I’ve had a twitter account and I understand the whole 140 and hashtag thing. I’ve also pitched my novels. Twitter pitching is the perfect marriage of the two. The format forces you to pick the best your manuscript has to offer and be succinct in 140 characters. Er, make that 135, because you’ve got to get the hashtag in there.
Writers had an opportunity to Twitter Pitch in an event arranged by The Writer’s Voice Contest coaches. (Please don’t just randomly pitch agents on twitter.) #WVTP was our ticket to the group.
I read a number of the linked blogs, prepared my pitch, ran it by my CP, ran it through a test tweet box for character count and then at the appointed time, lurked to get the gist.
Impressive pitching out there. I picked up a few tips:
What you say: It’s got to have the who, the conflict and the stakes. After that, a little setting or genre hints help, but key to setting you apart is your particular voice. You’ve just got to play with the words for that one.
Timing: Keep up with the feed and note when the agent of your interest comes on and pitch while he/she is fresh.
Persistence: One agent noted she’d seen the pitch all day, please send a partial. Then another said she’d seen too much, please those who hadn’t pitched much, do so now.
Variety: Present your pitch from a number of different directions. I discovered Twitter won’t let you post the exact same wording twice. Or my Twitter won’t. The writers that used this technique had a presence that wasn’t annoying. (To me anyway, jumping on and off.)
So, my tries—yes, I changed that pitch throughout the day—didn’t garner an agent’s attention, but I did pick up some great ideas for what does.
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