Pitch versus query

Pitches and queries are not the same thing. They're like eating apples and pie apples: both apples but different purposes.

A good query tells you just enough about the book to entice you to read on.  I yammer endlessly about that topic over at QueryShark.  Other really sterling examples can be found in "Briefly Noted" the New Yorker magazine book review section, and in Shelf Awareness reviews.

It's harder to find good examples of pitches.  Today's issue of Shelf Awareness has both.

In the review of  THERE BUT FOR by Valerie Ryan, here's the second paragraph:


Once a year, Genevieve and Eric Lee give an "alternative" annual dinner party, to which they "invite people who were a bit different from the people they usually saw, as well as friends they saw all the time." Maybe a Muslim, a Jew or a Palestinian--a foray into diversity. This year a friend of a friend, Mark Palmer, brings Miles Garth with him. The title of the first section is "There," followed by "was once a man who, one night between the main course and the sweet at a dinner party, went upstairs and locked himself in one of the bedrooms of the house of the people who were giving the dinner party." That man is Miles. And thereby hangs the tale.


Now, do you want to read more? Heck yes you do. That's the basis of a query letter.

But if someone says "hey, what's your book about?" you're not going to recite that paragraph. Not unless you want their eyeballs to glaze over anyway. No, this is where you need The Pitch.

Here's the shelf talker for that very same book:

A dinner guest excuses himself from the table, goes upstairs and locks himself in a bedroom, where he remains for three months. We wonder why. Four people try to tell us.

Short, to the point, enticing.

You need a query letter AND a pitch. You don't combine the two. Read good examples to get a sense of how this works. Shelf Awareness is a good place to start. You can subscribe to their daily email at no cost.***




***The expense is that you'll want to order a lot of the books they talk about. Frankly, it would cost me less to send Marilyn Dahl to Antarctica for six months than to continue to read her reviews. On the other hand, every book I read from her reviews is amazing. It's a dilemma.