NaNoWriMo Pitchapalooza

There is so much more to NaNoWriMo than 50,000 words. Here's yet another reason why it rocks: (from their blog The Office of Letters and Light)

February is Pitchapalooza!

The Book Doctors are back with the second-annual Pitchapalooza for Wrimos. Read on to get the lowdown from them on what this means, and how you can participate!

You wrote your 50,000 words (or got pretty close!). You’re a winner. You’ve been congratulated. You felt the high. But here’s the 64-gigabyte question: What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious manuscript?

If you’re like the approximately one gazillion writers we know, you want to get published. And you want to get published successfully. You want readers to devour your book ravenously; you want raves glowing in blog posts; you want bookstore owners to hand-sell your book so fast it’s literally flying off the shelves; you want to trade barbs with Stephen Colbert; you want readings in front of rapt devotees; you want to go viral at the speed of one of those krazy kitten movies. But how?

This is where we, The Book Doctors, come in. It’s our job to help writers make their dreams come true. It’s what we did with our first Pitchapalooza winners, Nura Maznavi and Ayesha Mattu, whose book, Love InshAllah, just hit the shelves. In the last week, they were profiled in the New York Times, had one of the most talked about pieces on the Huffington Post, and cracked the top 500 of all books sold on Amazon. Then there’s Pitchapalooza winner and NaNoWriMo veteran, Genn Albin. After she won Pitchapalooza, one of New York’s top agents sold her dystopian novel in a three-book, six-figure deal.

Now we’re embarking on our second online Pitchapalooza exclusively for NaNoWriMo participants so that you, too, have a chance to win.

For those of you not familiar with Pitchapalooza, here’s the skinny: You get 200 words to pitch your book. You then email your pitch to nanowrimo@thebookdoctors.com. Twenty-five pitches will be randomly selected from all submissions. We will then choose one winner from the group. The winner will receive an introduction to an agent or publisher appropriate for his/her manuscript. We will also award a fan favorite who will receive a free one-hour consult with us (worth $250). All pitches must be received by February 29, 2012. The 25 random pitches will be posted on March 5, 2012. Winners will be announced on March 15, 2012. Anyone can vote for fan favorite, so get your social media engine running as soon as the pitches go up!

You may be thinking, “I can’t sum up my entire book in 200 words!” Let us say this: “Yes you can!” Your pitch is the first thing an agent, editor, publisher, bookseller, and often reader, will look at. In this age of one-minute attention spans, if your pitch doesn’t blow the person you’re pitching out of the water, you’ll get that dreaded letter that starts: “Dear Writer, Unfortunately…” We don’t want you to get any more of those letters. So enter the 2nd Annual NaNoWriMo Pitchaplooza by sending us a kick-ass pitch for your kick-ass novel. Who knows, maybe this year, the golden ticket will have your name on it.

P.S. Like last year, we’re offering free 20-minute consultations (worth $100) to anyone who buys a copy of The Essential Guide To Getting Your Book Published. Just attach a copy of your sales receipt to your email and we’ll set up your consultation.

Happy Pitching and ¡Buen Provecho!