TRANSCRIPT

Hi, before you can query an agent, especially for agents using QueryTracker (and I will tell you more about it in a future video), you need to know and write the following:

First is Audience. Who is your book targeting? This should include the age group as well as a specific audience if you have one, for example, children who are dealing with anxiety.

Second, a one-Sentence Pitch. How would you describe your book to someone in just one sentence?

Third, a Synopsis. This summarizes the plot of your story in an engaging way.

Four, comparable Books. You need to find books that have been published within the past two years that are similar to your manuscript. For this requirement, try to find books that aren’t too popular (you know, the ones everyone will be referencing), but also ones that aren't too obscure. And be sure that the comps are from the past year or two. Doing this not only helps to ground your manuscript in the agent’s mind, but it also shows that you’re a student of the industry and a person who takes their writing seriously. And just a side note here, when I say being a student of the industry, that doesn’t mean getting caught in any hype or drama taking place in the publishing industry. Anything happening in the industry itself is outside of your control, so ignore it and focus on what you can control.

When presenting your comps, I simply list similar titles. I’ve seen more descriptive approaches for doing comps, such as, “The humor of x meets the mystery of y.” My guess is that the descriptive approach is better, but I have no facts to support this. But, in the end, it doesn’t totally matter. If your description is fantastic, but your manuscript isn’t, you’ll still get a rejection.

And as always, proof everything you’ve written.

And here’s one more tip for writing your pitch and synopsis… While you can definitely find tons of resources online to help, you know what I mean, like articles and blog posts about it, I recommend visiting Amazon and Barnes & Noble and looking up books that are similar to yours. On these sites, you’ll find the recommended age groups, one-sentence pitches and summaries of the books. Read these and ask yourself… what makes a description engage you? What one-sentence pitch makes you want to read the book? Take what you learn from reviewing these book and apply it to your own pitches and synopses.

I know that this is a lot of work and, after spending days or weeks or months or years writing your manuscript and then additional time crafting your query letter, you may be tempted to get your pitch and synopsis finished and out of the way as quickly as possible. As appealing as this sounds, you’ll want to take your time and make sure these are as good as they can be. Imagine your synopsis is on the back cover of your published book. What would make a shopper in a bookstore want to buy your book after reading the description? That’s the level of writing you’re looking for. For the one-sentence pitch, imagine you’re in an elevator with the president of Scholastic. You have two floors to pitch your book to him. What could you say that would capture his imagination so thoroughly that he doesn’t let you leave the elevator until you sign a contract with Scholastic?

So what do you think makes a pitch compelling? Let me know in the comments. And as always, thank you so much for watching. If you got any value out of this video, like it, subscribe to my channel and share the video with other aspiring picture book authors.