Do You Really Need a Short Pitch for a Conference?

This post from the BookEnds Literary Agency blog was shared around last week: Why Authors Need to Dump the Elevator Pitch. The dreaded "elevator pitch" is suggested in most conference preparation materials as essential—what if you happen to be walking down a hotel hallway with an agent, or standing in the buffet line, or in an elevator together? Surely you'd want to have a few sentence pitch for your book so you wouldn't waste the golden opportunity?

Well, I couldn't agree with the post above more. If you're feeling exhausted after a few days of the conference, imagine how it must be for the faculty. You might want a few-sentence pitch for the new friends you're going to meet at the conference, but definitely not for agents. If they want to hear about your book, they'll ask—and if you've gotten to that point, trust me, you'll have more than a few sentences to get their attention.

It basically comes down to the reminder that agents are people too. If you wouldn't like to be accosted by endless streams of people stammering out elevator pitches while you're on the way to the bathroom, or to your hotel room to lie down for ten minutes before the next round of pitches and classes, then why would you do it to someone else?

If you're planning to attend a writer's conference this summer, we have a series of conference survival tips here on the blog that can help you put your best foot forward!

Writer's Resource: Janet Reid's Blog

Regular readers of this blog might have noticed that I'm a huge fan of research, both the kind you do when you're planning a novel and the kind you do before you try to find an agent or publisher (or before you self-publish). I have a huge bookmarked list of helpful links, but one of the best ways I stay on top of what's happening in the publishing industry is by reading certain helpful blogs on a regular basis.

One of the best around is super-agent Janet Reid's. She posts daily with questions and answers from readers, trends she's seeing in the slush, query advice, and even writing contests. Her advice is always blunt—one of the things I like about her is that she feels no need to sugarcoat—but she's honest and encouraging at the same time. She also maintains the QueryShark blog, a must-read for everyone who wants to write an effective query.

If you find it hard to keep up with a post a day, Ms. Reid helpfully puts up a Week in Review post every Sunday with a summary of the past week's posts and the pertinent/funny comments on each. (Side note: the comments on her blog tend to be informative, interesting, and often hilarious. It's the only blog on my feed reader where I regularly click to the full site to read the comments!)

I usually read blogs on my phone, because I'm more likely to get a moment to check them out while waiting in line or riding in the back of a car. There are several good apps you can use to keep track of the blogs you read. The one I use, Feedly, is intuitive and straightforward.

And now, hopefully you'll excuse me for a moment while I gloat about the fact that I get to meet Ms. Reid in person in just a few weeks, at the Midwest Writer's Workshop. I'm pretty excited to hear her publishing wisdom in person!

Writer's Resource: Pub(lishing) Crawl

One of the best times of my day is when I pull up my blog reader (usually on my phone these days, since the baby makes laptop time scarce) and read the new posts. I follow a few dozen writing blogs, some written by agents, some by editors, and some by aspiring or published authors.

I find myself bookmarking posts from one of them far more frequently than any of the others, so I thought it would be a good idea to highlight it here as a writer's resource.

Pub(lishing) Crawl is, in their own words, "...a group of authors and industry professionals (formerly known as Let the Words Flow) who blog about all things writing, publishing, and books!"

According to their Who We Are page, there are currently 16 contributors, including editors, a bookseller, a sales rep, and authors. They post on a huge variety of topics, including writing and editing techniques, new book releases, and tips on how to survive life as a published author. They also host giveaways and often feature guest bloggers, so there's always a good reason to check back frequently.

What are your favorite writing-related blogs? 

Writer's Resource: RSS Readers

If you read blogs (and since you're here, I think it's safe to assume you do), you've no doubt noticed this RSS symbol on the sidebar of most of them:

RSS stands for (depending on who you ask) RDF Site Summary, Rich Site Summary, or my personal favorite, Really Simple Syndication. In a nutshell, it's a way to show you web content that changes regularly (like new blog posts) all in one place, so you don't have to check each individual website yourself. 

Here's how it works: every site with one of these buttons has an RSS feed. Using an online tool called either an aggregator, a feed reader, or an RSS reader, you can subscribe to that feed. Then you just need to go to one place to see which of the feeds have been updated. It's sort of like subscribing to a newspaper--a really cool one where you get only the most recent news on the topics that interest you.

RSS readers are an especially useful tool for aspiring writers wanting to keep up with agent and industry blogs. Many are updated daily or several times a week, and it's much easier to take a half-hour to read the new posts all at once through your RSS reader than to check each website separately for new content.

You can even get an RSS reader app on your phone and check your blogs on the go--very handy!

Below are a few of the most popular RSS readers. They each have their plusses and minuses, so I'd suggest checking them out to see which one you like best.

Google Reader (This is the one I use. If you already have a gmail account, there's no need to sign up again, which is nice.)

FeedDemon (According to the site, this is the most popular RSS reader for Windows users.)

Bloglines (I used to use this a few years ago and loved its simple interface. I thought they had shut down, but it looks like someone bought the site and it's back up and running! I might need to check it out again...)

Happy blog reading!