The Pitch:

So You Want To Publish A Novel

Winded is how I sometimes feel when pitching my debut novel to agents and small press.

I recently attended a virtual writing conference to pitch my debut novel to two agents via Zoom. It reminded me of trying to land a major airline job. Many pilots don’t get their dream job for an assortment of reasons. It’s the same for novelists. They either never publish or they self publish and struggle to break even.

Writers and pilots have a lot in common. They tend to have a good deal of experience under their belts, work on their craft diligently to improve, but still get rejected or ignored. Even when passionate about what they do, there is no guarantee of success.

When I first started flying, I couldn’t imagine not being in the air. I loved it. Once I got my private pilot license, I immediately started working on my commercial rating because I could fly by myself for some of it. I’ll never forget that time in the air all alone. I miss it. Writing is much the same. It requires lots of alone time, cranking out scenes then tearing them apart and putting them back together again, word by word.

The driest place on earth: the Namibian desert. What alone can feel like.

Improving one’s skills in both fields never ends. Last week at book club, a famous author, Jamie Ford, talked about how every time he writes a new book, he suffers impostor syndrome. “It isn’t such a bad thing,” he added. It motivates him to be a better writer.

I recently learned a good lesson about how NOT to pitch my book. A reputable agent, who attends writing conferences in search of new talent, patiently listened to me during my ten-minute slot at the conference. Afterwards, she wrote an essay (for Substack) on how most of us lost her attention within the first sentence.

“It’s supposed to be a conversation, not a monologue,” she wrote. I was getting over a horrible cold and worried that I might have a coughing fit at any moment. I had a water bottle next to me and my IPad, with my two-paragraph book description, below my computer screen. I used it like a teleprompter, reading my pitch and glancing up occasionally to make eye contact with her.

When I finished, she asked a curveball question: what are you working on now? I told her about my short stories, then shared that I had two-thirds of my next novel drafted. “Tell me about it,” she said. I was completely unprepared for this question. I described the highlights of my next project and noticed my own excitement bubbling over as I told her.

“I love that story,” she said. “OK. Send me your pages.”

The whole experience threw me off. And then I read her essay. I think what she meant was pitching a book requires some spontaneity, like telling a friend about a great read. When I went off script, I finally piqued her interest. It’s a daunting concept because memorizing a pitch is hard enough, but improvising? The more I thought about it, it made sense. And I have nothing to lose by trying it.

When I got hired at a major airline, I met six people over two days during the interview process. I had a conversation with each of them. Had I given them a bunch of cookie-cutter answers, I never would have gotten hired. I practiced with a former HR professional, keeping the heart of my stories the same but changing the words each time I said them. I suspect that agents and small press editors want to know about the book, but they also want to know about the person who wrote it and whether they can work with them. That’s when a conversation can come in handy.

Just yesterday morning, I got a rejection from that agent. She liked the premise of my book but found it wasn’t right for her. And so it goes. She gave me some rare guidance to tweak it. Sending me off with encouraging words, she wrote that my book “has real promise.”

I’m still waiting to hear from the other agent and hoping for additional feedback. In early September, I plan to attend another writing conference to take a stab at a conversational pitch. It’ll take some practice, but it’s worth a try. Whenever I’m disappointed by an outcome, I try to turn it around, to use it as a motivating moment. I find it unhelpful to turn inward and feel sorry for myself. I’ll tweak the first fifty pages of my debut novel again and pitch some more agents and small press because I want to get to yes.

Getting to yes: the top of Big Daddy, Namibia.