Pitch Line

In a recent rejection letter, the responding publisher reminded me that I was to include a pitch line for all submissions over 3,000 words. It was my bust; I was sending the story out to mulitiple publishers and missed this detail in the publisher's submission guidelines. Fortunately, it seems they read the story without the pitch before rejecting it.

But it got me thinking--should I include a pitch for all of my short story submissions? It's beginning to seem logical, as the only story I've gotten published was submitted with a pitch (it was a novella, so I figured it would need one).

So I've written one successful submission pitch, but is there any sort of criteria for properly pitching stories? Obviously it's a mini-synopsis, but what should maximum length be? As few as possible is the obvious answer, up to a max of 100 words, I'm thinking.

What do you think?

StoneTable said:

The best thing you can do is read the guidelines closely and include a summary only if they ask for one.

Click to expand...

Thank you, I'll keep that in mind as most of the pubs I submit to in the suspense/crime genres don't ask for a summary. I'm hoping that my new publishing credit will carry some weight in my future submissions, but it also seems that editors seem to theme--consciously or unconsciously--their issues, and a lot rides on presenting the right story at the right time. My novella fell into such a theme, though I had no clue it would as the editor didn't mention the theme for that issue. Oh well, I do so enjoy a good crapshoot...