A Couple of Notes on This Year's #PitchMe Entries

First off, thank you, thank you, thank you for submitting to #PitchMe. This contest doesn't work if we don't get a hefty batch of super promising submissions, and once again, you guys delivered. We've finalized most of our picks, but this year's entries were so great that we're still dilly-dallying over the last couple of slots.

Overall Impressions

• Maybe it's because I've gotten used to reading queries, but so many of the little things that stuck out to me last year didn't stick out to me this one. I didn't notice or care how you spelled my name (or didn't), whether you admitted you're a first-time novelist, or even how you closed your query. I scanned for title, word count, category, and genre, then dove straight into the summary. If the author's bio paragraph connected their lived experience to their book's subject matter, that was certainly a plus, but if a query happened to skip over that pesky bio paragraph, I honestly might not have noticed. The story itself was king.
• Established, best-selling authors can write anything they want, and publishers will throw money at it, but break-in stories have to clear a much, much, much, much higher bar. Write what you love, they say, and let your passion sell itself, but a part of me wonders how much experience such authors have with not selling anything. If you've been at this for a while, if agents and editors compliment your writing but never give you the time of day, it may be because your concepts aren't standing out.

PB Notes

• There were 84 submissions within this category.
• My #PitchMe spreadsheet has two columns for note-taking on each entry: "Pros" and "Cons." Too often, I found myself typing "Good query" under "Pros" and "Concept may not stand out enough" under "Cons." It's clear that so many of you are seasoned writers who've learned how to craft pitch-perfect queries and even manuscripts, but if agents have seen your concept over and over again, it may not matter how strong your query or even your manuscript is. Tara agreed. She pointed out that several of these entries were exceptionally well-written--but about a dog or cat.
• On the whole, Tara thought these entries were really, really strong. In more than one case, she decided not to pick an entry simply because she didn't think it needed #PitchMe's help.
• She--and I--also shied away from rhyming picture books because they're hard to critique and really have to be pitch-perfect to catch an agent's eye. If the verse is on, it's ON, but if the meter is off by even a single syllable, the whole thing kind of falls apart.

MG Notes

• There were 44 submissions within this category.
• And more than half of them--28, to be precise--were some kind of fantasy. Throw in the horrors with fantastical elements, and the number would be well over 30. Nothing wrong with fantasy, of course, and I loved some of these entries, but MG in general and MG fantasy in particular has become quite tricky to sell, so your project really has to go above and beyond.
• Maybe it's just the time of year, but I also came across enough ghost stories in these entries that I started to take note. Here again, some of these ghost stories were my very favorite entries, but it also made me wonder if our agents might be experiencing ghost-story fatigue. 
• Lastly, multiple stories started on the first or last day of school, so those first pages had to work even harder to stand out.

YA Notes

• There were 49 submissions within this category.
• And quite a few of them were also fantasies. That said, there weren't nearly as many, but there were certainly enough to make me jot down a note.

Adult Notes

• There were 84 submissions within this category.
• And on the whole, I'd say that the adult submissions featured a better mix of genres. That said, experience has taught me that my fantasy and sci-fi tastes don't match up very well with what agents are looking for--which has everything to do with me and absolutely nothing to do with the amazing fantasy and sci-fi authors #PitchMe has featured in the past--so those ones really had to wow me to make it onto my longlist.

You may have done the math yourself, but of the 14 awesome agents and 5 lurking editors who will be checking in on #PitchMe, 6 will be looking for PB, 13 for MG, 13 for YA, and 11 for adult.

Please meet me back here tomorrow for the list of finalists!