12 Week Year for Writers

Pitch Perfect: How to Write a Letter That Lands You a Publishing Deal

• Trevor Thrall • Episode 34

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Landing a publishing deal often feels like an impossible dream for aspiring authors. What makes one manuscript stand out among thousands? How can you ensure your pitch letter doesn't end up in the rejection pile? In this revealing conversation, former book editor Jason Kuznicki pulls back the curtain on what really happens when editors evaluate submissions.

Drawing from his experience reviewing hundreds of pitch letters at the Cato Institute, Jason dispels common myths about the publishing process. Contrary to what many writers believe, editors aren't looking for authors who can dazzle them with vocabulary or obscure references. Instead, they seek writers who can communicate clearly and connect with readers. "Can you talk about your book like a real person?" Jason asks, identifying this simple quality as the most crucial element of a successful pitch.

The conversation explores the surprising reality that pitch letters serve multiple purposes beyond securing a publishing contract. They help authors clarify their thinking, provide a compass for the writing process, and ultimately become valuable marketing copy. This makes crafting a pitch letter valuable even for those planning to self-publish. Jason shares practical advice on structuring these letters, emphasizing brevity (just a couple of pages), clarity about your book's core argument or story, and the importance of identifying comparable titles.

Perhaps most refreshingly, Jason reframes the author-editor relationship. Rather than viewing editors as gatekeepers or adversaries, he suggests seeing them as potential teammates who want your book to succeed. The best pitch letters demonstrate you understand not just your subject matter, but how to talk about it engagingly with different audiences—a skill that proves invaluable throughout the publishing journey.

Want to transform your publishing prospects? Join our workshop on August 21st to learn how to craft pitch letters that open doors and set your work up for success. Whether you're writing fiction or non-fiction, this episode provides the insider knowledge you need to approach publishers with confidence.

We're excited to announce the launch of our new website: 12weekyearforwriters.com

To celebrate, you can join the 12 Week Year Writers membership for 50% off the first three months.

ABOUT TREVOR THRALL & THE 12 WEEK YEAR FOR WRITERS

My team and I help writers get their writing done. If you're stuck, it's not a knowledge problem. It's not a skill issue. And it's not a motivation or willpower thing. You know what you need to do and how to do it. The problem is consistent execution: getting the writing done week in and week out.

With the 12 Week Year for Writers system, you'll create a routine that helps you write more, and more happily, than ever before.

Thanks for listening!

Trevor Thrall:

Welcome to the 12-Week Year for Writers podcast. I'm Trevor Thrall. Today I am joined by former and present colleague, jason Kuznicki, an editor and a writing coach with a lot of experience reading hundreds and hundreds of pitch letters. If you've ever wondered what it takes to land a publishing deal, this is the episode for you. Hey, jason, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you on for the first time. Thanks, it's good to be here. Yeah, fantastic, jason Pusnicki is with me. He's one of the writing coaches at the 12-Week Year for Writers and today we are talking about how to write a pitch letter. But before we do any of that, jason, since it's your first time on the pod, why don't you tell people who you are, what kind of writing you've done and why it is that you know so much about pitch letters?

Jason Kuznicki:

So Trevor and I are former colleagues at the Cato Institute where I was for quite a few years the book editor and in that capacity I got lots of pitch letters. But I've also been an author. I've successfully written and published a book with an academic press books and authors in my career and have gotten a lot of pitch letters, mostly in nonfiction public policy work. But a lot of the lessons from there I think are also applicable in fiction and carry over Fantastic.

Trevor Thrall:

Well, we should probably start, you know, for those who are the aspiring authors set in our listing audience. Let's just start by explaining the most basic thing, which is what is a pitch letter?

Jason Kuznicki:

A pitch letter is a letter that you write to an editor who's in charge of acquisitions at a publisher. Who's in charge of acquisitions at a publisher? Now, that might be the editor that you work with for copy editing or line edits in time, or it may not be that Many larger publishing houses will have specialized editors just for acquisitions. Either way, the pitch letter goes to an editor and it either accompanies your finished manuscript, if you have it, or it says what you're working on and what you intend to deliver. It can be either one of those, but I think really, the uh, important points are just the same in either case. Whether you finish the book or not, and and so everything I'm going to talk about here, it's going to stand either way, absolutely, absolutely.

Trevor Thrall:

And I have. I've had clients who, before even pitching to a publisher, use their pitch letter to land an agent in the first place who would then take the pitch letter to publishers.

Jason Kuznicki:

So yes, yes, and, and that's also, that's also a valid step of the process. It often happens that way. Yes, absolutely.

Trevor Thrall:

So that makes it pretty clear what its general role is. But as someone who's been on the inside as the editor, making the decisions about which of these things to publish and move forward with and which not, why is a pitch letter important?

Jason Kuznicki:

It's important because when I'm reading it as an editor, I'm trying to figure out several things, and the very first one is is this book a good fit for our mission as a publisher? Does it fit in well with the types of things that we publish? And I want you to be able to tell me that you have a good idea of what your book is about. And I will be looking at that idea of what your book is about and trying to fit it into the publishing world that I inhabit, and I'll be trying to determine, from from what you tell me, whether this is going to be a good opportunity for us both.

Trevor Thrall:

Yeah, yep. So you know, I think a lot of authors, myself included, really kind of wonder the extent to which let's put it this way it's easy to wonder if the pitch letter matters at all from the outside, because so many people just get rejection after rejection, after rejection, even if they have a great book. And then you find out the people that do get published already know the editor or have a publishing.

Jason Kuznicki:

you know they know someone who knows, sometimes yeah, sometimes it works that way.

Trevor Thrall:

So we know, we know that can be how people get published, of course, but but? But what you're saying is that it's the quality of the letter does matter. It's because they don't know, they haven't seen your book yet, so you're relying on that letter to decide if you're even going to look at the book at all?

Jason Kuznicki:

Yes, yes, it absolutely matters, and the very first thing that an author should do before writing a pitch letter is to research the intended recipient. I don't mean the editor in particular, I mean the publishing house. Is this the type of thing that this publishing house would do? So when I was in charge of Cato Books, if someone were to send me a cookbook or a book of poetry or you know, a book of fiction, a novel, you know that's not what they do there at all, and so if they write a clear, coherent pitch letter for it, that makes it real easy for me. That's five minutes of work for me. I say no, this is obviously not the type of thing that we do. Maybe it's really good cookbook, but it's not what we publish.

Jason Kuznicki:

And I can write right now write back a standard form letter response and tell them to move on. But if they had done a bit more research, they might have found a publisher where this would have been of much, much more interest. So one way to avoid rejection letters is to know where you ought to be heading in the first place.

Trevor Thrall:

I know, yeah, we'll talk about what goes into a good one in a minute, but how many letters would you get at Cato back in the day.

Jason Kuznicki:

Oh wow, Dozens and dozens and dozens.

Trevor Thrall:

So many of them. And yeah, what was the percentage of books that you published to letters you got?

Jason Kuznicki:

Less than 1%, I would say.

Trevor Thrall:

It's just for a little reality. Check out there. Right, it's a bit of a roulette wheel getting published and you have it's. To some degree it can be a numbers game, even if you're doing your research and sending only to appropriate places. Not everyone is open and has you know the bandwidth at any given time to publish everything that's good, and so you know there's a, there's a choosiness factor that happens right, and so presumably people are going to be looking into your letter, not just to see that there's a general fit, but that you know the quality is there and the big idea is there and all that good stuff. And if it's fiction, then it's going to be. Is this a compelling story? Do they have great characters? All that sort of stuff.

Jason Kuznicki:

That's right. That's right. There's a lot that I'm looking for beyond just fit with the publishing mission. I want to know also about the author as a person, and that's something that can come through in a well-written pitch letter. I want to know not just can you write a great book, but also can you talk about your book. I want to know not just do you have technical mastery of the subject area, but can you make it accessible? Are you someone who could sit down on a podcast and be interesting and engaging? Are you someone who has a good social media presence? Are you someone who could maybe do an amazing book talk? And a good pitch letter will give me a sense of that.

Trevor Thrall:

Yeah, because and here's another hard truth for you kids One of the reasons people are so excited to get a traditional publisher is their fantasy that that publishing house is going to do a lot of marketing for them, which is false. It is false, it is absolutely false.

Jason Kuznicki:

And unfortunately, like a lot of other creative endeavors, nowadays, the creator needs to be on social media. If you're an artist in the visual arts, if you're an author, if you're whatever, being on social media is a part of your job, because people want to connect with a person before they buy the product.

Trevor Thrall:

very often, Absolutely yeah, and every pitch letter book proposal I've ever written to a publisher has had a very lengthy section on marketing where I attempt to persuade them that I am a very effective marketer with a reasonable size platform who has a good chance of moving books. Because, you know, for every for publishers, you know you have to remember that books are basically lottery tickets. You know, yes, that we have things we publish as a general field or kind of book we we publish, but most publishers make it's kind of 80 20 rule. They make 80 percent of their money from 20% of the books they publish. The problem is they don't know which 20% it's going to be. So every book.

Jason Kuznicki:

That's absolutely true, and so Absolutely true In my experience. Most of the books that I published lost money, and two of them made it all back.

Trevor Thrall:

Exactly, exactly, shades of gray, yeah. So yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, and the only thing you can do as an editor is it's the right fit and the quality bar has been met. And then it's a bit of a lottery ticket and, and you know, I think one of the things that you're hoping for is that you can at least hit singles, because if the authors have a decent platform, then even if it doesn't go viral, doesn't hit big. You can. You can at least make money on it, and so, anyway, there's a lot of things that are important. We're going to get to those in a second a little bit more, but first, you know, I think we've kind of already touched a little bit on some things that people might not know, but people have all sorts of weird beliefs about this process and about pitching and so on.

Trevor Thrall:

So maybe you could just break down a couple of the things that people think they know but are just wrong about this process and about pitching and so on.

Jason Kuznicki:

So maybe you could just break down a couple of the things that people think they know but are just wrong about this process yeah, I've gotten quite a few letters where, uh, the letter reflects a high degree of anxiety, where it's clear that the attached manuscript is is actually workable, but then the author lacks some confidence in it. And often often especially with first-time authors there's a mentality where they think of the editor as kind of the final boss of the dungeon, and they've gotten through the whole writing process and now they have to defeat this last boss. And how you defeat that boss? By well, often it seems like the idea is you've got to be extra erudite and really show off a lot. And, by the way, I can make an even more difficult and complicated case than my book, and I'm even smarter than the words on the page that I've just sent you. And that's the exact opposite of what I need to see.

Jason Kuznicki:

I want to see an author who, yes, absolutely has that kind of smarts, but then also knows how to talk to a general audience, because if they can do both of those things, then they're going to reach a lot of people and they're going to bring them good information. And as a nonfiction editor, that's what I look for. I want that. So if you have written a difficult book, you have got to use the pitch letter as a chance to turn it into something more accessible. It is not the case that the editor is a you know sort of a next level author who is judging you about your expertise. There is some amount of that, but really the important part is, can this person reach an audience and connect with them? Do they know what their book is really about? Do they have a good sense of the topic themselves, and can they translate it into something that's accessible?

Trevor Thrall:

That's what I'm looking for yeah, yeah, and I think you know, sort of relatedly I think I think you know all over the place you run into that problem of people trying to write to impress as opposed to be understood. And I think that's that's always a bad path to go down.

Trevor Thrall:

And but. But I think you're exactly right. I think people mythologize editors as these super bosses who are waiting to find your grammar mistake or to chuckle over your incredibly obscure reference to something you know, whatever, or something like that, and instead it's much more practical and common sense than that what the editors are looking for, right.

Jason Kuznicki:

Never, never, never. I'm not even going to reject a book because of a bunch of typos, but I will reject a book if the author seems to have a complete inability to connect with an audience, and that's, that's a problem.

Trevor Thrall:

Yeah, another question sort of on that score is I think sometimes authors are not clear about what, how much their background and sort of bona fides mean when they write a pitch letter. You know, I think I see two ways people go about it. One is to completely attempt to obscure their background as a nobody because they haven't published something yet and so they're trying desperately not to mention this fact. And the other side is people who are trying to get you to publish something because of how important they are, even though they won't let you look at the quality too much. How do you break that down for people?

Jason Kuznicki:

One very easy way to do it, especially in the nonfiction world, is just send a CV along. Don't take up time in your pitch letter talking about you and your experiences. You want to talk about this new great idea you've had, that you've put into a book. That's what you talk about in your pitch letter. If you want to demonstrate that you're qualified, a CV will do it. That's a thing that we often want to see just for marketing purposes. If you're an alumnus of a particular university, for example, maybe that's the first place you go to do a book talk. That's something I want to know about. I want to know that you've got expertise in the field in one way or another, whether that's academic or practical and yes, that's important, but that can be conveyed through a standard CV. And then the pitch letter is where I want to really hear in your own words what your book is about and why it's important and how it's going to connect with people.

Trevor Thrall:

All right. So let's, that's a good segue. Let's, let's talk about that. What, what are the keys to writing a good pitch letter? What are the elements of a good, a good pitch letter?

Jason Kuznicki:

I want to see that you can state the argument of the book clearly and concisely and in a way that I can take to other people, because, as your editor, I'll be working very closely with you, but that work has as its goal to reach other people, and I'm trying to be on your team in that effort. So help me out. I want help in selling your book. That's what I'm looking for. I don't need you to prove to me that it's a good book. I need you to prove to me that you can sell this book, that you can sell this book. Now I will judge whether it's a good book or not by reading the book, and that is definitely a part of a very important part of the selection process. But in a pitch letter, it's not the place to prove your conclusions again.

Trevor Thrall:

That's, that's not it. What's the what's the key, then? Just just to hop on that for a second. What? What tips you from a send them a form letter to? I'm going to read the manuscript what's the most important part of that letter that makes you do that? Can?

Jason Kuznicki:

you talk about your book like a real person. Can you talk about your book like a real person? That's, that's it and, yes, that's. You know that's art, not science. It's not like there's a formula to it, but the person who writes a pitch letter that can get ordinary people interested in the book, like if I were to show the letter to my dad, you know, or if I were to show it to a friend who's not in the publishing world and say, hey, what do you think of this? If that lights people up, then I know that you're going to be the kind of author who's good at promoting their work. You're the kind of author who actually understands their work, and the easiest test of whether you understand something is can you teach it? So if you're able to hit the highlights without doing a whole lot of the sometimes difficult technical legwork, then that's a good pitch letter. That's what I look for.

Trevor Thrall:

Yeah, yeah. It's funny. I often think about, like, if you're telling the story about what the book is about whether it's fiction or nonfiction doesn't matter, but if you're at the bar, how would you tell it? Like, how would you tell that story? And if you don't have that kind of ability, it's going to be hard to tell the average person what your book is about, because that's how average people talk and think there are different levels of sort of writing about the writing, and the quickest, most accessible writing about the writing is like the elevator pitch.

Jason Kuznicki:

You've got 20 seconds, you're in an elevator, tell me what your book is about, and that's great. And a lot of people can do that kind of intuitively. The pitch letter is more detailed than that. The pitch letter is like a couple of pages. Don't write a whole lot more than that, uh, and it lays out in more detail than the elevator pitch what the argument is and why it's important and why people will find it interesting. And if you can do that, that's that's what I'm looking for, because that tells me whether the book fits in with our publishing mission and whether it is something that's going to have the capacity to attract attention and whether you're the right person to be drawing the attention, to be, you know, bringing people to it. Yes and yes, it's absolutely about you as a person, but it's not about your technical mastery, it's about your ability as a communicator.

Trevor Thrall:

Yeah, yeah. So in a sense it's a little bit like any good sort of and for the fiction writers out there. Forgive me, but in an academic article you would typically start with something we would call a summary introduction, where you would introduce people. Here's the topic we're going to be talking about, here's why it arises and why it matters. Here's what other people have been saying about it. Here's the debate. Here's what I'm going to say about it and here are the methods I'm going to use to make my case, and then you might end with the little road map, and most book proposals follow this, whether they're for fiction or nonfiction. Follow this in spirit, if not in the specifics.

Jason Kuznicki:

Yes, yes, that's right. You mentioned a section on marketing, and that is something I do want to see, and I also do want to be able to know at a glance what you're trying to accomplish in the book. A pitch letter often is great to read first and then dive into the manuscript and say you know, ask myself, does this manuscript deliver on the promise that's in the letter?

Trevor Thrall:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely Right. And so now I'm, as I recall from writing a few of these I can't remember the one I wrote for Cato anymore, but since it was sort of internal we might have skirted around the official version. But normally a publisher will have a template you can actually download, and that may or may not be the perfect way to organize it, but they usually give you the big chunks, it seems like. Did Kato have one of those? I presume you had one of those.

Jason Kuznicki:

We didn't have a template just because, it being a very wide-ranging sort of publishing endeavor, we looked at anything that would touch on public policy and be non-fiction public policy, although we did publish one, uh, fictionalized book on public policy, which, uh, uh, it was a dialogue with mephistopheles, which, uh, you know having, you know, satirical dialogues like that that's there's a long tradition of of. I mean, that goes all the way back, uh, it goes way back in, you know, western history. Voltaire wrote stuff like that. Uh, you know, and so so you know that, may you know, with that one exception, uh, the point here is that, uh, I didn't want to turn anyone away just out of hand and I didn't want to make it more daunting than it needed to be.

Jason Kuznicki:

But if you're working with a publisher who has a template, the easiest way to start off on the right foot is to work with their template and to do as as they're, as they're asking, and that that'll tell a publisher whether you're a team player or not. And, uh, you know, when you're a writer and you're working on a manuscript, you're working alone, but when you cross that bridge to publishing, you're on a team. You might be the most important part of that team, without which the team wouldn't exist. But you're still on a team and I'm going to try to be your teammate and I'm going to try to make that arrangement work for both of us. But I need to see that you're willing to do that too. Yeah, absolutely.

Trevor Thrall:

Absolutely. I'm going to put in a quick plug. While we're there, I'm just going to put a quick plug in for editing. I think a lot of people are nervous about that process for all sorts of very understandable reasons, fiction and nonfiction alike, and you can look up quotes from all sorts of famous novelists who say horrible things about editors. Because that's just whatever. They didn't like them, they didn't appreciate the process. I get it, it's a pain. It's't like them. They didn't appreciate the process. I get it, it's a pain. It's a huge pain. I don't think and it's funny because Cato had the best editing for all things, especially like the policy analyses I've never gotten so much editing on something I've written in my whole life Four or five rounds of review and feedback from different people in the building, including editors, finally including editors, and and you know, I was just like.

Trevor Thrall:

I was like pulling teeth, pulling teeth. But you know what, in the end, in the end, I looked at the final product and I was so proud of it. I was like man it's. It's a little arduous to go through that much review and edit and revise, but the end product is so good.

Trevor Thrall:

And so you know, I'm a huge self-publishing fan, but I am not a fan of self-publishing without editing, and so even if you do choose to self-edit we'll talk about this a little bit later and other podcasts will touch more on this question as well, more on this question as well but but even if you choose to publish on your own which is a great idea these days I really encourage you to work with an editor to get the final, most polished possible version of your manuscript. This is true for fiction. Non-fiction does not matter. I regard, I recommend, a developmental edit, a review of structure of all that sort of stuff as well, of course, as line editing, copy editing, proofreading, because you just want it to be beautiful when people see it and that's the way to do it.

Jason Kuznicki:

Yeah, yeah, I'm going to talk a little bit about the fiction side of things, because that's also where a lot of our audience is, and in my experience, I think of one author who is really instructive here, and not necessarily in a good way. That author is Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand was a mid-20th century writer of both fiction and nonfiction. Mid-20th century writer of both fiction and nonfiction. She wrote Atlas Shrugged. That's her big bestseller.

Jason Kuznicki:

But she was infamous, absolutely infamous, for being difficult to work with among her editors. She did not want to work with most editors. She hated what they did to her work. She was intensely, fiercely jealous of her written product and when I did work at Cato, I warned the interns not to be like her, because a lot of them had read Ayn Rand and a lot of them may have read some of her biographies where they talk about her struggles with editors. And the problem with being that kind of an author is you're going to lose a lot of good editors who want to help you and you may be successful finally in finding one editor who will roll over and do exactly what you want in every case, but that doesn't necessarily help your finished product.

Trevor Thrall:

You have to be someone really remarkable and have a really great talent for writing, and even then, even then, you would probably be better off to have several more people reading and giving feedback on your work it's so easy to see with with the most famous uh you know fiction writers out there, because their early work is great and then, as they get more and more famous, their books get longer and more ponderous. And if you try to read a john grism novel right now, good luck there. I'm just picking on him for no good reason, but. But you know what I'm saying and I just you know, get up around the 25th, 26th, 27th in a series and you're sort of like woof that should be given to a first year editor to just destroy anyway, all right so let's talk.

Jason Kuznicki:

And the other thing, the other thing that should be, should be said here, is it's not a test, right like? If I find something that that I recommend changing in your manuscript. It's not that I'm grading you lower if, if you're, you're thinking about school, tear that up and throw it out. That is not a helpful thought anymore. You're working as a part of a team to get, uh, the best product you can, and right. If someone points out that this reference isn't correct, well, you know that's.

Trevor Thrall:

That's done in the spirit of trying to make it a better book, absolutely, and and and I rail against this lone wolf mentality all the time it's not good for your writing, more or less at any stage. I don't think it's not good when you're ideating. It's not good when you're writing. It's not good when you're editing. It's not good when you're promotingating. It's not good when you're writing. It's not good when you're editing.

Jason Kuznicki:

It's not good when you're promoting. It's never good. Don't do things alone.

Trevor Thrall:

It sounds cool on paper, but it's a terrible idea.

Jason Kuznicki:

To bring this back to the subject at hand, when you go to write a pitch letter, you should think of it as you're trying to join a team and you will be the most important person on that team. Like I said, without the author, the team has nothing to do. But you're trying to join a team, you're not trying to be their leader, you're not trying to uh, you know, accumulate, you know servants or something. You're trying to join a team and so you explain yourself and what you have to offer and, uh, you know that includes everything from the argument of the book to the marketing of the book. And if you can do that in a couple of pages, you've written a letter that will presumably get you a book deal.

Trevor Thrall:

All right, we've convinced them. They want to write a pitch pitch letter. Talk a little bit about, before we go through, like sort of a process that you might recommend. This is useful for people, obviously, when they're trying to land a book deal, but we've talked about this before. It can be useful for you, even if you plan on self-publishing and marketing it yourself. So maybe just talk a little bit about the benefits of writing this letter.

Jason Kuznicki:

When I wrote my book Technology and the End of Authority, I went through a bunch of different sortas and writers and talks about their work and one of the very first things that I did in the entire project was to write essentially a pitch letter. And I was working with an editor who was very interested in my work to begin with, someone I already knew. But that still didn't stop me from writing a pitch letter. In a way, it made it very important in a different direction, because I wanted to make the argument as clear as possible in my own mind before I started doing the work. Before I go back to the library and read about Rousseau or Machiavelli, I want to know that I've got a reason for doing that. I want to know what I'm looking for in these texts. I want to know the argument as clearly as possible and one of the things that I very, very, very useful to me in writing the book.

Trevor Thrall:

Yep, so you just said two things and I added a third that you said before, and it came up with three c's. It's helps you with clarity, yes, helps, helps you clarify your thinking. Once you have written it down, it then provides a compass, it helps direct your work and, when you're done, it's copy, it's sales copy and marketing copy.

Jason Kuznicki:

It is the three Cs.

Trevor Thrall:

Look at that. We just came up with a cool framework. That's awesome. And you know what is funny is that, uh, you know, in in the fiction world um, this is not true in the non-fiction world, of course, because we're all plotters in the non-fiction world. We all make plans before we try writing anything. So writing this kind of document it's like writing a dissertation proposal, like you don't get to write the dissertation until you prove to your committee that you can write basically a fancy version of a pitch letter that we approve. That is the compass and shows that you have clarity about the project and all that sort of stuff.

Trevor Thrall:

But even fiction writers who call themselves pantsers, people who don't like to make the big plot right, even for those folks what they will tell you is they can't write a story if they don't know the general arc. They know character A starts in this situation and ends up here. Or if it's two people falling in love, they end up not knowing each other and then they end up together. They know they have a version of that pitch letter. In a sense it might be very small, but it's a kernel. But I think that vision that you have to set out for yourself, for every project is crucial, regardless if you're going to let yourself meander sort of a little bit or whether you're going to try to really plan it out.

Trevor Thrall:

So a pitch letter can be. It's like a multi-tool, you know. It has so many fantastic purposes and I like your phrase. It's a tool for thinking. It really makes you better, right, writing makes you better at thinking. It's just no question about it. I don't think it matters what you're writing about, all right. So I want to write a pitch letter, jason. What's my best general approach to doing it?

Jason Kuznicki:

Your best general approach is to imagine you're writing to a real person because actually you are, because actually you are, and do not get caught up with academic jargon, don't get caught up with technicalities.

Jason Kuznicki:

Don't try to impress them with your smarts, impress them with your ability to communicate, introduce yourself, maybe say a few words about your qualifications Mention if you're including a CV, like I've suggested and then very clearly, so no one can miss it, say something like the argument of the book will be as follows, and write about a paragraph about the argument of the book, and make this a very simple and very clear statement, much more so than in your conclusion or even in your introduction. You want this to be something that anyone can pick up and read. It is not necessarily the case that your editor is a specialist in your field. Your editor will be a specialist in some field, but not necessarily yours, and so you need to introduce your work here to someone who is, in effect, a part of an educated general audience. That's what you're aiming at for a nonfiction pitch letter general audience.

Trevor Thrall:

That's what you're aiming at for a nonfiction pitch letter, and in fiction it's more or less do everything you just said. But it's tell them the story, right? Yes, tell them the story, the story and why it fits, the genre, that you want it, that you tell them the genre and the sub-genre, because for most of the fiction writers, unless you're writing sort of general adult fiction, even there there are so many layers and slices and niches. But you know if you're a fantasy writer, a science fiction writer, a romance writer, you know what sub-niche you're in, because you write it and you read it, and so does your agent, so does the publisher, so does the editor, and so you want to be very clear about where you fit, why your book fits. Tell them the story in a quick synopsis so that they get that it's the right fit and so on.

Jason Kuznicki:

Yeah, and one thing that pitch letters will often do and I do recommend this is to mention some comparable titles. Absolutely, this is often done in the context of marketing, but also it can help an editor to understand in a general sense what kind of a book it is. If you're going to write the next Freakonomics, if you think you've done that, that's ambitious. But if you really think you've done it, then say so. But if you really think you've done it, then say so. And if you are not sure what the comparable titles are in the field that are out there, then perhaps you ought to do some research and some reading and come back when you are sure, because not knowing the literature in the field is, from my point of view as an editor, a big red flag. You should definitely be able to name right off the bat several comparable titles.

Jason Kuznicki:

So I mentioned in my pitch letter that I was imitating a lot of 20th century intellectual survey books, imitating a lot of 20th century intellectual survey books. So, like I mentioned Karl Popper, the Open Society and Its Enemies as a book that I was very consciously trying to imitate in my book, now I can't say necessarily that I'm as great a writer as Karl Popper, one of the greatest philosophers of the last century. But you know, I know what I'm aiming at, I know the kind of book and the territory that I'm in Readers of Karl Popper will enjoy my book.

Trevor Thrall:

It's something like that, right? So it's like King Kong meets Star Wars. You know, if you like three authors, you're going to love this, right? I mean, you see this in books all over the mall, or Barnes Noble. You know, this is how we make sense of what category you're in, and you want to help people get you to the right category quickly, exactly, yeah, so write for a specific person. Is it your mom? What do you choose, your mom?

Jason Kuznicki:

your dad. I tell people the high school English teacher. There you go. Perfect, you remember your high school English teacher and you know that they like writing. They wouldn't be a high school English teacher otherwise and you want to get them interested in this new thing that you're doing. I've written a romance novel that I think you'll really enjoy. This is what it's about. Or I've written a mystery, or I've written an examination of the last 20 years of US trade policy, or whatever it might be.

Jason Kuznicki:

Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic, all right, well, that's, I think, a great start to this topic, jason, and for people who want to learn more, there's going to be a workshop coming up. Yes, yes, on the 21st.

Trevor Thrall:

Absolutely 21st of August. If you're listening to this in the year 2026, it's too late. It already happened last year. But if you are listening to this before August 21st 2025, then you are very welcome to head over to 12weekyearforwriterscom register for this workshop. Or, if you are a member of the community, the workshop is free. So make sure to RSVP and we hope to see you guys next week. All right, jason? Thanks so much, man. Good talking to you. Thank you, good talking with you.