#PitchMadness Whats the Deal?

I just had my first experience with #PitchMadness and wanted to share my experience with others who may be interested in doing a #Pitch, wondering what it even is, or just in general curious about how authors are getting agents and published in the world of Social Media!

On Feb 26 Brenda Drake opened up submissions for #PitchMadness! I had never even heard of this before but was super intrigued.
Here’s the deal:
– Participants had 24 hours to submit their entry on a participating blog (such as Brenda’s above)
– What do you need to enter? A 35-word (max) pitch and the first 250 words of your finished manuscript. If the 250th word falls in the middle of a sentence, go to the end of the sentence.

Once we submitted our pitches they had people read through EACH submission (there were over 800 submissions) and then teams had to bring that number down to their top 60 submissions.

For this Pitch they added a fun little twist, calling it the Mario Cart Edition where 4 teams drafted 15 submissions to be on their team to go to the next round.

The next rounds are where agents will make there picks and requests to authors for queries, sample chapters or full manuscripts (with a fun twist if there is more than 1 agent requesting an author)

So…all this to say a few things I learned:

1. First, I did not get picked as one of the top 60 (boohoo), however this was my first crack at a pitch so no harm no foul, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t like my submission (as they reiterated a few times they had a lot of great submissions and I choose to believe mine may have been one of them)
2. There are a lot of other authors out there in the same situation as me.  I am not alone in my quest to find an agent, get published and sell my manuscript, and I find that to be encouraging to know there are others who I can gripe with, celebrate with and ask advice from!
3. KNOW YOUR STORY!! There is an awesome link a fellow twitter friend shared with me about the “Elevator Pitch” that really had me thinking…what would I say if I had 30 seconds to explain my story?? The fact that I was like …worried me!
   
4. Other authors are willing to help! After not making it to the next round of #PitchMadness I asked a the twitter world what suggestions they would have to make your 35 word pitch stand out and I got some awesome feedback!

There are a few more Pitches coming up and I plan to feel more ready for these, such as #PitMad coming up in just a week!! I encourage all you authors to check it out and give it a try, there are a lot of stories I’ve read in the past few weeks of successful pitches bringing in agents to ordinary writers just like me and you!

Wishing you all luck in everything you do!

Until next time…

 

Amy Eversley