I got ratioed by 300 writers
The author reflects on a recent experience pitching his novel to literary agents during an online workshop. He realized that despite having written his book, he was unprepared to communicate its essence effectively. This experience prompted him to develop a 'Pitch Bible' to improve his pitching skills and ensure he is ready for future opportunities.
- ▪The author participated in an online workshop with over 300 aspiring authors.
- ▪He was selected to pitch his novel but was unprepared and struggled to convey its concept.
- ▪After receiving feedback, he committed to improving his communication skills through practice and study.
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Record
| Original publisher | Hacker News (Newest) |
| Canonical URL | https://booksbyjeffrey.substack.com/p/i-got-ratioed-by-300-writers |
| Publication time | Wed, 20 May 2026 18:22:43 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-20T18:35:02.972Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-20T18:35:02.972Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | XETQr6eWfWvu |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
I Got Ratioed by 300 Writers...Learn to talk about your book BEFORE the opportunity arrives.Jeffrey JeakinsMay 20, 2026221ShareStock photo licensed via Envato ElementsI was in an online workshop a few months back, hosted by two top literary agents alongside 300+ other aspiring authors, all of us hoping to learn how to pitch our novels.Five people would be selected to deliver a verbal pitch of their book and somehow I was selected to be one of the five pitchers. This was it. A real chance to pitch my novel to actual agents.But truth be told, I hadn’t put any thought into really pitching my book yet. My head had been down writing for the last year and I had not spent any real time formulating my pitch.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Hacker News (Newest).
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