The June #SFFpit is over, and as usual we’ve analyzed the data. Because of course we did. Why wouldn’t you? Having data and not analyzing it is like having ice cream and not eating it. You *could* leave it in the freezer. If you’re a monster.

Thanks to host Dan Koboldt for all of his work. He is the true brains behind most of the information here.  You can visit his website here. He is the author of THE ROGUE RETRIEVAL, and THE ISLAND DECEPTION, available now. Rumor has it that the draft of book three is almost complete (I get to read it in a couple weeks!)

For those of you visiting for the first time, I’m Michael Mammay. Feel free to take a look around the site where I do whatever strikes my fancy, but usually it has something to do with writing. If you’d like to get updates every few months and be informed of upcoming events (Like future SFFPit dates, participating agents, and other opportunities) you can sign up for my newsletter here. I won’t spam you, I promise.

Some fun things happened yesterday. Dan got featured in Writer’s Digest talking about pitching contests, and we also got a shout out on Tor’s website. Tor also made a great graphic for the hashtag.

The Numbers:

We had a record number of participants with 883 authors posting 4069 pitches. That’s an increase of 63% over the 542 authors who participated in December. If you go back and look at last June, we had 556 participants. So we’re clearly in new territory here.

But Wait. There’s More:

Maybe you wondered what would happen if you broke the data down further. No? Just me? How about a breakdown by age group?

Our top genres, measured by people who used the hashtags were fantasy (#FA) at 2228 tweets, Sci Fi (#SF) 1077, urban fantasy (#UF) at 437, and Epic Fantasy (#EF) at 431. Note that these numbers are a bit higher than the others, as we pulled this data using a different mechanism.

Some people used multiple tags. The most popular combination was YA-FA, with 495 tweets. AD-FA came in at 229, and YA-SF came in third at 208.

The Agents:

Of course without the participating agents, this wouldn’t be much of an event. We had 27 different agents make requests yesterday, which is the same number that participated in December, but up from 15 who participated last June. Below is a list of the twitter handles of agents. The reason I’m providing this is for research purposes. When you see the numbers: 28 agents looking at 4069 pitches, it becomes obvious that nobody saw every pitch. Nobody saw even CLOSE to every pitch. So you shouldn’t take it as a rejection if you didn’t get a favorite from an agent.

One thing you can do is look at the agent’s twitter page and look back through what they *did* favorite. Say an agent favorited several epic fantasy tweets. If you write epic fantasy, maybe you want to query that agent. Agents have MSWLs, and you should check those as well. But not every agent keeps that up to date, and sometimes tastes change. Yesterday’s requests were like a mini real-time wish list. And if nothing else, these are agents who came to an event called SFFpit. They’re probably people you want to look into if you’ve got that kind of book.

This is a list of agents who requested during #SFFpit yesterday, not an endorsement by Dan or myself. As always, we recommend that you do your research on an agent before submitting your work. If I missed any agents, I apologize. We think we got all the requests, but there were a LOT. If you are an agent and would like to be notified of future contests, please feel free to contact me by twitter or via the contact form on this website and we’ll make sure you get the invite in the future (though you can always stop by, invite or not!)

I’m linking to the twitter handle the agent used to make the request, for your convenience. Because that’s how much I love you all. And when you wonder why it took me so long to get this post done, well, now you know. (If you’re wondering about the order of the list, it’s alphabetical by agency name)

@HeddaFlaherty, @BeckyLeJeune, @Jen_Corkill, @Justin_941, @Jessie_Devine, @literallycait, @lindsaymealing, @samroebuck, @TanusriPrasanna, @andreasomberg, @kortney_price, @wensday95, @_LisaRodgers, @eddieschneider, @RivetingRosie, @katedetweiler, @Mary_C_Moore, @DorianMaffei, @saramegibow, @hansenwriter, @kurestinarmada, @JennieGoloboy, @EmMorgen, @ginazampino, @lindsayleggett_, @LaneHeymont, @laurenspieller

I would be remiss if I didn’t add this: Just because an agent didn’t participate, doesn’t mean they’re not open to SF/F. Maybe they were busy. Maybe they don’t like twitter pitch contests. Use all your resources. This is just one.

Final Thoughts:

In addition to our participating agents, we also had several small presses come by yesterday. The same rule applies about doing your research. Our one recommendation is that you query either agents or small presses, but not both at the same time. This is generally accepted protocol. You can find things written about it elsewhere, so I’m not going to belabor the point.

And as with any #SFFpit post, it wouldn’t be complete without Dan building a word cluster out of yesterday’s tweets. Thanks for stopping by, and thanks to everybody who participated. We’ll see you in December.

Tags: #SFFPit, Michael Mammay