Self-Publishing
Pitch Kit for Authors: What Belongs in the Folder Before You Hit Send
Freelance developmental editor who has shepherded 200+ manuscripts from messy draft to publishable, and writes about revision like the craft it is.
Picture a writing conference, the last coffee break of the day. You have four minutes with an agent you have followed for three years. You talk about your book, she tilts her head, and she says the sentence every writer rehearses hearing: "Sounds good. Send me the query, a synopsis and the first fifty pages."
Then you go home and discover you own exactly one of those three things.
So the weekend goes on a synopsis you have never written, a bio you rewrite eleven times, and a query letter that still reads like the first draft of a cover letter. Monday arrives, and you send her something that is fine. It isn't your best, because nobody does their best writing against a deadline they didn't know was coming.
A pitch kit stops that weekend from happening. You build it before anyone asks for it, so that when the yes arrives, you just attach the files.
A pitch kit is a folder
It is easy to hear "pitch" and think of a paragraph. In practice, a pitch kit is a folder of separate documents, each written for a different person who will open it at a different moment.
The agent reads your query letter. If she likes it, she reads the pages. If she likes those, she reads the synopsis to check that the ending holds. If she signs you, the editor she sells to wants a logline and comps for the acquisitions meeting. If you self-publish, your future reader sees the blurb, the cover and the title, and nothing else.
Nobody reads the whole folder. Everybody reads part of it. That is why each piece has to stand on its own.
What goes inside, and who opens it
Here is the full inventory for a novel. Not every author needs every item, but most need more of them than they expect.
| Document | Typical length | Who opens it | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Query letter | 250–350 words | Literary agent | First contact |
| Sample pages | First 5, 10 or 50 pages | Agent | With the query, or on request |
| Synopsis | 1–2 pages | Agent, editor | After the pages land |
| Logline | One sentence | Agent, editor, you | Every conversation about the book |
| Short hook | About 50 words | Retailers, newsletters, ads | Launch |
| Back-cover blurb | 120–180 words | Readers | Point of purchase |
| Comparable titles | 3–5 books | Agent, editor, sales team | Query and acquisitions |
| Author bio | Two versions: 50 and 150 words | Everyone | Query, jacket, website |
| Title options | 3–4 candidates | You, then your editor | Before the first send |
| Cover concept | One image or mood brief | Self-pub readers, designer | Launch |
| Metadata | Genre, audience, keywords | Retailers, librarians | Upload day |
Non-fiction writers swap the synopsis and most of the sample pages for a book proposal: an overview, a market analysis, comparable titles with publisher and year, a chapter-by-chapter outline, one or two sample chapters, and a section on your platform. A non-fiction book is usually sold before it is finished, and the proposal is the thing being sold.
Each piece, and the mistake it usually carries
Rules for these documents are everywhere. What's harder to find is the specific way each one tends to go wrong, so this section leads with the failure.
The query letter
What it is for: making a busy stranger want to read page one.
The usual mistake: spending half the letter on the author and a quarter on the plot summary, which leaves no room for the one thing that sells: the main character's dilemma. A strong query lets the agent see a person who wants something, the obstacle in the way, and the cost of failing. It names the title, word count and genre in one plain sentence, gives two comps, and ends.
Keep: the protagonist's name, the specific choice they face, the word count.
Cut: rhetorical questions, "this book will appeal to everyone," and any line that explains your theme.
The synopsis
What it is for: proving the ending works.
The usual mistake: treating it like a blurb and hiding the twist. A synopsis is the one document where spoilers are required. The agent wants to see that the middle doesn't sag and that the climax pays off the setup. Write it in present tense, third person, with the main characters' names in capitals on first mention, and give every major turn its consequence ("so she..." or "which means...").
Keep: cause and effect, the ending, the emotional turn.
Cut: subplots that don't change the main line, and every secondary character who doesn't need a name.
Sample pages
What it is for: showing that you can do it on the page, not just in summary.
The usual mistake: sending pages that start with weather, waking up, or two pages of backstory before anything moves. The opening is often the chapter you have revised the most, and it can still be the weakest one, because it was written first, before you knew the book.
Keep: a character doing something under pressure on page one.
Cut: prologues the story doesn't strictly need. If the agent's guidelines say "first ten pages," send ten pages, not ten and a half.
The logline
What it is for: making the book easy to repeat. Agents pass your logline to editors, and editors pass it to sales teams.
The usual mistake: describing the theme instead of the story. "A meditation on grief and memory" is a review, not a logline. A working logline has a character, a goal, an obstacle and a stake, and nothing else.
For one invented novel pitched at every length, from tagline to synopsis, see our guide to building a book pitch from your manuscript.
The blurb and short hook
What they are for: turning a browser into a buyer.
The usual mistake: writing the blurb in the voice of a book report. Back-cover copy should sound like the genre: tight and urgent for a thriller, warm and teasing for romance, eerie for horror. The short hook is the blurb cut down to its sharpest fifty words, for retailer pages and email. There is more on this in how to write a book blurb that sells.
Comparable titles
What they are for: telling the agent which shelf your book sits on and which readers will buy it.
The usual mistake: reaching for the biggest name in the genre. Comparing yourself to a book that sold forty million copies says more about your ambitions than your book. Pick titles from the last three to five years, from authors with a solid readership but not a household name, and ideally pair two of them that wouldn't normally sit together ("the setting of X with the narrator of Y").
The author bio
What it is for: showing you are a real professional who can be worked with.
The usual mistake: writing only one. You need a short version (two or three sentences, for the query) and a longer one (for a jacket flap, a website, a festival programme). If you have no publishing credits, don't apologise for it. A line about relevant expertise, where you live, or why you wrote this book is enough. Never invent a credential, because agents check.
Titles, cover and metadata
These matter most to self-publishers, but traditionally published authors should still bring title options to an agent. If your working title is generic, having three stronger candidates ready shows you understand how the book will be sold. For self-publishing, the cover concept and the metadata (genre categories, audience, a short list of keywords) decide whether a reader ever sees the blurb at all.
The kit audit: twelve yes-or-no questions
Score your current folder. Give yourself one point for each honest yes.
- Could you send the query, synopsis and sample pages within an hour of a request?
- Is your query letter under 350 words?
- Does the query name the protagonist and the specific choice they face?
- Does your synopsis reveal the ending?
- Does page one of your sample show a character under pressure?
- Can you say your logline aloud in one breath?
- Are your comps from the last five years?
- Do you have two bio lengths, and are both true?
- Has someone who hasn't read the book read the blurb, and could they tell you what the book is about?
- Is every file named with your surname and the title?
- Do you know your word count to the nearest thousand?
- Have you checked the specific agent's submission guidelines this week, not last year?
10–12: you are ready. Send it.
6–9: you are close. The weak answers show you where to spend the next weekend.
0–5: don't query yet. Build the folder first, because a rushed kit can cost you an agent you can only query once.
A weekend to build the whole thing
Most authors build pitch documents one at a time, as each request arrives. It is quicker to build them together, because they all draw on the same raw material: who the protagonist is, what they want, what goes wrong, and how it ends.
| When | Task | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Saturday morning | Write the logline, then expand it into the 50-word hook | 2 documents |
| Saturday midday | Write the synopsis, start to finish, ending included | 1 document |
| Saturday afternoon | Draft the query letter from the logline and synopsis | 1 document |
| Saturday evening | Pick comps, write both bios | 3 short documents |
| Sunday morning | Write the blurb, list title options | 2 documents |
| Sunday midday | Cut and polish the sample pages | 1 document |
| Sunday afternoon | Give the query and blurb to one person who hasn't read the book | Notes |
| Sunday evening | Rename files, make the folder, run the audit again | A ready kit |
Order matters. The logline comes first because every other document grows out of it. If you can't write the logline, the problem is upstream of the pitch, and you need to know before you spend a day polishing a query.
Naming and organising the folder
It sounds trivial. It isn't. An agent who downloads "Query FINAL final2.docx" learns something about you before reading a word.
Use one folder per book, and one file per document, named the same way every time:
Surname_Title_Query.docxSurname_Title_Synopsis.docxSurname_Title_First50.docxSurname_Title_Pitch-Notes.docx(logline, hook, comps, both bios, title options in one file, for your own use)Surname_Title_Blurb.docx
Keep old versions in a subfolder called archive, not in the main folder. When you change a fact (word count, title, a comp), change it everywhere at once. The most common inconsistency agents notice is a word count that differs between the query and the manuscript.
Three kinds of kit, side by side
Your route to readers changes which documents carry the weight.
| Agent route (fiction) | Self-publishing launch | Non-fiction proposal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lead document | Query letter | Blurb and cover | Proposal overview |
| Must be finished? | Yes, whole manuscript | Yes, and edited | Usually 1–2 sample chapters |
| Synopsis | Required | Optional, for yourself | Replaced by chapter outline |
| Comps | 2 in the query, 3–5 on file | Used for ads and categories | Required, with publisher and year |
| Bio | Short version | Long version, on the retailer page | Platform section carries the weight |
| Cover | Not your job | The most important asset | Not your job |
| Metadata | Genre and word count | Categories and keywords | Category and audience |
Where StoryWith AI fits in the kit
We build StoryWith AI, so read this section knowing that. It is also the part of the article we can be most specific about, because we can tell you exactly what the tool does and what it doesn't.
StoryWith is a writing and revision studio for authors. Once your manuscript is in it, written there or imported from Word, PDF or plain text, the Pitch Kit page builds most of the folder above from the book itself, rather than from a genre and a one-line description typed into a box.
That difference matters. A pitch is a compression of the book, and a tool can only compress what it has read. Pitch Kit reads your chapters and scene summaries, your characters and your premise, so the logline names your protagonist and the comps come from your shelf.
What it builds
| Kit item | What Pitch Kit gives you |
|---|---|
| Title options | Four alternatives in different registers (literal, lyrical, mysterious, bold), drawn from your premise, genre and tone. "Use this" renames the book everywhere, after you confirm. |
| Cover concept | A generated cover in one of three styles: painterly, minimal or photographic. You can describe what you want, refine it, and save it. Each image uses one AI image credit. |
| Logline, hook and blurb | A one-line logline, a short hook of about 50 words, and a 120–180 word back-cover blurb written in the voice of your genre. |
| Query letter kit | A hook, taglines, 3–5 comparable titles, an author bio and a 250–350 word query letter, signed with the name you enter. It asks for your real name first instead of leaving bracket placeholders, and it doesn't invent credentials. |
| Non-fiction proposal | Overview, market analysis, comps, a chapter outline, suggested sample chapters and an author-platform section. |
| Pre-publish validation | Seven automatic checks: cover saved, premise written, at least 3 chapters, no empty chapters, at least 10 scenes, at least 10,000 words, protagonist defined. |
| Submission checklist | Ten steps you tick off as you go, from "logline locked" and "synopsis written" to "beta reader feedback collected" and "genre, audience, keywords selected". |
| Manuscript export | Your full book as Word, PDF, Markdown or plain text, ready to attach or to take into Vellum or Atticus. |
The pitch documents need a real draft to work from, about 5,000 words at minimum, and the title suggestions need a one-sentence premise. That's deliberate. Below that, the tool would be guessing, and a guessed pitch is exactly the generic copy agents skim past.
What it doesn't do
- It doesn't write your synopsis. The synopsis is on the checklist, but you write it. That is the right way round, because the synopsis is where you find out whether your ending holds.
- It doesn't choose your fiction sample pages. Your opening is your opening. What StoryWith can do is tell you whether those pages are working (see below).
- It doesn't research agents or send queries. You still need to read each agent's guidelines and personalise each letter.
- Everything it drafts is a draft. Edit it in your own voice. Treat it as a strong first version that you then make yours.
Why the rest of the studio matters to the kit
A pitch kit can only be as good as the book behind it, and StoryWith's other tools aim at the questions the kit audit raises:
- Is my opening strong enough to send? AI reader personas react to your first chapter as a thriller fan, a literary reader or a skeptical new reader would, with scores for engagement, clarity and emotional impact, and an honest "would keep reading" answer. See how an AI beta reader works.
- Is the manuscript actually ready? The readiness check runs six structural checks and flags blockers before you query, without spending AI credits. More in is my book ready to query?
- Does the ending pay off? Arc analysis names the shape of your story and points to flat stretches, which is the same weakness a synopsis exposes.
- What do real readers think? Feedback sessions send a private link to 3–20 beta readers and show where they stopped reading, so the "beta feedback collected" box on the checklist gets ticked with real data.
If you don't have a book in StoryWith yet, two free tools work without an account: the query letter generator and the query letter grader, both at storywith.ai/tools. The grader scores a letter you've already written on hook, stakes, voice and clarity, and quotes the lines it would change.
Five ways a kit falls apart in an agent's inbox
- The documents disagree. The query says 92,000 words, the manuscript says 104,000, and the synopsis gives the sister a different name. Build everything from the same source and update everything together.
- The query was written for every agent. "Dear Agent" signals that the letter went to two hundred inboxes. Spend one sentence on why this particular agent.
- The comps are aspirational. Two global bestsellers say you don't know your market.
- The synopsis is coy. "And then a shocking secret changes everything" tells the agent you either don't know the ending or don't trust it.
- The kit was finished before the book. For fiction, an agent who loves your query will ask for the full manuscript, sometimes within the hour. If it isn't ready, the kit has sold something that doesn't exist yet.
Quick answers
Is a pitch kit the same as a press kit? No. A press kit is for journalists and event organisers after the book exists in the world: headshots, an interview Q&A, review quotes. A pitch kit is for the people deciding whether the book gets published or bought. You will want both eventually, but the pitch kit comes first.
Do I need a pitch kit if I'm self-publishing? Yes, though its centre of gravity shifts. You'll lean on the blurb, cover, title, metadata and the long bio, and you can skip the query letter entirely.
How long should it take to build? A focused weekend for a novel, if the manuscript is finished. A non-fiction proposal usually takes longer, because the market analysis and the chapter outline need research.
Can AI write my pitch kit for me? It can draft most of it, and a tool that reads your full manuscript drafts far better than one that reads a prompt. But you are the one who signs the query, and the agent is signing you, not the software. Draft with help, then rewrite until every line sounds like you.
Before you attach the files
Run the audit one more time. Read the query aloud. Check the word count matches in every file. Make sure the synopsis gives away the ending. Then send it, and close the folder. It's ready for the next yes.
