The Late, Lamented PitMad on Twitter
Oh PitMad, why hast thou forsaken us?
Sadly, I am here to report that PitMad is no more.
So had you ever seen the #PitMad hashtag on Twitter? But, why should you have cared about PitMad?
So, let’s take a look at what PitMad was.
What was #PitMad?
PitMad was a quarterly pitch session on Twitter. So essentially what you would be doing was tweeting about your work. But it was only on specific dates, and agents and publishers were watching.
In addition, it only happened in March, June, September, and December.
It was a great idea. Agents and publishers would essentially scour the Twittersphere, searching for anyone using the hashtag. And, preferably, also using a genre hashtag or two. If an agent liked your pitch, then that was an invitation to query, or at least pitch a bit more.
Your friends could rally around you and offer their support by retweeting your tweets—but liking them was considered to be a faux pas.
When it was still going on, I would dive deep into hashtag and search for people who had not been retweeted much, if at all. And I would retweet them, either with words of encouragement or a comment about how interesting their premise sounded.
And if it were to return, I would do the same. Other writers aren’t my competition. After all, how many books do you have in your home or on your phone or e-reader? How many are in the library? Your book most likely won’t knock mine out of any of those places. And mine won’t do that to yours, either.
Getting Ready With PitMad Hashtags
So you could do yourself a favor, and create your tweets in advance. As in, today.
The idea was to know what to tweet. And you wanted to be able to fit both the #PitMad hashtag into your tweet, but also the hashtag specific to your genre. So, according to Sub It Club and Brenda Drake, the hashtags were as follows:
Main Hashtags for PitMad
- #AC – Action
- #AD – Adventure
- #BIZ – Bizarro Fiction
- #CON – Contemporary
- #CR – Contemporary Romance
- #E – Erotica
- #ER – Erotic Romance
- #ES – Erotica Suspense
- #F – Fantasy
- #FTA = Fairy Tale Retelling
- #GN = Graphic Novel
- #H – Horror
- #HA – Humor
- #HF – Historical Fiction
- #HR – Historical Romance
- #INSP – Inspirational
- #LF – Literary Fiction
- #M – Mystery
- #MA = Mainstream
- #Mem – Memoir
- #MR – Magical Realism
- #NF – Non-fiction
- #P – Paranormal
- #PR – Paranormal Romance
- #R – Romance
- #RS – Romantic Suspense
- #S – Suspense
- #SF – SciFi
- #SFF – Science Fiction & Fantasy
- #SH = Superhero
- #SHRT = Short Story Collection
- #SPF = Speculative Fiction
- #STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics
- #T – Thriller
- #TT = Time Travel
- #UF – Urban Fantasy
- #VF = Visionary Fiction
- #W – Westerns
- #WF – Women’s Fiction
Age Categories
So, per the Pitmad site, you had to use an age category. And here they were:
- #A – Adult
- #C – Children’s
- #CB – Chapter Book
- #MG – Middle Grade
- #NA – New Adult
- #PB – Picture Book (this is the youngest age category)
- #YA – Young Adult
Added Hashtags (Optional)
- #DIS = Disability subject matter
- #IMM = Immigrant
- #IRMC = Interracial/Multicultural subject matter
- #LGBT = LGBTQIA+ subject matter
- #MH = Mental Health subject matter
- #ND = Neurodiverse subject matter
- #OWN = Own Voices
- #POC = Author is a Person of Color
Older Hashtags
- #AA – African American (might not be used anymore?)
- #CF – Christian Fiction (might not be used anymore?)
So there did not seem to be particular hashtags for Zombies or Vampires or the like.
What Were The Rules?
Per Ms. Drake and PitchWars (run by the same people), the rules were:
- You could only pitch complete, polished manuscripts. This meant, no works in progress were allowed!
- So, you couldn’t pitch anything already published, no matter how many changes had been made to it.
- You had to keep the feed clear, so you were not supposed to favorite your friends’ pitches. But you could always retweet and even add commentary to the original post with the #PitMad hashtag.
- Also, you were not supposed to tweet agents or publishers unless they tweeted you first.
- Plus you had to be courteous and professional, of course.
- In addition, if you couldn’t be there, you could use HootSuite or TweetDeck to schedule your pitches.
- You could only pitch three times during a dedicated #PitMad day. And the tweets had to differ somehow, even if it was just a difference of a period.
- But if you had more than one MS to pitch, you would get three tweets per MS.
- Finally, if you were invited to submit a manuscript, you had to be sure to put PitMad Request: TITLE in the subject line of your email when sending your request. Plus, of course, you had to follow all other submission guidelines for the requestor.
What was the Schedule?
It was March, June, September, and December. Also, the times were 8 AM – 8 PM, Eastern Time.
For 2021, the dates were:
- March 4
- June 3
- September 2 (hey, that’s my birthday!)
- December 2
Note: all of these were Thursdays.
Pitmad: Takeaways
So, I am keeping the hashtags in this post because they are still useful on Twitter. Publishers and agents are still there—they’re just not running under the auspices of PitMad anymore.
All in all, there are still many agents and publishers out there. Consequently, you need to get their attention!
So you’d better get crackin’!
And Now a Word About Twitter, in 2023
So, it’s probably just as well that Pitmad has gone to that great tweet in the sky, for Twitter itself is currently on the brink. Of course, that could change tomorrow. But right now, things look a little grim.
However, while there have been some alternatives (I’m looking at you, Post and Mastodon), they are a bit lacking for one reason or another. Mastodon has a ton of individual servers (a bit like Discord). But these seem to be silos. How do you find all your friends? Post seems just to be so new and not very big yet.
So, even if PitMad were to be resurrected, those platforms aren’t necessarily the best new home for it. Perhaps they will be in time. But right now, despite its clear current problems, Twitter still has its place.