MoodPitch held its 3rd event in April 2023. While participation across the board steps slightly back from its fall event, it still has sky-high growth year over year, and we continue to see amazing engagement from Agents.

Without further ado...let's step into the numbers.

Overall Results

Industry Stats

Right away, we see 79 Agents and 770 Agent likes. Compared to the last MoodPitch, these numbers are off slightly, but still far and above anything else (aside from DVPit events).

Looking at overall Industry participation (which includes Agents, Editors, and Publishers), the number of participants lags the November event slightly (129 to 143), but the total number of Industry likes is greater (1260 vs 1201). Breaking it down further, Publishers make the big difference here with 326 likes, which represents a growth of 34% over the November event.

Bottom Line: Agent participation continues to be strong for MoodPitch - over 60% of the likes from Industry participants were Agents. Also noteworthy, Publishers drove most of the Industry growth for the event.

Author Stats

For this event, 1572 authors participated. While this represents a decline from participants in November, it's still among the top 5 pitch events that I've processed. Most importantly, 354 Authors received likes from Agents!

MoodPitch continues to be an amazing event for authors to get Agent attention. Over 22% (almost 1 in 4) of the participants received a like from an Agent!

Pitch Stats

In terms of overall pitch count, the trend of slightly lower numbers continues, with almost 4300 pitches and 453 pitches getting agent likes. But more importantly, the percentage of pitches getting Agent likes was once again more than 10% (in fact, it was 10.59% which is exactly the same as the November event...spooky). In addition, ~16.5% of all pitches received likes from the industry, which is higher than the fall event.

On a percentage basis, MoodPitch continues to deliver high numbers, unmatched by any other general pitch event.

Event Growth

As we've discussed, the numbers have been slightly lower in the spring than in the fall event. This could be for several reasons - I won't try to speculate too much here - but I don't notice anything alarming in the numbers. I'll explain...

While the number of Industry Participants (including Agents) fell, the number of likes didn't fall as far. In fact, the Publisher activity grew so much that overall like counts grew for the Spring event!

While the number of Industry Participants fell (by 10%), Author participation fell more (15%), which (to me) is healthier. The last thing a pitch event wants is to be flush with authors but have no agents. That's not what happened here.

The biggest affirmation of this is seen in Pitch activity. Overall Pitch Count and Pitches with Agent Likes fell by the same amount (15%), while the number of Pitches with Industry Likes only fell by 7%.

Hashtag Stats

With PitchStats, when we break down Hashtags, we generally categorize event tags into one of three buckets - Age, Genre, and Diversity.

For each category, we have three sets of views - Event Summary, Agent Activity, and Industry Activity.

Age Hashtags

MoodPitch looks very typical for a general event. Adult has the most activity by a long shot, followed by YA. Far behind both of these, we have Middle Grade taking up the 3rd position on the podium.

While Adult and YA each have almost 60 participating Agents,  Adult has 50% more likes than YA - which makes sense since Adult had 50% more pitches than YA. This tells me that most Agents pursue both YA and Adult and tend to like them at similar rates.

Once again, PB and Children pitches struggle to find Industry Participants.

Sorting by '% Liked', we see that Adult tops the charts with Agents, almost tied with MG, both with almost 13%. Just under them, almost 12% of YA pitches received an Agent like.

New Adult performs decently at 8%, but anything younger than middle grade struggles.

Sorting by the last column, labeled 'Agent/Industry %', we see the Percentage of Industry likes that are Agent likes. I often include this metric because it helps us see what categories are in greater demand among Agents - perhaps helping us identify upcoming trends or areas where Agents are leading the industry.

Middle Grade is once again dominated by Agents, where they make up over 80% of the Industry likes. YA and Adult sit at 67% and 59% respectively, emphasizing that MoodPitch is a very Agent heavy event.

As usual, New Adult is less popular with Agents, sitting at 39%, meaning that most of their Industry likes come from Editors and Publishers.

Lastly, we take an overall look at Industry Activity. Most notably, in every category except Chapter Books and Picture Book, over 10% of the pitches receive a like from the Industry.

New Adult rises to the top, though it's virtually tied with Adult as 20% of their pitches receive an industry like - that's 1 in 5 pitches!

Genre Hashtags

Fantasy regularly dominates the field, and it's no exception here with over 1300 pitches, 800 pitches ahead of Romance in 2nd place (with 487 pitches). Also, with over 250 Agent likes, Fantasy receives almost a third of all Agent likes in the entire event.

As usual, it's a good idea to sort by Agent count ('Agents') and see what genres garner little to no agent interest. If you are pursuing the traditional industry, these may be genres to avoid.

When viewing Agent Activity, sorting by '% Liked', we can see which Genres experience the most demand from Agents. Surprisingly, two tags that I manually added (unofficial hashtags) rose to the top. I typically view these as anomalies, but HORROR and ROMCOM are interesting to see, since their official counterparts also did well.

Beyond those, Graphic Novels took the top spot, with 23% pitches receiving likes. Suspense, Supernatural, and Literary Horror follow in the 19% range.

In general, it looks like a mix of dark and romantic genres as the theme.

Looking at Industry Activity: Graphic Novel, Literary Horror, and Supernatural fall away, and Suspense is joined by True Crime and Novella in the top 3. All three genres had 30% of their pitches get industry likes.

Overall, it's a very similar trend here that we saw with Agents, with less specific sub-genres.

Diversity Hashtags

Diversity is an increasingly important growth area in the publishing world, and as Industry professionals intentionally seek out diverse viewpoints, these tags become a critical means of getting these stories in front of agents.

From a Pitch count perspective, LGBT is often a very popular tag, and it leads the way in this pitch event. Close behind it is the new, more generalized Marginalized Voices tag. OWN has historically been another common general tag in 3rd.

Notably, POC (Person of Color)  is in 4th with 199 pitches, but it attracted 44 agents - which is the most of any diversity tag.

As we dive into Agents and sort by '% Liked', Black Voices Matter takes the top spot with 30% of pitches getting agent likes. Latinx, POC, and Jewish Voices were all grouped in the 25% area. Lastly, IRMC came in 5th with 20% - which is notable since it doesn't always perform very well.

Across the board, pitches with an official diversity tag tend to perform better than pitches that don't. The only exceptions are Neurodiverse and Senior Writer (SW didn't get a single Agent like). DIS and MU barely beat the baseline themselves.

It's tough to see Diversity tags that don't get attention. It's a good reminder that there's always blind spots and opportunities to reassess and improve.

Lastly, as we sort by the last column (and ignore anomalies), we see that Agents are very often the ones leading the charge (industry speaking) into diversity, particularly with Muslim Voices, Immigrant, IRMC, POC and BVM.

Overall, at the Industry level, we see similar trends that we saw with Agents in particular. This makes sense when Agents made up a large chunk of the likes for these top tags.

The only caveats are Marginalized Voices (moving up two places) and Fat Positive (which surges forward) taking the 5th and 6th positions respectively. This marks a big increase for Fat Positive, which under-performed in November.

Neurodiverse and Muslim Voices are the two under-performers at the Industry level.

Conclusion

While MoodPitch took a small step back in participation (compared to the fall), it overall had another strong event for April 2023, putting up amazing numbers with Agents and other Industry professionals.

Personally, it's a lot of fun to feel this level of excitement and buzz around a general pitch event. I'm glad to see the writing community thrive.

Ever since PitMad retired, the world of pitch events has felt...fragmented. Yes, many other events existed during PitMad's tenure, but PitMad was always the big one.

Of the remaining pitch events, DVPit is the biggest - always pulling in the most agents and attracting lots of attention. This is fantastic for any author that qualifies for the event, but general audience pitch events haven't had a clear leader.

Until now.

MoodPitch held it's sophomore event in the Fall of 2022, and while the Spring event was impressive, growth in the Fall was tremendous, possibly establishing it as the go-to event for both authors and agents.

Why do I say that? I'll let the numbers speak for themselves.

Overall Results

Industry Stats

Right away, we see 85 Agents and 787 Agent likes. Scanning other events, only DVPit surpasses it. Nothing else comes close until we scroll back to PitMad.

As we look at Industry participation, we see the Editor and Publisher likes are also high. The numbers aren't quite as staggering, but in my humble opinion, that's not a problem. As a pitch event, when considering Industry participation, it's best to be Agent heavy.

Where the Agents go, others will follow.

Author Stats

Over 1800 authors participated, which puts it among the top 5 pitch events that I've processed. Beyond that, 431 Authors received likes from Agents!

That is a crazy high number on it's own, but over 23% of Authors received likes, which is better than every other pitch event outside of DVPit - making MoodPitch the single best general event for Authors.

Pitch Stats

In terms of overall pitch count, this MoodPitch event had just over 5,000 pitches, which is a solid number, but not record breaking. However, the pitch count is meaningless if you don't have Industry professionals liking those pitches. Over 15% of the Pitches received Industry likes, and over 10% received Agent Likes!

Outside of DVPit, no other event has seen >10% of it's pitches get likes from Agents...and MoodPitch has done it twice!

Event Growth

MoodPitch had a strong start with their opening event in April, and they experienced phenomenal growth with their Fall event. I've captured several of the key metrics below.

Overall Industry participation grew by >60%, but most notably, the count of participating Agents grew by 85%...and the Agent like count nearly doubled!

The number of Authors grew by 57%, but even more impressively, it was outpaced by the number of Author's receiving Agent likes, which swelled by 61%.

Pitch count grew by 76% and the number of pitches receiving Agent likes grew by 62%!

Hashtag Stats

With PitchStats, when we break down Hashtags, we generally categorize event tags into one of three buckets - Age, Genre, and Diversity.

For each category, we have three sets of views - Event Summary, Agent Activity, and Industry Activity.

Age Hashtags

MoodPitch looks very typical for a general event. Adult has the most activity, followed by YA. Far behind both of these, we have Middle Grade taking up the 3rd position on the podium.

What's most interesting is that both Adult and YA have the same number of Agents, though Adult squeaks out slightly more Agent likes.

Sorting by '% Liked', we see that YA tops the charts with Agents - 14% of YA pitches received an Agent like. Adult and MG follow with 12.5% and ~11% respectively.

New Adult typically under-performs with Agents, but in MoodPitch, it performs decently at 8%.

Sorting by the last column, labeled 'Agent/Industry %', we see the Percentage of Industry likes that are Agent likes. I often include this metric because it helps us see what categories are in greater demand among Agents - perhaps helping us identify upcoming trends or areas where Agents are leading the industry.

Picture Book and Middle Grade are leading the charge, where Agents make up over 80% of their Industry likes. While MG is regularly an Agent favorite, PB is a bit of an anomaly here - something to watch.

Lastly, we take an overall look at Industry Activity. Most notably, in every category except Chapter Books and Picture Book, over 10% of the pitches receive a like from the Industry.

Once again New Adult seems to garner more interest from the Industry outside of Agents, with 14% of the pitches receiving Industry likes, virtually tied with MG in 3rd place.

Genre Hashtags

In terms of pure pitch count, nothing ever contends with Fantasy. With over 1400 pitches, it has almost 1000 more pitches than Romance in 2nd place! That said, it's notably that while Fantasy has over 3x the pitch count, it only attracts about 20% more Agents than Romance, showing that while it's a popular genre to write and pitch in, it's very crowded.

As usual, it's probably a good idea to sort by Agent count ('Agents') and see what genres garner little to no agent interest. If you are pursuing the traditional industry, these may be genres to avoid.

Looking at '% Liked', Gothic Fiction proved to be the most popular with Agents, where 25% of pitches received Agent likes. [It also had a high ratio of Agents per liked pitch (bested only by Magical Realism).]

Four more genres had Agents liking more than 18% of the pitches:

• Romantic Comedy
• Fairy Tale Retelling
• Horror
• Romance

Looking at Industry Activity, we notice genres like Fairy Tales dropping and Westerns and Sci-fi rising.

We also see that Romance performs well across the board, with many sub-genres in the top 10.

It's always fun to see what does well with independent publishers over traditional publishing.

Diversity Hashtags

Diversity is an increasingly important growth area in the publishing world, and as Industry professionals intentionally seek out diverse viewpoints, these tags become a critical means of getting these stories in front of agents.

From a Pitch count perspective, LGBT is often a very popular tag, and it leads the way in this pitch event. Close behind it is the new, more generalized Marginalized Voices tag. OWN has historically been another common general tag, but it lags in 3rd with almost half the pitches of MV.

From an Agent perspective, POC (Person of Color) rises to 3rd. This tag is often a favorite and performs well again here.

As we dive into Agents and sort by '% Liked', we see that both Muslim Voices and Black Voices Matter do very well, with over 40% of the pitches getting an Agent like. Additionally, POC has 30%, and Latinx Voices has 27%.

One critical note: unofficial diversity tags (like LGBTQ and LATINX) are towards the bottom. It's important that you use the official tags if you wish to have Agents see your pitch!

Across the board, pitches with an official diversity tag perform better than pitches that don't. The only exception is the new Senior Writer tag. Pitches with that tag are among the worst performers. Maybe it's the tag, maybe it's that the publishing market (and particularly the twitter crowd) is younger, but hopefully it will perform better with time.

Lastly, as we sort by the last column (and ignore anomalies), we see that Agents are more likely to pursue ESL, TV, BVM and MU tags, making up more than 90% of all Industry likes against those pitches.

Overall, at the Industry level, we see similar trends that we saw with Agents in particular. This makes sense when Agents made up a large chunk of the likes for these top tags.

At the bottom of the list, Immigrant joins Senior Writer as under-performers, and Fat Positive is right at the break even point. Considering how well ethnic related diversity tags perform, Immigrant could be an oversight, but authors targeting that hashtag may look to better performing tags if they qualify.

Conclusion

MoodPitch had a wildly successful event last fall and is well-primed to have yet another amazing event this spring. It will be exciting to see if the growth trends continue. If so, MoodPitch very well could become the biggest event for writers.

Last summer, I landed a pretty amazing job. It was a needed transition - the kind of job that I wanted since college, but one that was difficult to find in Oklahoma.

The only issue is that it's a lot of work. I'm not complaining, but when I have a family with three pre-teens in every kind of sport and after school activity, along with an all-consuming writing hobby, I learned pretty quickly that I couldn't fit it all in. PitchStats ended up on the backburner.

That said, I didn't abandon PitchStats. I've been lurking...planning...building... 👀

A Labor of Love

For what it delivers, PitchStats never took an unreasonable amount of time, BUT it was never quick. For the first few events, downloading tweets and corresponding likes took hours...and I would often have to babysit the process as it ran because it could fail for various reasons and need to be restarted.

Once I had the tweets, I would process them. I usually reserved a weekend - not because it took two solid days, but because it did take several hours, and I often needed time without interruptions.

• I build the event, download hashtags from official websites, and scan the pitches to find additional tags that I would add on my own.
• I check for spam. Just about every pitch event trends, and twitter spammers love to pile on. Each event, I scan for spam and flag it.
• The most arduous part of the process is labeling Agents, Editors, and Publishers. I have scans that helped me identify them, but overall, it's painstaking. I step through profiles until I go cross-eyed, trying to differentiate whether or not the person liking tweets is an industry professional or an over-zealous supporter.

After processing the event, I would write them up. This part is fun, but it was painstaking. Getting just the right view, marking it up appropriately, and then communicating the message in Twitter's shorthand took quite a bit of time. I tried to post one thread a day, usually putting out 4 or 5 threads for a small event.

End to end, a PitchStats event could easily take 10-20 hours of work over the course of 7-10 days. While I personally enjoyed the results and learned a lot from the analysis, it's proven difficult to manage with my currently life.

PitchStats 2.0

Rather than walk away, I decided to retool.

1. I improved my scripts for downloading tweets and likes drastically over time. While they still take several hours to run, they run in the cloud and rarely have errors.
2. I wrote better processes for identifying spam and popular hashtags.
3. I trained an Open.ai model to look at Twitter profile information and to tell me if someone is an Agent, Editor, or Publisher. It's not perfect, but it's surprisingly close - and a HUGE game changer.
4. I built dashboards of standard analytics I usually look at for each event.

I didn't build all of this overnight. Instead, it's been a gradual work for the last six months or so.

Recently, I took my new process and tested it across three of the recent pitch events: IWSGPitch, KidLitPit, and PBPitch.

When I processed these events, I was able to do one in about an hour!

I processed IWSGPitch on a Friday night and the other two during an afternoon on Saturday. KidLitPit was a new event for me - I had never processed it before - and I was still able to knock it out quickly.

Completing the Puzzle

This brings me to the last piece: Presentation.

My prior tweet format won't work going forward. I don't have time to crop and edit countless images or to write/rewrite twitter sized tweets. As with everything else, I need to standardize and streamline the process.

At first, I hoped my dashboards would be a good way to disseminate the data, but while they work alright for sharing with individuals, they won't work for mass consumption.

Which brings me back to this blog. I started it with the hope of expanding the PitchStats platform, featuring anecdotes or statistics that didn't fit the general twitter format. I didn't have much time or inspiration for that, so it sat dormant, but now, I'm hoping it will be the perfect platform for what I need.

I'm going to start experimenting. To test out my ideas, my first post will be focused on last fall's MoodPitch. It's pertinent because it was a very successful pitch event, and the next event is coming up. My hope is that the blog format will prove to be even better for authors. I hope to allow you to navigate the data directly and understand what agents and industry professionals are looking for.

Feedback

I'm putting the final touches on the MoodPitch post. It should be live in the next day or two. I'll be looking for feedback, so please don't hesitate to let me know what you think.

• Does this format work for you?
• Is the right data presented? Is it interesting/useful?
• Does everything make sense?
• Is  there too much information? Should it be broken up into several posts?

My hope is that this will be a better way to communicate my analysis to the writing community - but it could also end up being lost to the internet. If this is something you enjoy, please let me know.

As always, if you'd like to support my efforts, please like and retweet the #PitchStats posts...and consider subscribing below. 🙃

The last 24 hours have been interesting as people gear up for #SFFPit. Maybe it's because of the loss of #PitMad or maybe I didn't notice last year, but there seems to be a lot of activity and stress for this competition.

The largest debate has been over whether or not people should participate in RT swaps. I'll promise to RT yours if you promise to RT mine. Together we will support each other into an agent!

I entered the fray yesterday, posting my original analysis on the subject from September's PitMad.

I had no idea how sensitive the topic was, but it turns out that post was a great way to keep tabs on the discussion. I found the tweet reposted many times in different contexts. It was interesting to see how it was used by both sides.

Clearing the Air

I normally don't get involved in the Twitter drama. I don't want to be on one team vs another. But, I feel like this is a good time to go ahead and speak up.

Why?

The reason I started analyzing pitch parties is because I came across contradictory subjective tips and tricks on Twitter. It was really hard to know what was correct. So I decided to look into the statistics and see what the numbers told me.

What better time than now to clear the air around a discussion that is full of subjectivity and personal experience?

Into the Woods (if the forest was made of data)

For those interested, I'll break down the analysis. For those not interested, scroll through to the next section.

First, I'll recap what I found after the September PitMad.

On the matter of engagement, it should be no surprise to anyone that there is indeed a positive correlation between engagement and receiving agent likes - be they Retweets or Comments. This is a fancy way of saying what most of you already know - if someone gets more engagement on their pitch from the community, they tend to get agent likes.

(See the two threads below.)

As I share in one of the threads, they prove correlation but not causality. This means that while the chances of getting an agent like goes up with RTs and Comments, these charts can't tell you whether or not the agents like the pitch because of the engagement, or if the pitch received both engagement and agent likes because it was a good pitch.

The first thread that I shared at the very top tried to address this very question. Are agents influenced by engagement, even when it's manufactured?

I started with a premise - the idea of a "golden ratio". In my analysis, I noticed that the correlation of Engagement to Agent Likes was very similar for both RTs and Comments.

Especially with the upper deciles, the data shows that Comments and RTs for tweets with agent likes tend to maintain a certain ratio.

I decided to test this theory more aggressively. I calculated the difference between Comment and RT Decile and graphed it based on the likelihood of getting a like. What you see is that it's not just about getting either Comments or RTs...but getting both at the "golden" ratio.

Tweets whose Comments and RTs share the same percentile are twice as likely to get an agent like!

But how do you know if yours has that quality? How do you know at any given moment if you need more Comments or more Retweets?

Answer: You don't.

That's the key. You can't manufacture the golden ratio because you don't know what it is unless you look at all of the tweets in aggregate.

What Does All of This Mean?

Pitches with agent likes tend to have higher engagement.
This does NOT mean that high engagement caused the agent to like the pitch, BUT I'd be foolish to say that it has nothing to do with the agent liking the pitch. Why? Visibility.

1. Engagement makes it more likely for an agent scrolling through Twitter to find the pitch. I know that some agents are more diligent and use Tweetdeck and thoroughly scroll through each and every pitch for a certain hashtag, but I doubt ALL agents do that. Chances are some of them are just like us - they pop on for a few minutes to scroll the hashtags they care about and leave. They will more likely see the popular tweets and miss the others.
2. When an agent sees a bunch of Comments and RTs on a certain pitch, I bet they read it a little more closely. I know when I go through profile descriptions to label agents, editors and publishers, I pay close attention if the account liked 35 pitches, but by the time I get to the accounts that liked a single pitch, my eyes are glazing over. I'm sure it happens with agents too.

Agents do NOT like a pitch just because it has lots of engagement.
I know it's a bit contradictory to say this after my last point, but I feel like the data is fairly conclusive here. Agents like good pitches, not popular pitches. This is seen in the golden ratio. Some accounts have enough followers or build big enough lists to get hundreds of Retweets, without real merit (I'm not pointing fingers or suggesting anyone in particular). On top of that, we've all seen the generic Comments that people post without any real punch behind them.

But at the end of the day, if someone is manufacturing their engagement, they will likely not have the "Golden Ratio", and their chances of getting an agent are cut in half. Am I suggesting that agents are studying ratios? No. I'm suggesting that while engagement might increase a pitch's visibility, only a good/relevant pitch will get the agent to click on the 'like' button.

What This Doesn't Mean

The "algorithm" doesn't like RTs.
I don't know anything about Twitter's algorithm. Does it track the golden ratio and penalize anything that doesn't fit? Then we're all screwed because I've never seen a viral tweet with hundreds of RTs, dozens of comments and a handful of likes. I highly doubt that Twitter has an exception in it's algorithm to penalize RT swaps in pitch events. (Though tech companies do regularly surprise me with their attention to minutia, so I don't really know.)

This means I should get those on my list to do a mix of Comments/RTs.
If you learn this lesson, you're learning the wrong lesson. Please don't double down on a tactic that's been proven to fail. Even if you are able to manufacture the right ratio, that won't win you an agent. You don't need more elaborate lists - you need the right pitch!

RT for RT lists are evil!
Even with everything I've said above, I don't think it's wrong to build a list and get friends to Comment and RT your pitches. Every virus needs a 'patient zero' and every pitch needs an initial fan base. 😉

I think it's a great idea - for visibility - to build a base of support for your pitches.

Disclaimer: Yes, build that base of support, but don't do it at the cost of a great pitch. Spend the majority of your time and resources on writing your pitch. If your pitch isn't good, it doesn't matter how many friends Retweet it - you won't attract an agent. I'd much rather see the writing community help each other create the best pitch possible instead of RTing pitches they haven't even read or writing the same comments on dozens of tweets.

Conclusion

As I write these things, I tend to write quickly, and I'm sure I forgot a point or two, but the essence of everything I'm trying to say is this:

HAVE FUN!!!

At the end of the day, it's unlikely you will find the agent of your dreams and land that big publishing contract because of your pitch. Has it happened? Yes. Will it happen again? Yes. But it's an extremely rare event. And it didn't happen by accident. They had a relevant story, a great manuscript, a solid query, and an awesome pitch!

Focus on these elements first, and the pitch contest will take care of itself.

Do you enjoy reading pitches and supporting other writers? Then do it. Retweet, Comment - whatever you enjoy. Do you want to ask people to support you? Go for it.

But I think we can all agree that we don't have fun when events gets annoying and stressful. I'm going on a limb here, but I'll say it: Please don't blindly RT a hundred pitches just to receive blind RTs from people you don't know. And please don't leave generic comments on dozens of pitches.

Let's give and receive quality engagement, and we'll have a quality pitch contest - one that both writers and agents enjoy participating in.

Notice of Hypocrisy: I've participated in RT swaps in the past. My lists were never large, partly because I couldn't manage a heavy load and partly because I wasn't sure how I felt about the activity. But that was before my analysis. Ever since seeing the data, I've felt free to back off the lists. Now I only commit to supporting a few people, and I enjoy the contests a whole lot more.

If you are interested in seeing additional content like this, please consider subscribing to this blog. I promise not to abuse your information. You'll only receive relevant PitchStat updates right now - and notices about my books if/when I get them published. 🙃

For my maiden blog post, I had planned to write about the September 2021 PitMad - going back to the beginning of PitchStats. But with the announcement that PitMad is ending, it only seems appropriate to start here.

As someone fairly new to writing and the publishing industry, my exposure to PitMad has been limited. I participated in a few 2021 events and first cut my teeth on #PitchStats during September's PitMad event.

But PitMad is now no more. Many have said that it was a victim of its own success. It became too big and unwieldy for volunteers to manage. While that's true, I can't help but think that maybe it's also because agents have been losing interest.

Many suspected what the stats proved to be true: Agent participation was down significantly in the December PitMad. While many of us hoped that December was simply an off month when agents were particularly busy trying to break for the holidays, I for one was anxious about March.

Even though I only have four or five months of data, the stats have shown a weakness in Agent participation for several events now:

PitMad has been the biggest event, held every quarter. With the sheer number of participants, one would expect the ratio to be high, but the ratio was particularly high in December.

Not only that, but in the December PitMad, not only did the number of participating Agents drop, but for the ones that did participate, they liked fewer pitches.

As we see above, the number of participating agents dropped from September PitMad to December PitMad by 30%, but those agents liked almost 50% fewer pitches than in September.

Agents are less likely to participate in pitch events, and when they do, they are being pickier about what they 'like'.

Why? That's hard for me to answer and chances are it's due to a number of reasons. We all know Agents' plates are full with the pandemic, publishing backlog, and a surplus of queries. It's probably an easy decision to cut out pitch events.

Disclaimer: The downtrend in agent participation could be seasonal. I don't have enough data to know for certain. But I do know that with the agent participation rates we've seen lately, it would be discouraging for anyone who wanted to pitch...or volunteers hosting a pitch event.

The Future

So what does the future hold? Will Pitch Events die off?

Hardly. In fact, I expect there to be a boom of pitch events in the upcoming year as individuals and groups fill the void left behind by PitMad.

The issue will be finding the good ones...

Let's face it: We writers will do anything to have a shot at an agent. "What does it hurt?" we ask. Then we pull our most successful pitch, update the hashtag, and tweet it.

The problem is that the pitch event may not have participating agents. And when our pitch doesn't get any traction, it does hurt, even if we tried to keep our expectations low.

Future Pitch Events will succeed not on getting writers to participate, but on getting Agent participation. New events must have an Agent-First agenda, catering to agents to make it worth their while.

Because if the Agents show up, writers will too.

Will anything replace PitMad? DVPit appears to be a well-run event with a lot of Agent participation. Probably the only catch is that not everyone can pitch. But then again, that may be what attracts agents. Agents are seeking diversity, so if they can only participate in one event, this is the one.

But as far as a general pitch event for everyone, no, there is no clear successor (in my opinion). There may not be a successor. Pitch events may remain smaller and more specific. Only time will tell.

Will #PitchStats go away?

No. If anything, I think #PitchStats will be key in helping the community separate the good events (the ones with participating agents) from the bad events (few to no agents).

The focus of PitchStats has usually been on helping writers formulate their best pitch to attract agents. Now, it will also focus on identifying the best events to participate in.

I will continue to give updates on Age/Genre/Diversity for each event, and I may dig deeper depending on the event. As always, if you have specific questions, feel free to ask me on Twitter, and I'll do what I can to get the answer.

Happy Pitching!