Pitch Basics from Literary Agent Logan Garrison

How are your pitches going? Have you been in the forum getting feedback to really make them strong and shiny for the upcoming Pitch-Fest?

Our critique boards are open year-round, but are especially hopping during our conference and other events. The Perfect Your Pitch workshop runs until March 10, and then we’ll be taking your submissions for three days, from March 11 – 13. We’ll be randomly drawing 325 pitches for the Pitch-Fest, so don’t stress about what time zone you live in. It’s not a first-come, first-served type of thing! You can submit anytime from March 11 – 13.

Then we’ll be taking a breather as we prep the forums for the actual Pitch-Fest, which will begin on Monday, March 18 and run through Friday, March 22.

We’ve been giving tips and tricks from literary agents and other professionals. You can find links to all of those here.

Up today, we have literary agent Logan Garrison of The Gernert Company here to share with us how to prepare your letter so that it’s as perfect as possible.

Anything over about a page (and I mean that in the 12pt font double-spaced kind of way your teachers always meant it–no cheating!) tends to just get glazed over by whatever assistant or intern happens to be screening queries. I wish it weren’t that way, but as someone who handles a very high volume of queries every week, I can assure you that it is.

The best queries, to me, are the ones that have an intro sentence that peaks my interest (usually a quote from the work or your one sentence pitch of it), a short summary of the work, a brief paragraph on the intended audience, and then a quick bio of the author.

Be ruthless with your letter. Cut and cut and cut, then hand it off to someone else and ask them to be ruthless. It hurts, but it’s so valuable to just get it cut to the bare bones—you’re much more likely to grab someone’s interest that way.

Thanks, Logan!

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