Tips on Pitching to Comic Anthologies (in Comic Form)

Melanie Gillman, one of the editors of the queer paranormal romance anthology The Other Side (Kickstarting soon and launching this spring), has posted a set of comic strips covering “tips about pitching to comic anthologies”.

They start with the obvious, “follow directions”, but they also cover the very important (and not as well known as it should be) rule that a pitch is different from marketing copy in one important way: the pitch has to cover how the story ends. If someone is interested in selecting (or buying) your story, they want to know what it is that they are getting, in full.

Comic by Melanie Gillman

There’s also some good advice on the basics of interpersonal behavior, even if you’re communicating electronically, and an important reminder that rejection doesn’t mean your work wasn’t good enough. It might be a matter of space or selection criteria other than quality.

For example, when I was Submissions Editor for Smut Peddler, we were aiming for a good mix of types of smut: straight, gay, poly, and so on. If you happened to submit a good story that was too similar to something one of our invited contributors had done, it was more likely your work wouldn’t be included, even though it was a good idea. Sometimes it’s just luck of the draw, and while it can be tempting to come up with some kind of conspiracy theory about it (we didn’t go to the same school! they don’t like that I argued with them once online three years ago!), it’s better for everyone just to try again later.



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