Hey, gang. I'm excited to announce that my house, French Press Publishing, is actively acquiring (completed!) novels, novellas, and collections. And you can sit down for a pitch session with me at the World Fantasy Convention this year.
“What is a pitch session?” you conveniently ask, dear straw man reader?
Well, I’m glad you asked! A pitch session is your opportunity to sit
down with an editor or agent and sell them on one of your manuscripts. Now, for the 5 Ws of this particular event:
Who?
You, with your completed, ready-for-primetime manuscript, will have the opportunity to meet me, Stephen Kozeniewski, or Kayleigh Dobbs. What are we specifically looking to acquire? We will consider novels, novellas, and collections. Broadly speaking we like horror and sci-fi, but click on the “About Us” section of this blog for a little more info. You can also watch our past open call announcements during the Buzz Book Expo (2023, 2022) to get a better feel for what we like.
What?
You should be prepared to:
- introduce yourself like a human being,
for Christ’s sake
- give the editor a one sentence elevator
pitch (think the teaser on a movie poster)
- elaborate on your story (think the back jacket
of your book once it’s on the shelf)
- answer questions if prompted
Bear in mind this all has to be
accomplished in about five minutes, so polish your pitch until it shines like a
diamond. You don’t have to be a robot,
repeating a carefully memorized routine by rote. (In fact, that would kind of defeat the
purpose of an in-person pitch session.)
But if you punctuate every other word with “um” and trail off mid-sentence,
we’re going to mark you down as “that flop sweat-soaked wretch” instead of
“that author I desperately want to work with.”
Then, if we’re interested, we’ll ask to
see more, so you’d better not be pitching us some glimmer in your eye. Make sure your manuscript is ready to go.
Where?
World Fantasy Convention
DoubleTree by Hilton Brighton Metropole
Kings Rd, Brighton and Hove, Brighton BN1
2FU, United Kingdom
Gloucester Room
When?
Thursday, October 30, 2025
8:00 pm
Why?
I don’t fucking know. You’re the one that wants to get
published. You tell me.
But for real, we have so far published 16
books, including the Imadjinn award-winning You’re Mine by Somer Canon, and Kit
Power’s British Fantasy Award Finalist novella, Millionaires Day.
How?
E-mail us at frenchpresspub (at) hotmail
(dot) com to express your interest. We
will assign slots on a first come, first serve basis. However, if you’re not one of the twelve or
fifteen authors we’re able to guarantee slots to, you should still get your
pitch ready anyway. If the convention
doesn’t immediately kick us out of the room we may be open to seeing more
people. Or we can set up a time to meet
later, or you may be able to pitch us as you see us around the con. However, if any of you try to pitch me while I’m:
a) on the toilet (or “loo” as it’s called
in the UK), or
b) while I’m having a private dinner
I swear to God you’ll be blackballed from
my publishing company for life. And I
don’t even have a blacklist yet. You’d
be the first one on there. Go
ahead. Peek over that bathroom
stall. See how it works out for you.
As for the rest of you, we’re excited to hear about your work. See you in Brighton!
