Derisking 3 Common Rejections So You Feel Confident to Pitch Your Book!

Actions you can take to strengthen your pitch TODAY

In Hungry Authors, we teach writers that their mindset is a critical part of their success in traditional (or any other kind of) publishing. And it absolutely is. But sometimes I worry that the message people take away from Hungry Authors is, “I already have the best idea and the best writing—I just need to keep trying until I find the right person who will see my vision!” When in reality, there’s a lot more they could be doing to enhance their pitch so that more agents and editors are more likely to say “yes.”

That’s why one of the beliefs in the Hungry Authors mindset is “I’m open to feedback and I’m willing to change my plans.” We want to encourage Hungry Authors to do the hard work they need to in order to make their pitch as successful as possible. That’s what I want to talk about today.

It’s highly likely that there’s more you could be doing to make your pitch even stronger. Of course, you have to balance that with the time you’re willing to spend on it and how close you want to keep to your original vision. But regardless, in my experience, most authors could be doing more, not less.

Remember, when you pitch a proposal for a book to a publisher, you are asking them to invest in a product. I know, it doesn’t feel like a product to you; it’s a deeply meaningful expression of you. Publishers know this and they have great respect for authors’ stories, but they’re also in the business of selling products. And they have to be damn sure that they could market and sell your product if they decide to invest tens of thousands of dollars and several employees’ precious time into giving you an advance, editing, designing, typesetting, proofing, printing, warehousing, shipping, marketing, and selling your book. It has nothing to do with liking you or your work. It has everything to do with how many copies they think they can successfully sell.

Let’s compare two scenarios for a moment. 

Scenario 1: Kelly is a suburban mom with a passion for restoring old furniture and using recycled materials to decorate her house. She comes from a broken family and to her, giving new life to these pieces and bringing beauty from something broken is incredibly meaningful. Together, she and her husband have built their dream home where they’re now raising their kids. She’s got 600 friends on Facebook where she sometimes posts pictures of her reno projects, which always get lots of engagement and interest. She thinks often about this theme of “beauty from the broken” in her life, and so she decides to write a memoir of her upbringing and sharing the important milestones in her life that brought her to the happy place she is today. She hopes to inspire others from hard situations to have faith that their lives can be made beautiful again, and she begins pitching agents and publishers hoping to find someone to champion her cause and share her message for her.

Kelly sounds lovely, doesn’t she?

Scenario 2: Now, imagine that before pitching her memoir, Kelly decides to take on her most ambitious project ever: restoring a dilapidated historical home in her community. As she works to transform this house, she chronicles her progress on Substack and TikTok, sharing pictures and videos of the before & after, while also sharing stories from each room in the house. She quickly amasses a large community of Substackers who love reading the in-depth stories she writes and imagining the scenes from her pictures, and TikTokers who find her videos inspiring. She shares her own past experiences as well and her audience loves hearing about what she’s learning from the project and how she’s applying those ideas to her own life. She picks up her memoir again, decides to focus the scope of the story on this restoration project while interweaving stories from her past, and then pitches it to agents.

Let me ask you: If you were looking to invest in a book project, which scenario would make you feel more confident that you could help market and sell her book? In which scenario do you think her memoir is going to be more successful? 

Which would you rather publish?

Kelly had an interesting story and worthy idea from the start. But in Scenario 1, she didn’t really do anything interesting with it. She had a small built-in audience. But to be honest, Kelly is probably going to be rejected by most publishers. Because there are 1000 projects like Kelly’s in Scenario 1. There are much fewer proposals like in Scenario 2—but those are the ones that will stand out in the crowd. In Scenario 2, Kelly’s story has important ramifications not just for herself, but for everyone. There is an interesting, news-worthy hook. You can imagine local headlines touting the makeover and talking about the historical significance of the home in their community. Most importantly, Kelly used her agency to do something interesting.

Obviously, I’m not saying that you need to do exactly what Kelly did in this hypothetical scenario. But I am saying that in Scenario 1, Kelly didn’t do much (if anything at all) to improve her chances of getting published. In Scenario 2, Kelly did a lot. And I promise you, Kelly in Scenario 2 is way more likely to get a book deal.

So right now, I want to share some ways that I think authors could be setting themselves up for greater success. If you take further action before pitching, you’ll be lessening the risk of receiving these three SUPER common rejections that editors send out all the time. 

1. The Risk: Getting rejected because “This just isn’t a good fit for us.”

Actions: 

• Use Publishers Marketplace and the publisher’s website to research similar books that publisher has acquired recently and reference them in your query. 

• Even better, find other similar books that editor has acquired and reference those in your query, or provide them to your agent to include. 

2. The Risk: Getting rejected because “Your platform is too small.”

Actions:

• Come up with an incredibly compelling idea that will be an easy, obvious, “HELL YES I NEED THIS BOOK NOW” to your audience. 

• Make sure your writing is STELLAR.

• Rather than thinking, “Ugh, I hate social media” or “But there’s so many exceptions!” ask yourself, “Would my book be more successful if I waited a year and used this time to develop a bigger platform?” (The answer is probably “yes.”)

• Choose your favorite platform (Substack, TikTok, Instagram, guest podcasting, etc.) and spend three months working to grow that platform before pitching.

• Network with others with larger followings to include on your list of probable endorsements.

• Secure a foreword from a notable name in your field and add that to your proposal.

• Make sure you have a highly professional website. 

• Pitch yourself as a guest on podcasts.

• Build out a very thorough (and realistic) publicity plan to include in your book proposal. Make the case that although your platform is “small,” you know how to leverage your strengths and opportunities for maximum exposure. 

• Hire a publicist or marketing team to support your book.

3. The Risk: Getting rejected because “Memoir is really hard right now.”

Actions:

• Clarify your A story and your B story, and make sure your A story is super compelling and interesting (something most people wouldn’t do!) while your B story (how you felt about it) is relatable to a wide audience!

• Write shorter essays about your experience and pitch them to national publications like The New York Times, Vox, Parents Magazine, Washington Post, Good Housekeeping—whatever the right publication is for your story.

• Build your platform in a way that you love. Start a podcast. Pitch more articles. Start speaking at churches. Post everyday on LinkedIn or Substack. Prove that people want to hear your story and that they connect with your voice!

• Try writing an experiment memoir, where you take on a challenge over the course of a set period of time (most often a year) and see what happens! If they’re written well, experiment memoirs are inherently fascinating to people because the curiosity factor is built in. Experiment memoirs have great A stories - and all the better if you can connect it to a B story that’s relatable. For example, if you’re a highly independent person, what would it be like to live in a commune for a year? If you have doubts about religion, what would you learn about faith if you walked every pilgrimage in the world? If you’ve been accused of stinginess, what if you challenged yourself to do a random act of kindness every single day? If you hate accepting help from others, what if you forced yourself to ask someone for help every day for a year? In other words, identify a problem in your life and do something interesting with it.

Good luck!

Ariel