What is #PitMad?
#PitMad is upon us, yet again! For those who may be new to the writing community or Twitter, #PitMad is a quarterly event where writers tweet elevator pitches for their manuscripts to agents between 8 am and 8 pm EST on specific dates. You can tweet up to three times throughout the day using the same 280-character pitch or two to three different ones—it’s up to you.
Before you join the action though, make sure your work meets the criteria:
Completed: The work is finished and you’ve written “The End” after the final sentence of the last chapter.
Polished: There are minimal to no grammatical mistakes in your manuscript.
Unpublished: A work that has never been put for sale, has an ISBN or ASIN number, or that you’ve received any kind of payment from. It’s also important to note that if a portion of your longer work has been previously published and that portion makes up more than 20% of the manuscript PitMad classifies this as published.
This way if an agent or editor favorites one of your tweets you’re ready to send them your manuscript ASAP and they feel confident that the work you’re sending them is solid. How will they find your pitches? This is where things get even more challenging. Within your 280-character tweet, you’ll want to include the #PitMad hashtag, along with age- and genre-specific hashtags. Agents will be searching for specific hashtags depending on the kinds of books they represent.
Have more questions? The folks at Pitch Wars have you covered. They have a ton of resources to help you craft pitches, info about event etiquette, hashtags to use, and more. Here are some quick links to their site to help you prepare:
Good luck!
