Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Writers' Wednesday: Pitch Results & What's Being Requested

The results are in from Romance University's pitch session with Entangled Publishing last week, and I'm thrilled to say that one of their managing editors requested both novellas I pitched, SEX ON THE BEACH & TEQUILA SUNRISE! Very exciting :)

I think about half the pitches received requests from the Entangled editors, which is great news. I scanned the other posts to see which kind of works were requested (and which weren't). In a nutshell here are the results:

~Most commonly requested material: single-title full-length (above 75K) contemporaries, romantic suspense, a couple time travel romances, and a few historicals; category-length (50K-70K) contemporaries; and a few YA romances (Young Adult).

~Some reasons that material wasn't requested: Heroine was a teenager battling Lucifer (tough for her to win...); they had just acquired a story with a rock star heroine and didn't feel they could take another; they had just acquired a military romance series and didn't feel they could take another; pitch didn't follow the guidelines (longer than 3-5 sentences); heroine was sleeping around to try and get pregnant; the story started in the wrong place; too much telling and not enough showing; no editors were looking for a shape-shifter story; didn't want a story with the main character "waking up"; a 20-year age gap between H/H was too much; the person had already pitched the story before; writing "not strong enough."

Hope you find these results interesting - I know I did. If you're an author, definitely keep your eyes out for online pitch sessions. They are great ways to get past the email slush pile and get a fairly quick response to your query and sample pages. I'll mention one: Savvy Authors often has pitch sessions with both agents and editors - there are a few coming up this summer, and here's the link.

Good luck pitching, and keep on writing!

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