be able to sell your book.
4. Know your comparable titles. If your book is in your local Barnes & Noble, what books are going to be sitting around it? You should do enough research and reading so you’re familiar with what’s similar to your idea. You’re not going to get an exact match, but you should be able to say something like “My book would be next to Book X because we both do Y (or we both talk about Z).
5. Prepare for rejection. Your book is not going to appeal to everyone. The agent you’re talking to may not handle that specific type of book (“low” science fiction vs. “high” science fiction, for example), or may have something similar already in the works. Don’t take rejection personally. After all, you don’t actually want an agent or editor who doesn’t adore your manuscript, do you? If they’re lukewarm, they won’t be pushing the sales as much as if they loved it.

Your pitch should look something like this:

My novel, MY STORY, is a 100,000 word adult historical fiction novel about X. [Give a short description of your main character (maybe two) and the major conflict, then give a couple of plot points to entice the agent to ask for more] My comp titles would be Book Y because of Z.

Over the years, I’ve attended a lot of writing conferences, and one of my favorite types of sessions is the “How Not To Get Published” panel. This is where you put a bunch of published authors, editors, and agents at the table and ask them for their worst experiences. Not only do you have an hour of belly laughs, but you come away thinking that you can’t be all that bad compared to what you’ve just heard.

Here are 10 of my favorite manuscript submission stories … that actually happened.

Top 10 ways NOT to get your manuscript read:

10. Enclose a chocolate bar for the editor … to a publishing house based in Atlanta, GA … in July

9.  Fill the box containing your horror manuscript with tiny plastic spiders

8. Douse your romance manuscript in perfume

7. Address the package to “To Whom It May Concern”

6. Fill the box containing your manuscript with glitter and confetti

5. Enclose a bribe

4. Misspell the editor’s name

3. Print the entire manuscript in Lucida Handwriting

2. Cut the pages into a cute bunny shape

and the Number 1 way NOT to get your manuscript read …

 

…leave it in your desk drawer!

I attended my first writing conference last year. Oh, I’ve been going to DragonCon’s writing track for years, so I figured I’d pretty much heard everything I needed about writing. I was going for the chance to pitch my book to an agent or editor. Maybe I’d pick up a couple of new ideas, but I was paying for that face-time.

Boy, was I wrong.

I did meet a lot of agents and editors – and other authors, who are not only great people to talk with, but can help you connect with even more agents, authors, and editors. I did pitch my ideas, and even got positive results from all of them.

But I also learned more than just a couple of new ideas. We had lectures like “Treating Your Story’s Setting as a Main Character” and “Crafting a Gripping Opening” and “World Building 101.” We wrote, and we critiqued each other’s work. We shared ideas and websites and contact information.

We had classes on social media, and on publicizing yourself and your books. I think I learned more in one day than I’d learned in two years of playing around on Facebook. My Facebook author page – and I learned to set up a separate page for that instead of using my personal page – went from a few friends to over 3,000 in around six months, and it’s still growing.

If you’ve never attended a writing conference, save up the funds and go! You’ll learn a lot more than you think you will, plus you’ll meet all those people who will play an important role in your career later on. The contacts you make now can only help you in the future.

Plus, it’s just a whole lot of fun.

What’s the best conference you’ve ever attended — or the one you’ve always dreamed of attending?