Thursday, April 15, 2010

Pitch Perfect

With the MWG conference this weekend, the topic of pitching to an agent came up at lunch after critique group last Tuesday. I mentioned that I had recently read some helpful posts about pitches on literary agent Nathan Bransford's blog and acquisitions editor Alan Rinzler's blog.

A critique buddy, Claudia, who will be at the conference this weekend, asked me to post links on my blog. So, here are the links:

Mr. Rinzler's March 29 post "Insider's Tips for Preparing and Delivering a Winning pitch," discusses preparing for the pitch and delivery. The main points that stick with me are: be short and convincing, talk about the book first and self second, practice, be polite, and listen.

Unfortunately, for some reason, the video of Nathan didn't show when I revisited his site, but if you read the comments in his April 1 post about "The Importance of the Pitch" you can get the gist of what he said.

Wishing you a "pitch perfect" weekend at the MWG conference, or wherever your path to publication takes you.

4 comments:

  1. Good luck to you, Claudia. I hope the pitch goes great!

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  2. I need to work on keeping it short-I just can't seem to keep from going on...and on...and on. (Probably why they said "No, thanks" to me for jury duty this week!)

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  3. Hi Cathy,
    Jury duty? This is too weird.
    I was supposed to report for jury duty a week ago Monday but the Friday before I got a call from someone in the clerk's office telling me not to report because they had too many jurors in the pool (I must've been in the shallow end).
    Anyway, I really thought it was because I went on and on when I filled out the pre-selection sheet.
    Donna

    ReplyDelete

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