Agents Requesting Material at Pitch Sessions

Both are possible. The only way to find out if they really are interested is to send your work in.

The agents I know won't request anything to be polite. They have too much to do to deal with that. But you can be sure that some who request material will reject it. The 15 minute pitch sounded good but the product just wasn't there. Just like Infomercials.

Jeff

WeaselFire said:

The agents I know won't request anything to be polite. They have too much to do to deal with that. But you can be sure that some who request material will reject it. The 15 minute pitch sounded good but the product just wasn't there. Just like Infomercials.

Jeff

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Agents do sometimes ask for a submission following a pitch session even if they aren't interested in the book because it's harder to reject face to face than by email. Especially if they've already dealt with half a dozen stroppy writers who have argued with them, and are feeling vulnerable and fragile.

It's not great, but it happens.

Old Hack said:

Agents do sometimes ask for a submission following a pitch session even if they aren't interested in the book because it's harder to reject face to face than by email. Especially if they've already dealt with half a dozen stroppy writers who have argued with them, and are feeling vulnerable and fragile.

It's not great, but it happens.

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And honestly, I wouldn't worry about the "why." What does it matter if they requested it to be nice to you? You have nothing more to lose by an agent saying "no" after reading the pages than saying "no" at the pitch session, and this way, you get your actual writing under the agent's nose.

I attended a conference about three years ago and there was an agent panel. It included Jenny Bent, Janet Reid and Alex Glass.

Don't recall how this question came up but one of them answered (and I think it was Jenny) that she'll request almost everything that's pitched at a conference, i.e. that it'd have to sound pretty bad before she would not request.

But the interesting part (in a good way) to me was the rationale: the thinking was that if a writer has ponied up cash and taken the time to attend a conference, then it shows sufficient seriousness about their craft that even a bungled pitch shouldn't be reason not to at least look at the material.

Proof positive: I bungled my pitch (never done one before, blah blah) and Jenny still requested the MS. Few weeks later I got a polite rejection.

So being able to send off your materials as "requested" at a conference is, according to what we were told, at least a leg up from the regular slush. How can that be a bad thing?

I was at a pitch session with an editor and she rejected my pitch at the table. I asked if I could try another. She said OK and gave me the thumbs down on that one too. Since we were laughing and joking about it, I said can I try for #3. She said sure. And requested the first three chapters -- That was a pity request I'm pretty sure she thought I was going to pull a book 4 out of my hat if she didn't. LOL.

But she was very nice and told me the reason why she wasn't interested was market saturation for the first book I pitched and the second book dealt with a topic she was tired of looking at.

So I felt it had a lot less to do with me and my books than it was sometimes you don't have a right fit. The good news is both books are currently being reviewed by editors that requested them

It may or may not end in rejection. Some people write horrible queries and great books. You never know, so keep faith!

My own experience with conference pitching is that unless you vomit on them, or you're pitching a genre they don't rep, most agents do say to send pages. But I may have been lucky that way. Regardless, it got me a chance to send pages beyond the "query and first five," plus I got to say "Requested Materials" and get out of the biggest slush pile. I also ended up with personalized rejections that gave me some insight as to WHY it was no, instead of a form email or no response. So overall it was worth it.