Customer Reviews

Making the Perfect Pitch: How To Catch a Literary Agent's Eye

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I've read many books intended to help writers get published, but this is possibly the best book I've seen on getting an agent to notice your work. Katharine Sands, an agent herself, has given us a reference that is a must for your writing library.

We've all seen single-source guides on pitching your book, but Sands goes one further by collecting the wisdom of some of the top agents in the publishing business:

* Sarah Jane Freymann relates seven essentials needed in a query letter.

* Robert Gottlieb tells how to stay ahead of publishing trends.

* Michael Larsen give tips on establishing a marketing niche that will appeal to publishers and agents.

* Laurie Horowitz shows how agents can turn books into films.

* Andrew Stuart gives insider tips on paring back queries to their bare essence, packing the most punch on a page.

* Jane Dystel advises the best way to stand out from the rest of the slush pile.

* Donald Maass discusses stand-out settings, memorable protagonists and intractable problems that every novel needs to be breakout-worthy.

There are forty chapters of advice from the best in the business. And while some of it will, by nature, overlap, the info here is invaluable. It's a panel discussion in a convenient book form so beginning writers can refer to it again and again.

If you're considering writing for publication, this book is peerless. Highly recommended.

I'm the author of two non-fiction books and am preparing to sell my first novel. In studying and listening to agents, I found that each one required something a little different, which was not only confusing but scary. I had heard Katharine Sands speak about Making the Perfect Pitch at a writers conference and bought it. I felt like I'd been let in on the secrets of the publishing world. The agents contributing to the book explained what they want and what they don't, and while each may want things a little different, the basics are the same. The day I received Making the Perfect Pitch, I read it straight through. This book should be required reading for all writers - first-time or seasoned.
Sharon Magee
Author of Geronimo! Stories of an American Legend
Co-Author of Arizona Goes to War

When I got this, I figured it was just another book about writing, submitting, and trying to succeed at writing. This book is very different though. It is very blunt, like so many other books, but somehow it is rarely negative. After reading similar books, I've come away feeling I could never make it as a writer. This book is uplifting, and sort of says, "You can make it, but here are the things you have to nail down." A great book. Highly recommended to anyone making an attempt at publishing fiction, non-fiction, or screenplays.

Agents are like editors with their own individual tastes for books to champion. Is the agent lured to your project or do they reject it? Often it will depend on the pitch. Literary agent Sands writes, "You can hire a caterer, a hit man, or a dominatrix. But you can't hire an agent. Literary agents must be enchanted, seduced, and won over to take you on as a client. They must want to devote their efforts to working on your behalf."

The beauty of this title is the different voices from forty top agents. Each chapter reveals some insight into what attracts a particular agent to a particular idea. I used my yellow highlighter often with this book because of great inspirational common sense advice. Here's an example from Sands chapter on Practicing Pitchcraft, "Writing is solitary; publishing is collaborative. The key point to understand: you want to get others excited about what is exciting to you."

A call to excellence in your craft is built into the fiber of this book and repeated often. As literary agent Joseph Regal wrote in his chapter on The Providential Diamond, "No agent is waiting for something that's 'almost' there; none of us are hoping a talented newcomer will send ragged, unfocused writing, no matter how promising. If your instinct is that another pass would make it better, make that pass. And do it again, until you are certain that you have reached a point where there isn't a single thing more you could think of that would make the book better."

Any writer or would-be writer can profit from the wisdom for pitching crammed into these pages.

This book is fantastic. It's clear and easy to understand, and the perspectives are from the agents themselves. After working on my query letter for months, reading everything I could on the subject, and talking to other writers, I still had a mediocre query letter and felt very confused.
This book gives examples of great queries and clear guidelines for writing one that will get the attention of an agent. With what I learned from this book I wrote a query letter that is getting positive responses. I finally feel I understand the submission process and the elements that make a good query letter.
The writer and the agents who contributed to this book have done writers a great service. Anyone serious about being published should definitely have a copy.

In the freelance writing world, the right marketing skills can mean the difference between survival or a career dirt nap. Talent often takes a back seat to persistence and preparedness --and only the strongest and savviest survive. Sands' book offers professional ammunition for the battle which will help any writer--both professional and neophyte--hone his or her target eye. I have been writing for a living for nearly ten years and don't often read how-to books. But Sands' keen insights and her no-nonsense but supportive voice gave me a bracing shot of career espresso. It is now on my work shelf next to the other tools of my trade: a twelve ounce coffee cup and Roget's Thesaurus.

Sands offers her readers an insightful and inspired collection of essays that cover a range of issues including writing, pitching and the publishing process. The best part is that Making the Perfect Pitch is enjoyable, often funny, to read. It's not a clinical text of "how to pitch" your book, although it gives fantastic tips and often a "step-by-step" on how to write an effective query. Every aspiring first time author needs this book in their back pocket and a resource and confidence builder.

If you are a writer who seeks to be published by an established major press, then you are going to need the services of a good literary agent. The problem is that acquire the services of a really good literary agents, a writer cannot simply go out and hire one. The best agents must be persuaded by the writer to take him or her on as a client -- and that requires a considerable body of information and effort. Enter Katharine Sands' Making The Perfect Pitch: How To Catch A Literary Agent's Eye, a strongly recommended, "hands-on" instructional guide revealing all the elements and practicalities of crafting a successful pitch. Making The Perfect Pitch is composed of forty insightful articles from top literary agents and other authorities in the publishing field, providing everything any aspiring author needs to know in order to get themselves an agent who will, in turn, sell the publishers on accepting the manuscript for publication.

Katharine Sands, a successful literary agent with the Sara Jane Freymann Agency in New York, corrals 40 top agents and experts from CAA, Trident Media, Meredith G. Bernstein, Jane Dystel Literary Management, and more and gets them to tell what really excites them about pitches, query letters and proposals. "Making The Perfect Pitch" is well organized and the approach is unique. While it's informative to have the expertise of one agent it's invaluable to have the opinion of a number of different agents'. Ms. Sands brings a breadth of knowledge and experience to writers they desperately need and seldom receive. If you're hunting for an agent, you need to know how to pitch and "Making The Perfect Pitch" gives you the ammunition to be dead on target.

Dee Power
co-author of "The Making of a Bestseller," March 2005

Tons of wonderfully helpful guidance on how to sell yourself that has application way beyond how to hook a literary agent. Many many succinct and handsomely presented examples of pitching, all as related by a slough of experts who are on the receiving end of bushels of pitches. To be savored and digested in small doses and worth returning to over and over for renewed inspiration.