This material was originally published in the Making the Perfect Pitch: How to Catch a Literary Agent’s Eye, edited by Katharine Sands

Pitch Perfect
by Jandy Nelson

Years ago, I received a query letter that began:

“I am a Vietnamese American man, a witness to the Fall of Saigon, a prisoner of war, an escapee, a first generation immigrant, and an eternal refugee. After my sister committed suicide, I quit my job, sold all my possessions and embarked on a year-long bicycle journey, back to the land of my birth, to the memories of my sister and the battlefields of my own psyche. Catfish & Mandala is my story.”

I called for this manuscript immediately and so did every other agent to whom Andrew X. Pham had sent his letter. His query was “pitch perfect.” It simply and elegantly revealed story, style and most importantly his authentic narrative voice.

So, the love affair with your work begins with the pitch. And despite the fact that at Manus & Associates Literary Agency, we get over one thousand submissions a week, we are still looking to fall in love, to be swept off our feet by the promise of a great project.

As an agent, I spend a great deal of my time writing pitch letters to editors so I understand how difficult it can be to encapsulate an epic novel, to reveal the essence of great literary fiction, to determine the audience for prescriptive nonfiction, to do a competitive study of all the other similar books on the shelves. Editors like agents are inundated with submissions and I know my pitch letters need to intrigue, excite and evoke in the editor the passion that I feel for a project. And so do your letters for us.

An effective pitch goes a long way. If I like your pitch and use it to then pitch your book to editors, those editors will then use it with their editorial boards and sales/marketing departments to stir up in house enthusiasm for the project. And then, if the editor buys the book, that same pitch could be used to inspire the sales force who in turn uses it with book buyers across the country.

K. M. Soehnlein sent me a query letter years ago for his novel The World of Normal Boys. It began:

“When all the kids around him were coming of age, Robin MacKenzie was coming undone.”

What a great set-up! I was immediately gripped. When I then turned around and pitched the novel to editors, I used the same opening in my letter. When his editor then took on the book and began pitching the novel in house to marketing and publicity people, he used it as well. And now if you look on the book jacket, the flap copy begins with that same wonderful pitch. Your pitches to agents can be the beginning of a very long train enthusiasm so it really is worth it to take the same time and care with them as you did in writing your book or proposal.

 While there really are no simple rules to follow to write the perfect pitch letter, I am going to give you some brass tacks that might help you get started. Fiction and nonfiction pitch very differently (narrative nonfiction pitches like fiction). Nonfiction pitches need to cover four important elements:

1) What is the concept of the book?
2) Who is the audience and why do they need this book?
3) Why are you an authority? What credentials do you have that make you the expert in this field?
4) What differentiates this book from all other books on the topic?

In addition to these four elements, you will also want to reveal in your nonfiction pitch if you have an author platform. This is an existing audience for your proposed book that comes from your visibility or access to readers. Do you have a lecture circuit? Run workshops? Have a radio show? Do you have additional venues where you can sell your book?

Also, very important in the nonfiction pitch is a great title. I always think of the movie Shakespeare in Love where they joked that Romeo & Juliet was originally called Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter. Definitely don’t pitch your project to agents with Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter as a title, brainstorm with everyone you know until you find your Romeo & Juliet.

Here is an example of a strong nonfiction pitch I received:

Hot Flashes, Warm Bottles: A Guide for First Time Moms Over Forty is the first prescriptive guidebook for the multitudes of women who make up the growing ranks of midlife mothers. (ANSWERS WHAT IS THE BOOK, WHO IS THE AUDIENCE) The concerns of these women are unique; they are as different from the concerns of young mothers as they are from older mothers with grown children. (ANSWERS WHY DOES THE AUDIENCE NEED THE BOOK) Hot Flashes combines the candid and often hilarious anecdotes from the women in Nancy’s support groups with field-tested and mother approved advice. (ANSWERS IS THE AUTHOR AN AUTHORITY IN THE FIELD) Hot Flashes promises to be the bible for this growing demographic of women whose concerns are not yet addressed elsewhere — and who are actively seeking resources. (ANSWERS If THERE ARE OTHER COMPETITIVE TITLES)

I asked to see the proposal right away. This simple, straightforward pitch revealed what the book was, who the audience was, why the book was so important, so topical and so needed within the targeted community. It revealed the authors expertise and how the book differed from all the other parenting books on the market. All that in four sentences!

Pitching fiction and narrative nonfiction is trickier because it is less about convincing us there is a market, or of your expertise, and more about the quality of your writing and storytelling ability. That said, there still are more effective ways than others to pitch fiction. The biggest mistake I see writers making is confusing pitches with synopses. When pitching your novel, you do not want to give a detailed breakdown of the plot, character motivations, scene descriptions, etc. I know it’s daunting to think of breaking down your four hundred page masterpiece into a few sentences, but it is imperative. Remember how many queries we pass on in a week! Many novels can be broken down this way:

1) Set Up (Set the stage: who are the characters, where are they, what has been happening to them of late) Act 1
2) Hook (A turn of events that is compelling, pivotal in the plot, something which changes the course of the narrative) Act 2
3) Resolution (A Wrap Up that does give away your ending) Act 3

Here is an example of a fiction pitch for The World of Normal Boys by K.M. Soehnlein:

In a time when the teenagers around him are coming of age, Robin Mackenzie is coming undone. (SET UP) A terrible accident has jarringly awakened the Mackenzie family from the middle-American dream they have been living and suddenly each member of the family is spinning out of control. (Hook) Through the impeccably authentic narrative voice of thirteen-year-old Robin Mackenzie, Soehnlein tramples over the perfectly mowed lawn of Surburbia in the late 1970’s to reveal the emotional complexities that bind and unbind one family. (RESOLUTION)

For Dream of the Walled City by Lisa Huang Fleischman:

The daughter of the chief magistrate, Jade Virtue spends the first 10 years of her childhood without ever stepping outside the walls of the family’s great mansion. (SET UP) But after the mysterious death of her father, she and her family must embark on a new life in a rapidly changing China. (HOOK) With exquisite prose, Dream of the Walled City recounts the tumultuous life of Jade Virtue as she is swept into the torrent of historical events that mark early twentieth century China. (RESOLUTION)

Sometimes when pitching fiction and narrative nonfiction it helps to do a comparative pitch. Lisa Fleischman’s Dream of the Walled City could be pitched as a Chinese One Hundred Years of Solitude, The World of Normal Boys as a gay The Ice Storm. But when using a comparative pitch, you want to make sure to be accurate, to not say you are writing an Irish Joy Luck Club when you are writing about a Scottish expedition up Everest. And you don’t want to baffle with an impossible pitch like “my book is Chicken Soup for the Soul meets The Great Gatsby.”

While the author biography is essential for nonfiction pitches, fiction pitch letters are not the place for modesty. You want to mention if you’ve had stories published in magazines, have received an MFA, or if you have some experience that gives you an inside look into a particular arena. For instance, my client Laurie Lynn Drummond has written a collection of short stories Anything You Say Can and Will be Used Against You about women cops in Baton Rouge. The fact that she was a cop in Baton Rouge is an essential part of the pitch for her book even though it is fiction.

These are just some pointers. Ultimately, you need to take the care, the innovation and the passion with which you wrote your book to write your pitch letter. Your letter can be simple. It can be funny. It can be persuasive. It can be enthusiastic or quirky. It should be whatever works best to introduce your work to the world. Everyday, when I go through my mail, I hope there will be a letter that will make my heart beat a little faster.

I am not sure what it is exactly that makes me pick up the phone and call an author in a fit of enthusiasm to see their work, but it happens every day and it happens because of the strength of their letter. I hope tomorrow it will be your letter that does it!