For any fellow disabled writers who may not have this on your radar, #PitchDis is currently ongoing. I’ve taken the below block directly from an email they sent to me and bolded the dates:
Pitches will only be accepted September 9 through 8pm EDT September 11. When the pitch window closes, it closes for good. The form link will be emailed to subscribers on September 9, and will also be posted on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, and pitchdis.com.
If you have any questions or need clarification about anything please email contactpitchdis@gmail.com
AI generated woman writer
#PitchDis is an opportunity for unrepresented disabled writers to post a 300 character pitch for a finished manuscript, basically any genre (you will indicate the genre in the form provided when submitting.)
Each writer can post up to 2 projects. Any over that will be deleted. Agents and editors who are participating will then review the posts and reach out by email if interested in seeing more.
Pitch events are always a long shot, but if you have a manuscript that is ready to go, and enough time to put together a 300 character (not word – character, think 2 well written, tight sentences) pitch, then you really don’t have anything to lose. Plus, I think it is good practice to work on a tight pitch for a work you’re going to be sending queries out for anyway.
You’ve written your book – congratulations, that’s a huge achievement!
After all that effort put into writing, you then:
Worked with an editor and did revisions
Worked with some beta readers and did revisions
Have researched other books in your genre.
You’re almost ready to hit the query road!
You are now going to need to write some query letters and in order to do that, you need to research what book agents are looking for. Two good places to start with that are:
Publishers Marketplace: https://www.publishersmarketplace.com/: subscription required, with a more limited ‘quick pass’ available for short-term research.
You need to be prepared to compare your book to already published books in the genre, e.g. what books would your manuscript sit on a shelf with in a book store? Do yourself a solid and have a very clear idea of what your genre is and what comparable books have been published in the last several years. How is your book similar to these recent books and what makes it different? An agent will want to know this, just as a publisher will want to.
The query process is part creative, part business, and all of it needs to be handled professionally. Set up a spreadsheet to track who you’ve sent your query to, when you sent it, when you can expect to hear back, and the response when you do hear back.
If you hear back from an agent, they will almost always be saying thank you, but no. It can be tough to hear so many people ‘pass’ on the manuscript you’ve spent so much time on – a little like having someone look at your child and say, “I hope that’s not the only one you had – but either way, I’m sure someone else will like it.”
These are the preliminary steps to preparing a query.
Writers spend a lot of time working in isolation. We’re also prone to self-doubt. We can quickly move from, “I just wrote something great! to “This is possibly the worst thing ever written, by anyone.”
Photo by Download a pic Donate a buck! ^ on Pexels.com
When we finally find an agent who offers to represent us or an independent publisher who offers us a contract, there is a level of validation, a temporary euphoria unlike any other. We tend to think, “Someone else likes what I wrote; my writing is going to reach readers!”
[If you bother to submit to agents/publishers, you hope to find readers.]
Writers tend to be creatives, and many of us are not also business people. We love the art or our pursuit and can forget that much of publishing – the agents, the printing/selling – are business for people trying to make a living (even if most of them also love the art of it); the agents and publishers at least need to break even rather than lose money. And in publishing these days, not losing money is harder and harder to achieve.
Recently, for example, the independent publisher who had signed me to publish the first two books in my mystery series decided that he could no longer keep things afloat. He’s shuttering his business and working on returning book rights to over 30 authors.
Also in the past year a well-known author’s agency decided they were severing ties with a list of their represented authors who they deemed as not ‘financially viable…enough’.
This is tough news to get. We work so hard, think we’ve finally made another level, only to find that through no fault of our own the landscape has shifted under our feet and we’ve at least metaphorically tumbled down the hill. That’s what it can feel like. It can also feel defeating and hard to keep motivated.
How can we help ourselves when we feel discouraged?
Take a moment to grieve: it’s a good idea to acknowledge the sense of loss that one feels when something that one has worked so hard for is suddenly gone. Like any loss, rather than ignoring it, allow for acknowledgment of it. Remember though, there is a line past which acknowledgement becomes wallowing. If you’ve quit writing for more than a few days, you need to get back to work.
Work with other writers: I find that making myself sit down with another writer, or joining a writing group to meet once a week (even to just discuss a work in progress), can provide motivation that working alone does not. That doesn’t mean I enjoy making myself do these things, but I admit they sustain me in writing when working alone might not.
Set new goals: the past is just that. Whatever hard work and steps you put into finding your first agent or publisher, can be re-harnessed to do the job again. The business of writing requires time and effort.
When discouraged, remind yourself how far you’ve come: Hundreds of thousands of people are working on writing books. If you’ve gotten as far as having an agent or publisher, you’ve made it further than 90+% of them. Don’t give up now.
A better deal is ahead: Ask most writers and they’ll tell you the more/longer they’ve been writing, the better their writing gets. As you grow in your experience you will have more to offer an agent/publisher and that will open new doors to you. Something better is on your horizon, as long as you keep working your way towards it.
If one writes a book, it will remain unseen by others without marketing (e.g. put it out there to agents/publishers or even directly to readers.) The book that eventually is published, though, just may find an audience. And that is an incredibly satisfying feeling.
The more writing and querying you do, the better you ought to get at doing what you’re doing. Sometimes the first written novel will not find an agent, but as a writer, you should also be working on your next book even while you are querying the first.
I’ve been writing a loooong time. When I was in high school, I was thrilled to be gifted an electronic typewriter with built-in correction tape [to be clear – this was state-of-the-art at the time]. By the time I was a senior, Dad, who was an early tech adopter, purchased our first family computer. I could not get him to understand how that didn’t help me as a writer unless he actually bought a printer. This was decades before publishers were taking electronic submissions, and with dial-up modems, it would have taken over a day to send a manuscript electronically and with the amount of electronic screaming the phone lines provided, no one would have put up with that for longer than it took to send a fax.
I mention this because newer writers sometimes ignore the foundational part of becoming a writer – practice writing. Lots, and lots, and lots of writing, revising, and reading, and learning, and practicing. I’m published now, but that took over two decades, three strokes and recovery from them, and time off for graduate degrees.
Malcolm Gladwell has posited that one requires 10,000 hours of practice to become established at something; this may not be true for everyone but when it comes to writing, there’s a lot to be said for practice, revision, and more writing.
It also helps to come to terms with the realization that some ideas are good without being novel-worthy and some characters are engaging but don’t have a story that’s compelling enough to earn readers.
Just because you’ve written something good doesn’t mean it’s good enough to find a traditional publisher.
Just because it’s good enough, doesn’t mean it will find a traditional publisher.
Your journey to becoming published requires as much persistence, research, and work as it does creative talent.
If your goal is to go the traditional publishing route, then writing the book is arquably only half of the work you have to do. Querying agents and independent publishers who are open to your genre and unagented queries, is hard work. I previously posted on how to write a compelling query letter – which needs to be on point at 300 words.
The first paragraph of your query letter should be changed to suit each individual and company that you send it to.
You may have to revise your letter 50 – 150+ times. Yep, it does get discouraging to get 75 people in a row telling you that while your manuscript is good, it’s just not what they’re looking for at this time.
I found this response on a thread where a new writer was asking people who had submitted, how many rejections they received:
“My first novel I queried -140 rejections, 0 offers. Second novel I queried – 40 rejections, 5 offers. Third novel- 10 rejections, 1 offer.
None of those novels were related, I just got better at timing and hitting the right audience during the hard part of research in the trenches.”
The more writing and querying you do, the better you ought to get at doing what you’re doing. Sometimes the first written novel will not find an agent, but as a writer, you should also be working on your next book even while you are querying the first.
Sometimes the second book gets picked up; sometimes it is the third. You can always resubmit your earlier work once you eventually do have a publishing record. People – including Steven King and Ellis Peters – have done variations of this.
Of course, you may also find that like Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, once you’re known for a particular genre/character, readers aren’t really interested in your ‘other’ ideas. Writers, like actors, can basically become typecast, e.g. known for a particular genre. Which is a bonus for sales of new work, and a curse if you want to write different kinds of things. Readers cannot be counted on to buy work that is outside the genre they initially loved you for.
Not that any of us early in our careers can really wrap our heads around the idea of resenting readers for loving us too much for a particular story we’ve created. That’s a future-you worry, right?
christyoslund 