Emergents Digital in association with HIE and The Association of Scottish Literary Agents presents…
Bluesky Writers’ Pitch 2025
Emergents Digital - in association with The Association of Scottish Literary Agents and HIE - is delighted to present Scotland’s Bluesky Writers’ Pitch 2025!
Celebrating its tenth year, Scotland's former ‘Tweet Pitch’ event for writers has a new home on Bluesky! Yes - this joyous yearly celebration of Scotland’s writing and publishing sectors is back, and offers the same host of opportunities for writers, agents and publishers to connect, but on a new social media platform.
The annual pitch event has been an essential and productive part of Scotland's publishing calendar for the last nine years. But, amid growing concerns about the suitability and relevance of ‘X’ as a host platform for the event, we have taken the decision to hold this year's event on Bluesky.
This year, the pitch event is supported by two online seminars - a pre-pitch event focussed on how to perfect your pitch, and with insights into the work publishers and agents are looking for in 2025.
A second event, after the pitch day, focuses on writers and social media, new opportunities and a guide to making the most of platforms such as SubStack.
Details of both events, including ticketing (they are free but registration required) are in the Emergents Digital tab above.
How to pitch your work…
Apart from the new platform, this year’s pitch event, our tenth, follows the same basic rules as the last nine years - you’ll need to have a Bluesky account!
To participate writers must be based in Scotland - that is, they must have their main or principle home in Scotland.
On the day - writers pitch their work as the text of a post (not a file attachment) on their own Bluesky account to a maximum of 280 characters plus the hashtag - #scotwriterpitch2025
Participating publishing houses and literary agents will read your pitches by following the hashtag.
Writers can pitch any type of work they wish - but please bear in mind that our agents and publishers are looking for trade, commercial, titles - so think fiction and non-fiction for adults and children in all mainstream genres, plus picture books for children, and works for the young adult market. Pitches for academic or technical works are unlikely to be relevant to our participating agents and publishers.
Writers can pitch for the same work more than once, but if doing so, they must change the pitch. Don’t keep reposting the same pitch, and do not bombard the hashtag pitching the same work.
The work you pitch must be original work, not previously published or be under contract to any publisher.
We do not accept work that includes any AI generated content. Please do not pitch work that contains AI generated content for any kind, or to any degree.
You must, without exception, own the rights to the work you are pitching. If you work in partnership with a co-writer or illustrator, make sure you have their consent before pitching the work. You remain fully legally responsible for the content of your pitch.
If you are pitching a picture book for children please include just one image from the book in your pitch.
To enable publishers or agents to contact you directly in response to your pitch, enable direct messages on your Bluesky account.
All pitches are made at your own risk.
How to set-up a Bluesky account -
The process of setting up a Bluesky account is very straightforward - download the Bluesky app from your app provider or go to bsky.app in your browser and follow the instructions.
This guide, found on YouTube, provides the basic details of how to set up a Bluesky account. There are loads of others, and videos detailing advanced uses of the platform, and options available to account holders: