How the MoodPitch team went from all vibes, no plot to trending #5 in the US.
In late 2021, my friends and I started chatting about how much we'd love a Twitter pitch event that not only allowed moodboards, but featured them. I remember getting really excited about the idea of turning our timelines into a sort of Pinterest feed of book aesthetics.
The glorious VIBES of it all!
Fortunately, Jaimie Hunter (@jaimiehunter) and Kathleen Foxx (@kfoxx_writes) had far more grounded ideas about how to get a moodboard-plus-pitch event off the ground.
We decided to call it MoodPitch. What else?
From the beginning, our goal was to establish a fun, all-ages, all-genres, inclusive, and accessible pitch contest for the writing community.
A note about that: intentions and outcomes don't always align, and learning how to be as inclusive as possible is an ongoing project. We stumbled a few times, listened to feedback, and aimed to do better.
For an image-based pitch event, visual accessibility is critical, so we decided early on that all moodboards had to include alt text (a description of the image for screen reader users).
We picked April 7th 2022 as our first pitch day so we'd have enough time to prepare. Got our website, email, insta, and Twitter handle up and running, and then the real work began: we had to develop a massive agent/editor list with up-to-date contact info to put out the word.
Slowly, we chipped away at our list for several months until it was complete enough to send out the first round of emails to industry folks.
We also needed to publicize the new event on Twitter. To our relief, authors seemed interested!
But would they show up on pitch day?
Agents began to respond in bigger numbers, and most seemed interested!
But still, we wondered: would they show up on pitch day?
Even with confirmed agent participation, there was no way to know for sure. Agents are super busy, after all, and MoodPitch was totally untested as a concept.
So the MoodPitch team—all three of us—could only hope for a good turnout. We were incredibly nervous the day before!
Would they show up on pitch day?
They did. In massive numbers. Before 10 am ET, MoodPitch was trending #5 in the US!
Agents and editors were scrolling the hashtag, folks were generally pretty polite when reminded to use alt text (and lots of authors remembered!), and there was a ton of positivity in the writing community throughout the day.
Immediately afterward, authors were tweeting about how much fun they'd had. How they'd made new friends. How they enjoyed the whole 'Pinteresting' of the timeline.
There were around 25,000 MoodPitch tweets altogether that day!
It was a dizzying amount of engagement that far exceeded our expectations, obviously. We were ready to officially declare the first MoodPitch a success.
And then? There were the success stories MoodPitch was created to facilitate. Since that inaugural MoodPitch and our second in November, we've heard from multiple authors who connected with their now-agent via MoodPitch.
It's the best feeling! A way to give back to the writing community that's been so generous to us. We hope to see many more agent announcements in the years to come.*
For current info on the next MoodPitch, you can visit our site at moodpitch.org where you can also sign up for our non-spammy newsletter to stay updated. And if you're so inclined, please follow us on Twitter and Instagram (@moodpitchers).
*Twitter is constantly changing under its new ownership, and this may affect our ability to hold future MoodPitches and/or require us to migrate to a different platform. Signing up for our newsletter is the best way to stay informed of any changes!
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