Pitched as...

     I was kind of overwhelmed by the deals on Publisher’s Marketplace at first. There were just so many different categories, most for international or audio rights, which is probably super cool for the author, but not exactly what I would consider interesting right now. At first, I tried to see if I could spot any recognizable names, but that wasn’t really going well, so instead I filtered by Young Adult Fiction in hopes that it would go better. It did not. In the end I was reminded of a part of one of our readings (I cannot remember which) that said books are often pitched now as “modern day blank” or “a combination of blank and blank” and I realized I found A LOT of those. 

     A modern day Cyrano pitch is interesting because I didn’t realize Cyrano was a popular enough story for this to be a compelling pitch for a lot of people, although to be fair, maybe this isn’t the pitch that would go on the blurb in the back. The rest of the description is very YA trope-esque. The most effective pitch for me is the Cyrano part, so I guess it worked in this case. 

     This is weird. I haven’t seen Sailor Moon but it doesn’t seem like it can be easily combined with Simon vs. the Homo Sapien Agenda. Very confusing. Very niche. It makes me wonder how well these combo pitches actually describe the story. 

     This is intriguing. Young adults are at peak angstiness, so “dark” is good there. Hopefully “queer” is actually reflective of the story, and Howl’s Moving Castle is definitely attention-grabbing. 
      I suppose it’s interesting that books are often pitches as retellings or combinations of existing things. Cynical people might argue that it’s a sign of lost originality, but I think it seems to be more of a strategy for pitching. It certainly caught my interest a lot of the time more than a weird title or unknown author did. The comparison is more about finding the right readers than it is about relevance to the story. Almost everything is a retelling anyway, right.