I wrote this post just over a year ago, and in that time I’ve seen more and more abuses of Twitter’s generally-fun-and-useful pitch contests. It’s become bad enough that in two recent SF and Romance pitch contests I followed, over half of the ‘favorites’ were from brand new and unknown publishers, or worse: from companies already known to be predatory or clueless (by online watchdog groups). If the trend continues, Twitter pitches won’t be worth the time for serious authors, publishers, or agents.
New authors: do your research! Don’t send material to a publisher/agent unless you know they’re going to be a good partner. Do some simple, basic research: learn who they are, where did they learn about publishing (did they learn about REAL publishing?), are they total flakes and dictators when disagreements happen, and can they sell your work?