Pitch Madness: Rules of the Game

The submission window for Pitch Madness is this Saturday, August 24, and will be open for 24 hours (12:01AM EST to 11:59PM EST). There will be no cut off number. Everyone who submits during the window will make it into the contest. You will receive a receipt, if you don't, check with me here on the blog or with Brenda on Twitter (@brendadrake). 

For those of you not familiar with Pitch Madness, it's a contest where agents compete in a game against their peers for pitches. Our slush readers will read through the pitches and pick the top 60 pitches for the agent round starting on September 6. We try to get a good mix of various genres, but the writing comes first. Basically, if the submissions aren't ready, it's a pass.

The agents will be playing a fun game of Monopoly for your pitches this round of Pitch Madness. Keep an eye out on the Twitter hashtag #PitchMadness for slush readers' comments as they search for the best of the best. And on reveal day, September 10 at 12AM EST (Noon - NY time), to watch the challenge rounds between the agents go down. 

Here's the rules of submission . . .


This is for completed, unpublished fiction manuscripts (no non-fiction or novellas). The categories are Adult, New Adult, Young Adult, and Middle Grade. Any genres. One manuscript per writer. The winners will not be notified before the agent round. (All submissions sent before or after the window time slot will be deleted.)

The email for submissions is brendadrakecontests@gmail.com - NO ATTACHMENTS - All pitches must be embedded in the email.

Please format your entries like this ...

Email subject line: Pitch Madness: TITLE OF MANUSCRIPT

Name: Your name
Title: TITLE OF MANUSCRIPT
Genre: Genre/category of your manuscript (ie. YA Fantasy)
Word Count: Word count (round to the nearest 1000th)

Pitch: 35word (max) logline. Do not go over even one word.

Excerpt: The first 250 words of your manuscript. If the 250th word falls in the middle of a sentence, go to the end of that sentence. Your pitch should be Times New Roman 12pt, single spaced, one space between paragraphs, no paragraph indentions. Make sure the formatting is done correctly, but if the email transfer messes it up we will still take it.

Good luck, everyone! 


#PitMad Twitter Pitch Party! 

And, if you don't make it into Pitch Madness we're holding another Twitter Pitch Party on September 12. So get your 140 word pitch ready and make sure the word count includes the hashtag #PitMad and category (YA, Adult, MG, NA, and so on). Tweet your pitch when you see an agent come on but don't do it too obsessively. The agents will read the feed.