Pitch Events: To Pitch or Not to Pitch

  • By: Jessica Faust | Date: Jan 08 2019

Pitch events have become increasingly popular over the past few years. For those not familiar, these events usually take place on Twitter. During the day of the event, authors, using the assigned hashtag, Tweet the pitch for their books. Agents or editors interested in reading more “like” the pitch and direct the author on how to send more material.

I can proudly say that I think almost every BookEnds agent has signed an author whose pitch they liked.

That being said, a reader asks:

Hiya, if you have the time to address this, what’s the general feeling on pitch contests from agents, these days? It feels like (from the writer’s side) that there are more Twitter pitch contests than ever, but also less agents participating than ever (especially in adult categories).

Has this method of pitching run its course? Did it ever have any advantages over querying?
I honestly can’t say whether or not there is more or less agent participation. At BookEnds we try to keep track of when pitch events are happening and remind each other about them. Whether or not every agent attends depends on our schedules. The truth is, our clients and the work we do for them always needs to come first and sometimes a pitch event doesn’t align with what we need to get done that day.
I don’t know that pitching on Twitter has run its course, but I also don’t think it’s always the most effective way of reaching agents. I still think querying is best and even if you are pitching at an event, I would encourage authors to continue sending queries.
Since pitch contests are usually a one or two-day event you can’t guarantee that an agent you want to work with will have the time to get on or find your pitch. I know I often struggle to get through the list even when I do get there. So my suggestion, keep querying. Keep pitching, keep querying, and keep participating in all available avenues to reaching agents. You just never know what will grab someone’s attention.