My trip to NYC and the letter O

O is for Overrated?

If you notice; I’ve put a question mark at the end of overrated. No, that’s not a typo missed by my word program. About a year and a half ago I went to New York City to attend a Pitch and Shop Conference. What is a P&S Conference? Glad you asked. This is a conference where you go to pitch your book idea to different agents and editors. For three days you brainstorm with a moderator in a group setting with other determined authors, and refine your pitch.

You’re getting the idea. You hone the two paragraph ‘Blurb’ that you would put in your query letter or any other medium used to get the attention of an editor or agent. I had researched conferences and had seen numerous posts about a Pitch and Shop conference, all of them very positive. So off I went.

Let me back up here a second and say that I had to submit some information and be selected for the conference. I don’t remember exactly what it was that I submitted, but I know it was not part of the book I was pitching. I think it might have been the synopsis and some information about myself. If I recall, the price of the conference was around $600, but it was in NYC, the publishing hub of the modern world—OK, maybe I’m getting carried away there.

Anyway, off I go, armed with an enthusiastic attitude and a list of pitches I’d been working on. I arrive at the conference in downtown Manhattan early and greet my fellow ‘pitchers’ as they arrive. The list was amazing. There were lawyers, grad students, psychologists, people who wrote for magazines, and there was me; a high school graduate with no background in writing, and the only degree I held was a ‘working man’s PHD’ from doing woodworking most of my adult life. Needless to say, I was in heaven. I was surrounded by other serious authors, about to go face to face with four editors and agents, armed with a finely tuned pitch, from what I believed to be, a very good book.

This is getting a little long, so I’ll finish this up with the letter P tomorrow.

Have you been to any conferences you would recommend?