A picture book pitch party on Bluesky!?
One of the things that online children’s authors are missing these days is a viable pitch party, where unagented authors post their story ideas, and agents and editors can scroll through the posts to find stories that they would like to see more of. The last few pitch events on X were a misery, for several reasons that had nothing to do with the organizers and (most of) the participants. So, what is the alternative?
The social media platform Bluesky has a large kidlit community and all of the tools needed to host a great pitch party, but is lacking the number of participating agents, editors, art directors and publishers Twitter once had. Let’s aim to change that! Staging a pitch event will add incentive for agents and publishers to migrate to Bluesky, and provide a fun community-building experience.
I have organized a Bluesky-only #SKYPITCH event.
We are planning a bi-annual schedule, with the 1st event on Wednesday, October 23rd, and another event in June.
To be clear, expectations for our inaugural event should be for community-building, to show off the creatives who are building a fantastic presence on Bluesky—not for a life-changing flood of agent “likes.”
We have invited dozens of agents and agencies, and there is still resistance to adding a new social media platform. The purpose for #SKYPITCH is to have an event that shows off the talent and builds community. A confidence-builder for everyone that demonstrates how the best creatives have gathered on a platform that still has the mechanics to make a pitch party work, without the issues that plague X. The success will be in a showcase of great, *human* talent and the positive engagement.
What would the #Skypitch event be?
To keep it clear and simple, our 1st #skypitch event is for PICTURE BOOKS only. (We might later expand to include a broader spectrum of kidlit pitch events—Chapter Books, Middle Grade, Young Adult etc.—if things go well.)
The event itself will be like the typical pitch party authors know and love. On the selected day, authors pitch their story in a Bluesky post using the #SkyPitch hashtag! (Agented authors should include the #agented hashtag.) Agents and Editors on BlueSky might read the pitches, and like the post, inviting the author to send them the manuscript in a query. Only agents and editors should like a pitch. Please reply to pitches you want to support, but refrain from hitting the heart to like the pitch unless you are inviting the author to query. To keep people’s timeline free of repeat posts, we’re also asking for people to refrain from reposting. This helps isolate agent interactions for the authors and filters out engagements that aren’t requests. Replies will show off just how supportive and engaged users are on Bluesky! We encourage everyone to really engage with pitches in replies and get to know each other.
If an agent or editor does like your post, check their submission guidelines and do your research before submitting a query! DON’T just DM an agent or editor, check to see how they would like you to submit.
Great tips on agent research from SCBWI.
You can pitch up to three picture books, but only pitch each one once. If you are an author/illustrator, you can attach an image to your pitch (or you can create a mood board as long as you credit the image creator). Bluesky has a character limit of 300, so you have to craft a tight pitch that fits the limit. You can use additional hashtags to identify your sub genre, editors and agents will look for this (#SEL= Social Emotional Learning, #NF = Nonfiction, #C= Concept, #L= Lyrical, #I= Interactive etc.).
Hopefully more of the already overwhelmingly positive response comes in, and we will have a viable way forward to bring back one of the more enjoyable kidlit activities to the community!
Let me know what you think of the plan, and if you would participate!
