SF Weekly Pitchapalooza Love for Book Doctors
Well Played, Sterry By Michael Leaverton
You’re a writer and you have one minute with Soft Skull Press executive editor Laura Mazer: How do you pitch your book? This isn’t a rhetorical question — you really do have one minute with Mazer. At Pitchapalooza, she’s sitting next to NaNoWriMo’s Chris Baty and self-described “book doctors” Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry, the founders of the five-year-old event. To prepare, start speaking in public ASAP, because you’re pitching before a room of people. Try to compare your book to what’s already out there, but don’t say, “It’s like Foer got drunk with Godot at Twilight and started puking Seuss,” because we’re going to say that. There might be agents scattered around you in the audience, like at the Pitchapalooza in New York, so don’t mutter profanities and scribble on a matchbook when awaiting your turn — or, better yet, do exactly that. The winner gets “an introduction to an agent,” which is surely better than it sounds. The losers get the opportunity to buy Sterry and Eckstut’s book The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published: How to Write It, Sell It, and Market It…Successfully!, which comes with a “free consultation” worth $100. Of course, it should be clear that Pitchapoolza is, at its core, a drop-dead genius way for Sterry and Eckstut to market Essential Guide — they know their shit, to be sure. They’re the book doctors.
http://www.sfweekly.com/events/pitchapalooza-2325029/
NaNoWriMo Twitter event with The Book Doctors
Join us on 11/30 at 2 ET, for a LIVE 2-hour event as we celebrate the close to another successful National Novel Writing Month by answering YOUR questions about how to pitch your latest finished manuscript to agents and editors — live on Twitter with the hashtag #novelpitch! We’ll also choose 20 participants at random to give 140-character pitches and get feedback — and one of those people will win the grand prize of a half-hour telephone consult with us.