Last month was the ninth #SFFpit Twitter pitching event for sci-fi/fantasy authors seeking literary representation, hosted by myself and Michael Mammay. The first #SFFpit took place in June 2014, so this marks four years of the event.
Having taken some time to examine the numbers and talk with Mike, I think it’s time to discuss the future of the #SFFpit contest. To inform that discussion, let’s look at some numbers.
#SFFpit 9 Participation Numbers
These numbers are offered with the usual caveats: they’re based on a download of the #SFFpit feed for the hours of the event (8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on June 28th). There were more than 5,000 tweets during that period on the hashtag.
Spammers continue to be a problem. I’ve done my best to remove spammy tweets before this analysis, but would still appreciate it if people went on the #SFFpit hashtag, clicked to view “Live” tweets, and then report/block the obvious spam.
Participating SF/F Authors
First, the good news: we had 1,021 participating authors at the ninth #SFFpit, 15.6% more than last June and a record number since the start of the contest. About two-thirds of the authors this time around had never participated in #SFFpit before, at least under their current Twitter handle. That’s a wonderful influx of new #SFFpit authors, and a figure I might use when recruiting agents/editors in the future (more on that in a minute).
The engagement and support among authors was remarkable. I didn’t bother to count, but I’m guessing that RTs and other encouragement reached record levels, too. Bravo to everyone who made an effort to support their fellow authors.
#SFFpit 9 Pitches by Age Category
Pitches by Age Category and GEnre
Due to technical reasons that probably aren’t of interest to you, I was only able to assign about 16% of them to an age category, so the age category breakdown is essentially a sampling. Even so, the numbers are consistent with past events, so I think they’re somewhat reliable.
As usual, young adult (YA; 43%)) is the leading age category, followed by adult (37%). Note that the latter may be an under-estimate, as pitches that did not specify the #AD hashtag are not counted as adult. Middle grade (MG) remains a distant third, representing just 12% of pitches.
Now, let’s look at genre:
Genre/Subgenre Representing >1% of Pitches
The distributions are very similar to #SFFpit 8, with fantasy (FA) the most popular, followed by science fiction (SF). Space opera (SO) remains a distant third. Beyond that, I encourage you not to read too much into the relative order of subgenres, since the smaller numbers are more likely to be affected by sampling.
Literary Agent Participation
Now we come to the less-good news. Mike and I invited about 50 agents from 36 agencies to the event, less than a third of whom actually participated. Even counting the handful who showed up on their own, 23 literary agents from 19 agencies participated.
Note, this does not count a handful of agents who wandered over from #FaithPitch, which also ran June 28th, as I’m unsure of their legitimacy. Even so, it’s the second-lowest level of agent participation ever. There are likely several contributing factors such as:
- Many agents are traveling and/or closed to queries in June.
- The overall enthusiasm for pitch events may have dampened.
- Mike and I have our own commitments in June that reduce prep time.
Another somewhat-obvious trend apparent in the figure is that we consistently have fewer agents in June than December. June might simply be a bad month (see Idea 1 below).
What To Do About Future #SFFpit Events
The overall trend of #SFFpit participation from both sides is illustrated here:
Over the past four years of #SFFpit, author participation continues to grow. This is fantastic from a community point of view. However, without more literary agents to make requests, it’s also incredibly competitive. Mike and I have discussed a few ways to help remedy the situation in the future. I’d like to hear your thoughts on these, ideally in the comments section below.
Idea 1: Move #SFFpit to Different Times of Year
Currently, we host #SFFpit twice a year, in June and December. These months are hardly ideal, especially from the agent point of view. In June, many agents are on vacation or otherwise traveling. In December, many have family/holiday commitments.
The challenge, of course, is that there’s no perfect time to hold such an event. I feel very strongly that we should avoid January (query avalanche), August (industry conferences/vacation), and November (NaNoWriMo). March/September or April/October might work, but I’d have to check with various folks to make sure we don’t step on the toes of other writing/pitching events.
Idea 2: Invite More Agents/Agencies
Of course, another possible strategy would be to invite more agencies and participate. Mike and I personally invite more than 50 agents each time around. Most, if not all, of the invitees have been vetted in some way by us or trusted colleagues. Thus, I’m very comfortable supporting them when they show up.
We could certainly invite more agents to participate. There are established agents we haven’t gotten around to inviting, just as there are new agents and agencies every year. It would create more work, and we’d almost certainly have to lean on some author friends for help.
Idea 3: Invite Editors and Small Presses
At this moment, #SFFpit is primarily aimed at authors who hope to land a literary agent and pursue traditional publishing. Mike and I both are traditionally published, so we’re biased. That being said, we also recognize that there are many publishing paths that might suit authors who participate in #SFFpit, such as small/independent presses. Extending invitation to those editors would certainly expand the requesting pool.
This idea seems likely to be effective, but it also makes me nervous. Literary agents can be vetted using resources like QueryTracker and Publisher’s Marketplace. Small presses, however, are more harder to credential, especially if they’re new. We can only evaluate them using soft data, i.e. information on their websites, the experience claimed by their personnel, discussions in AbsoluteWrite forums, etc.
N.B., many small press editors already come to #SFFpit and make requests. Unfortunately, I can’t vouch for most of them. I remind authors to obsessively research any publisher before sending materials.
What Do You Think?
I’d like to hear your thoughts on the ideas above, as well as any others you might put forth to ensure the future success of the contest. Please leave a comment below (all comments are moderated, so it may take a bit before I approve yours).
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Interesting data and questions. While it’s certainly true that you’d have less summer-vacation absences from agents in April/Oct, I think you might lose something by changing the dates. Not only because there’s a 4 year history of June/Dec, but also because it’s more memorable (that may be just me, but if I see June/Dec I immediately think “biannual” and I’ll easily remember when the event is being held (the first month of the year and the sixth). When I see April/Oct, there’s no memorable scheduling connection.)
Inviting more agents or editors/small presses creates more work for you on the back end (especially option #3), but I think one of these may be the best option. Perhaps a good solution would be inviting another person to co-host with you and Mike in June, and having them help with some of the vetting?
Thanks for sharing, Jenny! I may have to poll some agents to find out if changing months would really help. Because if it doesn’t, we lose some of that memorability.
Honestly, the kind of volume that these Twitter events get usually convinces me of one thing: Twitter is an awful medium for pitching.
Hundreds of YA pitches, for example. No agent has time to read it all. Most don’t have time to skim it. They can try to narrow down by keyword but that’s a crap shoot.
These events are going to evolve beyond Twitter. The new venue is going to be a livestream of some sort, a kind of live agent speed dating. That’s the future. And it is far more likely to get results.
Hey Dan,
Sorry to hear about the agent participation woes first of all. I guess that makes those few nibbles people did get all the more important!
As you say, there is no perfect time of the year, and the current schedule has a lot of weight behind it now as an established part of the community.
The best solution, if possible and short of changing the nature of the event altogether by opening it to presses small and large, is to make certain more agents can sign up and be present.
The real question in either case is how to reach that goal. And since it would entail a lot more grunt work, why not ask for the assistance of a few volunteer SFFPit workers — or, dare I suggest, SFFPitPonies — who could handle the researching and interfacing with agents meeting certain pre-defined criteria?
I’m certain plenty of us would be ready to devote some time to help keep SFFPit the success it has been.
Also, SFFPitPonies. Think about it.
Agree. If there are already agents or agencies you trust but just don’t have time to invite, you could farm that out to a few volunteers (although they would need to extend the invitation on your behalf, since the agents wouldn’t necessarily know the authors from Adam). And you could farm out the vetting, if need be; most of us authors have already vetted a bunch of agents for our own benefit.
I definitely understand that picking a time is difficult. I agree that you’d probably get better agent participation if it were at a different time. I would definitely like to see more agents and even the small presses that you mentioned. I think it would be interesting to get agents or publishers that are newer to join too. Sometimes having someone will to take a chance on you means the world.
It would be a bigger commitment for you to ask more agents–you and Mike need your own writing time! I hope you keep doing the event; definitely look to other times of the year, IF they fit into your schedules, too. Maybe it becomes a once-a-year event? I was thrilled when your post about it hit my feed, and it galvanized me to start honing my elevator pitch though life events have forced a slower writing pace for the time. Thank you for all you’re doing.
November might be a good time *because* of NaNoWriMo. Their outreach gets people thinking about writing and writers, and we writers who do it are often on Twitter half the day using writing prompts from the NaNo accounts anyway.
I think I’m biased. This was my first #SSFpit, but I landed a great agent with a great track record because of it, so obviously I loved it! However, since I returned to the query trenches last year, I’ve been using Publishers Marketplace to vet anyone who’s interested in me. That might be worth mentioning to people who participate, even though you have to pay monthly for the service. Also, Saavy Authors does a different kind of pitch event on their blog. I found that one to be very helpful as well. Obviously, the more agents the better, but the great thing about Pitch contests is that you know they’re interested in your idea before you query it. Then you just have to prove you can write it. Thanks again for this great opportunity!
Dan,
A huge thank you to you and Michael. I can’t imagine the time you put into these events to help little old writers like me. Even if my pitches (through SFFPit or any pitch event) don’t generate a response, it forces me to think of my story in new ways and shrink it down to a small number of characters, which is always a good thing.
As to your concerns, it sounds like having it a different time of year would be beneficial, just based on what you say about your June issues. Ideas number 2 and 3 also appeal. The more the merrier. Even if an editor or small press aren’t what someone is looking for, you never know how things may work out (as I’ve found so often in my writing endeavors).
If more participants generate one like, or any feedback at all, it’s a good thing. Most writers I know are like me and don’t get a response from these pitch events, but we still try. Every little push along the way helps.
I am new to SFFPit and have only done a couple of others so far. I have appreciated the author support, even if the agent turnout is low. Would it help to extend the contest time or even the time for agents to view? It might be agonizing for authors to have to wait, but if the agents knew they had a few days to read over all of the tweets it might encourage more participation. Just a thought…I definitely think it would be great if we could find out from the agents what their reasons are for participating or not.
Really interesting data! Moving the event to other months could be effective, but I think we’re seeing a burnout on these Twitter pitches in general. The stream moves too fast for an agent to keep up with, and it seems like more and more of these events are cropping up (as I write this there are two Twitter pitch events this week alone) leading to less agent participation.
If the number of tweets allowed from each author is reduced, that might help cut through the clutter too. 10 maximum allowable tweets per author during the event is a lot. If the stream could be slowed down so that agents don’t have to sort through so much content it might lead to more participation.
I love that you guys are only inviting agents you know are reputable to this event, but that does contribute to smaller agent turnout. Getting the word out to more agents is a good idea, with the caveat that authors understand they need to vet potential agents before sending work off, which they should be doing anyway.
Thank you for for organizing this pitch event. I didn’t get to participate in June (my novel is going through major revisions).
I did participate in a pitch session earlier in the year and found it to be a positive experience. It took place in April and it seemed there was a lot of agent turn out. I don’t think they were all vetted though and the moderators strongly advised to vet all the agents who liked your tweet. And I did get a DM from one of the mods who cautioned me that an agent with a questionable reputation liked my pitch, so it felt like the mods were looking out for the writers.
Another aspect of the pitch session that was really helpful was that it was split over two days by age category. One day was for YA/MG/PB and the other day was for adult. This probably causes more work on the mods, but it might lighten the traffic of pitches and more agents might participate if they know they don’t have to sift through pitches to find the age category they’re interested in.
By breaking up the pitch sessions by age group, you might be able to recruit volunteers who specialize in those age ranges and can help invite more agents to the pitch session.
Thanks again. I’ve also put Mike’s Book on my TBR.
I think shifting the event dates might be helpful based on what you’ve said. I admittedly didn’t participate this year because my project wasn’t ready to pitch, but I am grateful that you host the event no matter how you must change it!
First of all, thank you for the time and effort. Even if the number of agents is down, the networking is still beneficial. I think moving the dates is a good idea. If people are paying attention they should be able to adjust. I think expanding is worth a try, at least once. Although this does open up the issue of not so reputable or professional agents and publishers getting in, it is always on the writer to do a bit of research, I guess it comes down to whether you want to deal with the potential headache of “clean up” if the changes have adverse effects. Regardless, I will continue to participate.
As a host of my own Twitter event, I understand these issues. It’s almost impossible to police these events. If you impose new rules, not everyone will follow. If you change the date, there will be backlash.
No matter what you decide, someone will be angry.
As for the statistics, with such a small sample size, it’s almost impossible to draw meaningful conclusions. Yes, this June was down, but last June wasn’t.
You could consider making the event more agent friendly by splitting it across two days. One for adult and one for YA/MG? Just a thought. Thanks for all you do.
Dan,
Thank you for running SFFPit. I’ve always felt that it was nice to be in a place where people knew going in that it was going to be a place for SFF. I think all twitter pitch parties are hit or miss. I can see why you’re disappointed in the data surrounding the pitching in June, but the numbers for December are great. I think part of the reason for the increased pitches with the decrease in agent participation is exactly what people would think: It’s summer and there are things to do. I don’t know if there’s a way to solve that, but this year feels like MANY contests that had been in early fall moved to summer to get away from pitch wars and pitmad. When there’s a twitter pitch every week, why should the agents come out to do extra work, especially when the people who are serious will come to you?
Now, if you wanted to change it to a first page contest hosted on a blog or some such, I feel like that would be a way to get more agent traffic (especially if there was a round of critique), but that’s more time consuming and limiting.
All of this is just a really long winded way of saying, maybe annually is better that way SFFpit isn’t contributing to the pitch fatigue clearly being felt. Or Invite more Agents.
Thank you for all the hard work the 2 of you put in for SFFPit!
Could I just second Diane Morrison’s comment about NaNoWriMo not being an obstacle? Also the idea of reducing the number of tweets from 10 per work to 2 seems helpful. I’m pretty sure other pitch events have already done this.
Thank you.