PITCH PERFECT Ronald Turnbull plays his audition tapes to publishers The pool of difFuse waffle The soggy prose The finely crafted BLURB The stunning COVER PHOTO The comfort that comes from a well crafted pitch.


here’s 800 of you applying, and only one’s going to get through. First they line you up in sixes, and discard anyone who’s too tall or whose hair is red. If your size and shape are right, they give you 45 seconds to show what you can do. You display your best smile, and choose a routine which swoops from a gentle crooning start to a full-throated belter of a climax and still leaves a moment at the end for a few steps of your special tap dancing. And they go


T 10 Outdoor focus | spring 2017 no thanks next one please goodbye… 0 / the Research


Okay, getting your book past a publisher is a bit easier than auditioning for musical theatre off - off -Broadway in New York like my daughter-in-law has to do. But not that much easier. You’ve got two minutes of some publisher’s time, and lucky at that. Within page one of your Word fi le, you’ve got to make them want to read pages two and three. The good news? You don’t need to do any tap dancing.


Your intended victim may be one who already published something along your line, by an author you respect. An old fashioned paper-and-coff ee bookshop is a great place to pick things up and see who published them. Then you go back on the Internet and fi nd out who the editor is in the Outdoor section. Or ask the boy on the switchboard or the other members of the OWPG. Ms Info@ can


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