Pitching - Part Two

Most romance authors pitch for the first time at Nationals. I’ve never been fortunate enough to attend the National RWA Conference (next year, baby – Atlanta- hoo wee). Apparently you have to do this in person and the editor and agents are right there in person looking at you. So you better wear something nice and hopefully have a good hair day.

I figure there are some advantages to pitching online.

Advantages to pitching online:

No one can hear your knees knock, see your sweaty palms or smell the results of your sweating.

If you’re a writer, you might do better with writing than speaking.

Misspellings can be excused as typos.

You can wear your PJs and fluffy slippers and no one is the wiser.

Some disadvantages:

No one can see you smile, and some people have a wonderful smile.

No one can hear your lovely speaking voice (assuming you have one, ahem).

It’s hard to exude warmth from behind a computer screen.

Some authors are technologically challenged.

Thought you might like to see my 99 word pitch too, so here it is:

A runway model turned café owner is about to lose her home to foreclosure. She won’t accept charity and won’t sell the café, the only thing that’s ever been truly hers. A ski contest with a sizable cash prize could be the answer. And she won’t let the fact that she hasn’t skied in years stop her. The deputy sheriff is a new Christian and wants to make up for his bad boy, checkered past. But the woman who needs him the most won’t trust him, even though he could show her everything she needs to be truly happy.

I’m still a student of the pitch and the query. It’s an entirely different skill set. It’s clear that pitching is important – while we learn our craft, we’ve also got to learn a little bit about marketing. The “pitch” is that all important marketing tool – the “back of the book blurb” and if you've done it right, it may actually sell your book.