Things That Worked: Another Pitch (and more tips!)

Sample materials to simplify your life

Welcome back for another round of ‘Things That Worked’!

I‘ve been playing around with the Substack ‘Chat’ feature lately. I lately acquired a wonderful new batch of subscribers (*waves* Hi there!) and wanted to know what sort of things they wanted to read about here on Page by Page.

The one answer I got? Pitches.

Ask and ye shall receive!

The art of the pitch

As I noted in my last TTW post on pitches, pitching is an art form. Some university departments are running their own workshops on pitching so that faculty members and students can learn the craft (why not suggest your own department do the same?). It takes a great idea, great timing, and a certain set of skills to pitch successfully.

But perhaps most of all, it takes persistence.

I’m going to be really honest with you here: I have made several unsuccessful pitches. Usually, when a pitch is unsuccessful I never hear back from the publication in question. One of those unsuccessful pitches ended up being successful elsewhere—I pitched it to The Guardian, never heard back, and pitched it to a blog at The Washington Post, which picked it up. One pitch was initially successful—I was invited to submit the piece I’d proposed, but once I did, I never heard back (ouch).

The best way to learn how to pitch? Practice!

The best way to learn resilience as a writer who pitches? Don’t let one rejection keep you from pitching another piece, or pitching elsewhere!

‘The Approach’

Once you have a great topic in mind and you know which publication you want to pitch to, it’s time for what might be the most important step in pitching: figuring out how to get in touch with someone at that publication.

Here are a few simple ways you can do that:

• Check their website. Many publications advertise specific email addresses for those who want to pitch opinion pieces or essays on specific topics.

• Hunt down editors. Not in a predatory sort of way. Be cool, people. But if you can’t find an obvious email address to send your pitch to, look at mastheads and ‘About’ sections until you can identify the editor you might want to approach. Then see if you can find their professional contact information on the publication’s website or on LinkedIn. Google is your friend.

• Try social media. Some editors don’t have a problem with writers reaching out informally with a simple query like ‘if I wanted to pitch a piece to your publication, who should I write to?’ Some are so used to it they might even have the information in their ‘pinned’ Tweet/X-post or their bio. But it’s worth seeing how active and open they are on social media before you reach out.

• Ask around. Do you know someone who’s successfully pitched to this publication before? Ask them how they did it and whether they’re comfortable sharing contact details of the person they initially contacted. Know someone who might know someone else who’s published somewhere? Well, you won’t know until you start asking around!

A successful pitch