Today we continue our seven-part series on pitching your book with Diane Holmes, where she helps talk you through some of the potential pitfalls you may encounter when trying to bring your work to print.
Part 2 is:
#2 “Son, I think you brought a knife to a gun fight.”
Translation: “There’s a basic understanding about what we’re going to do today, but you didn’t get the gunfighter’s memo. Whew, kinda embarrassing. Next time you need to bring the big (mental) guns and put away that butter knife.”
Reality: When agents and editors take pitches, they’re expecting to meet at a peer level. They’re the industry pro; you’re the writing pro. This means you’ve done your homework on book writing, pitching, and how this whole publishing industry-thing works.
When you haven’t become an expert on your part of the equation or don’t have a solid idea about what the other side does, it shows.
Of course, even when you’ve done this, you’re likely to feel nervous during a pitch. That’s actually not a problem. But not taking the time to thoroughly understand your genre, publishers’ needs, how agents work, what goes into a pitch…. That’s on you. Continue reading Avoiding Negative Responses To Your Book Pitch: Part 2