On March 11th, literary agents will be turning to Twitter to find their next author clients.

That’s right: it’s time for another #PitMad, the manuscript pitching party on Twitter where you can tweet in hopes of finding an agent for your book.

Here’s how #PitMad works:

Between 8am and 8pm EST, authors can pitch their completed manuscripts two times per hour (per manuscript) in 140 characters or less using the hashtag #PitMad, along with the hashtag abbreviation for their genre (see below for those abbreviations).

Literary agents monitor the feed throughout the day and favorite the pitches they like. When an agent favorites your tweet, it’s an invitation to send them your query.

Brenda Drake has a great, concise description of the #PitMad event and its rules on her site.

Here’s a few of her Twitter pitch recommendations:

Don’t tweet agents and publishers directly unless they tweet you first. Don’t favorite friends tweets. The agents will be requesting by favoriting tweets. so let’s keep that for requests. You can RT your friends to show your support. Please keep in mind, we never know what agents or publishers will be on the hashtag, so make sure you research each requesting agent or publisher. You do not have to send requests to those requesting if you don’t want to work with them. If you can’t be there, you can always schedule your tweets by using Tweetdeck or some other application that schedules tweets.

As I mentioned above, you’ll want to include your genre hashtag in your tweets too. Here are those abbreviations:

#YA = Young Adult

#MG = Middle Grade

#A = Adult

#NA = New Adult

#PB = Picture Book

#CB = Chapter Book

#NF = Non-fiction

#WF = Woman’s Fiction

#SFF = Science Fiction and Fantasy

#R = Romance

#LF = Literary Fiction

#Mem = Memoir

For more info about book pitching etiquette on Twitter and how to compose tantalizing tweets, check out:

Have you taken part in #PitMad? Let us know all about it in the comments below.