Literary Speed Dating: pitching at the ASA

[noemz]

So, I did my pitch today at the offices of the Australian Society of Authors (in Mountain Street, Ultimo).

Basically you queue up to talk to an agent or publisher of your choice, and you get five minutes to sit down and pitch your book. They might ask you for your contact details, book proposal, sample chapters, etc. After five minutes, the horn goes off (and the entire room jumps, seriously) and you move on to the next agent or publisher (or rather, join another queue).

It was a really good experience, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to meet up with an agent or publisher, or even just for practice. It was pretty informal and friendly. The ASA is planning to run this every year, with the next one in November 2014.

Unfortunately for me, there was only really one publisher (Momentum Publishing) that was interested in fantasy novels, so I didn't have a lot of people to talk to. Well okay, I got to talk to a lot of writers while waiting in queues.

[Marina]

I'm guessing this kind of thing probably works better in America, where there are a lot more publishers!

Shame there was only one who was interested in fantasy. Were you pitching a straight novel or a graphic one?

Marina

[noemz]

Just a regular epic fantasy novel. Harpercollins wasn't there; I wouldn't mind pitching for their Voyager imprint. Hatchette has "Orbit" but the queue got too long and I missed out on talking to them.

I did get the name of a Curtis Brown agent who does science fiction and fantasy, though.

Of course, I ought to actually FINISH writing the damned thing, then I'll see where I get with it! I was hoping to have the next draft completed but the outline kept falling apart on me. I used the pitch as practice and as a deadline to get back to work on a novel that has lain dormant for ten years! That worked, so, certainly time not wasted.

[Marina]

Time spent writing is never time wasted! It's all practice. You know they say you have to write a million words before you get any good at it. I reckon I'm about halfway there -- just hope it doesn't take me as long to do the next 500,000 as it did to do the first!

[noemz]

Hey, I can write a few million words and still suck at it!

Yeah. I'm impatient. I want to see some progress after spending nearly three months wrangling the outline!