But how do you *keep* scoring book deals?

Here's the EXACT pitch that got me a contract for THE SPARE ROOM

How do you pitch your book? It’s an age-old question for authors, relevant whether you’re starting a new project, querying a manuscript, or being asked to describe your actual published title. (If you ever want to watch an author internally morph into a puddle of goo, walk up to them and whisper softly: So what’s your book about?)

I’m putting together an (already impressive, if I do say so myself) collection of successful author queries, which means I’ve been reaching out to writers and, huge imploring smile, asking them to send me theirs. And many have replied that they actually got their agent another way or haven’t had to query in so many years, their letter has been lost to the sands of time. (There was talk of self-addressed stamped envelopes, remember those? )

But almost any author who’s written more than one book, even for the same editor, has had to sell their next title. Not with another query letter, but with a pitch! It’s kind of similar and equally important for nailing down the heart—and hook—of your story.

I have a few of these languishing on my hard drive—the original pitches I sent to my agent and editor to get them to sign on for The Herd, We Were Never Here, and The Spare Room. I’ll be sharing the final and, if applicable, pre-revision versions with paid subscribers in the coming weeks, with footnotes about what changed from the first draft to the final one.

Of course, other authors pitch their books in different ways; some send a detailed plot synopsis or outline (which I, as a non-outliner, cannot do), and some write the entire manuscript, often with the idea that their agent can pitch the book wide instead of to an audience of one, i.e., the current editor. As for me, I submitted said pitch along with a short sample of the manuscript.

I hope you’ll find it helpful to see how I distilled the sellable aspects of a book (the book hook! Look!!) by describing the set-up, introducing the characters, and laying out the first few beats of the story…so that my editor (and, hopefully, her higher-ups and sales team and, eventually, my readers!) would be raring to turn the pages.

Below you’ll find the exact proposal I submitted for The Spare Room, my latest novel, which I pitched in late 2020 and which came out in 2023. (Don’t worry, no major spoilers ahead…because I really didn’t know where the story was going to go, ha.)

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