How To Pitch Your Graphic Novel

So you’ve come up with a great idea for a graphic novel, you’ve been writing and drawing like crazy, and now you’re ready to pitch it to an agent?

EXCELLENT!

But pitching to an agent is scary, right? It seems rather daunting, right? It’s hard to know what the heck these people want, right?

WRONG!

From my experience, pitching to an agent is a lot of fun and very exciting. Yes, it’s anxiety-inducing. Yes, there are moments of heartbreak. But pitching to agents has always been beneficial to my work. While you may receive a lot of form rejections, when you do get some personalized feedback it will be SOLID.

With that said, I’d like to help you on your journey by showing you what I included in my graphic novel pitch package. But first, a disclaimer:

This is by no means the “best” way to pitch to an agent. Nor is it the only way. I’m also not guaranteeing you’ll have the success you’re looking for by using my method. All I can tell you is this is how I did it. And, yes, it landed me an agent. It could for you, too. Or maybe it won’t. Who the heck knows? At the end of the day you just gotta be in love with what you made, be prepared to take some lumps, and brace yourself to get back up again if you have to.

Now, without further ado, here’s what you need to make an eye-catching pitch package for your graphic novel:

Full Synopsis

You need to write a full synopsis of your story. This is not a quick summary of your book to tantalize your audience. It should be a multi-page document (2-4 pages depending on the length of your GN) that shares all the action and story beats. That means there needs to be a beginning, middle, and end, and you need to show all the emotional turning points in the story. And don’t worry about your writing. It’s OK if it’s kind of drab. The full synopsis isn’t meant to be a finalized, polished piece of writing. You’re basically showing prospective agents that you’ve thought about all the parts of the story, that all those elements are linked together, and your characters have changed at the end of the book.

Summary

Using your full synopsis as a guide, write a one-paragraph summary of the entire book. For reference, look at the back cover copy of your favorite book or read the summary of your favorite movie. The prospective agent should get a good idea of your story’s vibe from this short summary.

Bio

Write a short bio about yourself. It can be a couple sentences to a paragraph. If you have previous publishing credits, share them here. If you don’t have any publishing experience, that’s OK. Use this space to share your qualifications as a writer and artist, and talk about how much you love making comics.

Script

For my pitch, I went a little overkill. I had two scripts: a script for the first 30 pages of the book, and an “extended script” that went to the halfway point of the story. Most agents will probably only need the 30-page script, but some may want to see more. If you’ve got time, it might be worth having an extended script in your back pocket that you can send to a prospective agent upon request right away.

30-Page Sample of Comic Art

This is another part of my pitch that I overkilled a little. I put together a 30-page sample of finished comic art. Inks, colors, everything. You could safely get away with a 30-page sample of penciled pages with a few pages of finished art here and there. That’s up to you. I decided to go “whole hog” with the artwork because I had nothing better to do at the time.

If you’re only going to finish a few pages, I’d recommend inking and coloring a couple single pages and one spread. Preferably something with some action in it. Really show them what you can do visually.

Multi-Page PDF Document

Now that you’ve got your synopsis, summary, script, and artwork lined up, it’s time to start putting together the actual package. For this, I recommend a multi-page PDF document. Here are the elements you’ll need:

Cover: This could be the actual cover for the book, or just a placeholder image with the title of your book, your name, and your contact information (phone number, email address, and mailing address).

Introduction: This should be a single page where you introduce your book (or series) to your prospective agent. Paste your book summary here along with some details about your target audience (i.e., a middle-grade book for 10-year-old girls who like monster trucks). It’s also a good spot to share any potential “extras” that could be inspired by your book, especially if it’s something educational like a STEM project or learning toy.

Character Sheet: All of the prominent characters in your story should be identified with their name and a short description. If you have artwork for each character, include that here.

Full Synopsis: You’ve already written your full synopsis, so just paste it into your document and format as necessary. Again, it’s a bit of overkill, but I included a handful of spot illustrations throughout my synopsis to help the reader visualize what was going on. Spot illustrations aren’t necessary, but if you’ve got the time and desire go for it.

30-Page Sample of Comic Art: You’ve already drawn it, now just format the images for your pitch package.

Author Bio: At the end of your pitch, include the bio you wrote along with a picture of yourself. If you don’t have a recent picture of yourself, just have someone take your picture with their smartphone and email/text it to you.

Once you’ve prepared all the elements of your pitch package, you’ll want to save all of the pages as JPEGs before compiling them into a PDF document. It’s important to make your PDF as small as possible. Many agents won’t accept attachments over 5MB, and some won’t take any above 2MB! My advice is to save all your pages as lo-res JPEGs (try to keep the file sizes around 200-300KB). Will your images look grainy and gross? Yes, they will. But such is life. As long as the text is legible, you’re good.

After saving all your JPEGs, combine them together using your PDF editor of choice. I use Photoshop. Some folks use Adobe Acrobat. If you have neither of those, there are places online that will make a multi-page PDF document for you at little to no cost.

If you want to have a hi-res version of your PDF, save another set of JPEGs at a higher resolution and combine as a PDF.

Query Letter

Now it’s time to write your query letter. This might be the most important part of your pitch because it’s your first impression. Don’t worry, though. As long as you’re professional you’ll make a good impression, and I’ll show you how to do that.

Open your preferred word processing software and create a document for your query (I also pasted my summary and full synopsis in this document so I could have all of those elements in one spot). It’s safe to say that you will be emailing all of your queries, so it’s important to have a solid subject line. Here’s the format you should use:

Query for [first and last name of agent]: [TITLE OF BOOK OR SERIES], [demographic] graphic novel

Here’s an example of what this could actually look like in your email:

Query for Jane Doe: BOB’S BIG DAY, young adult graphic novel

Pretty simple, eh?

Next, you need to write your query letter. You’ll basically copy and paste this into every email you send out making sure to personalize as necessary.

Your query letter should be set up like this:

Dear Mr./Ms. [last name of agent],

My name is [your name] and I am [using the bio you’ve already written as a guide, fill in the rest of this paragraph with information about you and your accomplishments].

[Summary of your story]

This book will be approximately [number] pages and will be finished in [however long you think the book will be finished]. The full synopsis and a 30-page sample of comic art are available upon request.

Thank you so much for your time, Mr./Ms. [last name of agent]! I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

[Your name]

OK, so here’s an example of what this email could look like:

Dear Ms. Doe,

My name is Wes Molebash and I’m a cartoonist and illustrator living in Southern Ohio. I’ve been creating comics for well over 20 years. My comics have been featured in comic books, magazines, and newspapers, and I stay busy with freelance work. I’ve recently decided to take the plunge into graphic novels, which is why I’m writing you today.

Bob McDonovich is a lethargic ninth-grader with no passion for anything. He slacks off in school, avoids making friends, and flakes on his chores. His teachers are frustrated with his wasted potential, and his mom and dad are at their wits end. While walking home from school one day, Bob sees a faun rummaging around in his neighbor’s backyard trash cans. Bob chases the faun into the woods where he discovers an entire community of magical creatures. As Bob grows more and more comfortable with this secret community of fairies and magical folk, he learns to embrace the “magic” of life and develops passions he never knew he had! However, a dangerous person has been following Bob into the forest and plans to out the secret society, thus destroying Bob’s newfound hope and zest for life.

BOB’S BIG DAY will weigh in at about 250 pages and will be finished in 12-18 months. The full synopsis and a 30-page sample of comic art are available upon request.

Thank you so much for your time, Ms. Doe! I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Wes Molebash

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to writing query letters, but this template is a great starting point. You’ll need to modify this email for every agent, but we’ll talk more about that in a minute.

Agent List

Alright, so you’ve got your pitch package put together and your query letter is written. But what good are these things if you don’t have anyone to send them to? It’s time to put together the list of agents you’d like to query!

I highly recommend that you use QueryTracker. It’s a gigantic database of literary agents that will help you find agents to query, and will also help you keep track of who you queried and what their responses are. You can search for agents who represent the type of book you want to make and add them to your list of agents you want to query. Since we’re talking about graphic novels, I recommend that you do a search for agents that rep graphic novels as well as for agents that rep the demographic you’re aiming for. So if your book is a young adult graphic novel, do a search for “graphic novel” and a separate search for “young adult”. There will be a lot of crossover, but you may find a couple amazing agents that would’ve fallen through the cracks had you not searched for both terms.

There’s some debate about how many agents you should query. My thoughts are “the more the merrier.” The last time I queried for an agent I sent out 40+ queries. It worked for me. Maybe it’ll work for you.

Send Your Queries

Once you’ve compiled your list of agents, it’s time to start querying.

Before you query an agent, make sure to revisit their profile. Read their bio on the agency website. Search for their social media. Remind yourself why you want to pitch to this agent. Then, following their guidelines, start formatting your query.

Some agents will have you send your query to a specific email address. In those cases, you can just copy and paste your query and tweak as necessary. Other agents may have a web form they want you to fill out. In these cases you’ll have to get a little creative. Don’t worry, though. You still have all the pertinent information. You’ll just need to copy and paste the requested info into the appropriate fields.

Regarding web forms, there have been times when my PDF document was too big to attach (even though the agent requests it for initial queries). In those cases I let the agent know that my attachment was too big. Sometimes I was able to provide a Dropbox link to the file. Other times, I waited for permission from the agent to send the larger attachment.

Wait

Sometimes agents respond the same day you send your query. Sometimes they respond days, weeks, or months later. Sometimes they never respond at all. Unfortunately, you don’t have any control at this point. All you can do is wait patiently for that one yes, because one yes is all you need.

Good luck, friend!