TRANSCRIPT

You may have heard of pitch contests on Twitter/X such as #PBPit or #KidLitPit. In these one-day events, authors get to pitch their book through a tweet. And then if an agent or editor likes your tweet, you can then send your manuscript to that agent or editor whether or not they are open to submissions.

So the question is… Is it worth your time to enter these contests?

On the one hand, the tweet is more or less your one-sentence pitch that you’ve already crafted. So if that pitch is already complete (and strong), entering these contests takes very little time.

Plus… you can find a few success stories about authors who actually found an agent or publisher through one of these events.

On the other hand, getting noticed in these events seems highly unlikely. For the handful of agents or editors who say they’ll be scanning X that day, hundreds of writers will be pitching stories. What are the chances that your tweet will even get seen?

I entered a few these pitches and I heard nothing but crickets. Plus, I spent so much time that day desperately searching for a heart on my tweet and comparing my pitches to others that I didn’t spend any time working on my own writing.

At the end of the day, I just felt discouraged. I thought my stories sounded as interesting as the ones that did get hearts, so I couldn’t understand how not a single editor or agent could show any interest in any of my ideas.

After entering several pitch contests, I decided to stop and to focus on what I could control: following the Unstoppable Author Framework and the Rule of 3.

So those are my thoughts on Twitter pitches. What are your thoughts on them? 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 be sure to share the video with other aspiring picture book authors. Thanks.