Event Calendar
Prev MonthPrev Month Next MonthNext Month
September 2020 Agent Pitch Event
Wednesday, September 09, 2020 to Tuesday, September 22, 2020
Category: Events

September 2020 Agent Pitch Event

Registration is closed.

Agent Pitch Event dates: Tuesday, September 8 - Monday, September 21, 2020 (see timeline below)

Tentative list of participating agents

Members can pitch one unpublished (and never self-published), completed, polished women’s fiction (see below) manuscript. Soon after, agents reply to the posts they would like to pursue. This is a free, members-only event, but to give the agents a chance to focus on each pitch, the event is capped at 100 registrants. See information below to prepare yourself to be eligible.

Important! WFWA's definition of women's fiction is novels that have, at their core, a plot driven by the main character's emotional journey. They may belong to one or more subgenres, including romance, historical, suspense, #ownvoices, mystery, Southern, science fiction, or many others.

Pitch Event elements

  • The title of the manuscript
  • The applicable subgenres of women’s fiction for this manuscript
  • A 50-word pitch, which must include the protagonist’s emotional journey and which must have been refined in a recent Prepare Your Pitch Event (see below)
  • The (polished) first 500 words of the novel

Schedule of activities leading up to the review of pitches by the agents

Tuesday, September 8: Participants register

Thursday, September 10 - Sunday, September 13: Participants post their pitches in the online forum; all pitches must be posted by midnight EST on September 13, 2020.

Monday, September 14 - Monday, September 21: Volunteer committee members review pitches to ensure they meet program guidelines and that the protagonist’s emotional journey is clear in the pitch. Those members whose pitches don’t adhere to program guidelines will be contacted and given twenty-four hours to make the corrections needed.

Friday, September 25 - Sunday, October 4:  Agents review pitches in the forum and request additional materials for manuscripts of interest to them.

How participants are selected

This event is capped at 100 participants. To facilitate as many of our members as possible in pitching their manuscripts to agents, slots for this event will be assigned in the order below. Only members who have participated in a recent Prepare Your Pitch event are eligible for Agent Pitch Events.

  1. Members who actively participated in the August 2020 Prepare Your Pitch Event, but have not participated in a previous Agent Pitch Event.

  2. Members who did not participate in the August 2020 Prepare Your Pitch Event but did actively participate in a recent Prepare Your Pitch Event and did not participate in a previous Agent Pitch Event.

  3. Members who participated in a recent Agent Pitch events and participated in the August 2020 Prepare Your Pitch Event and who have a different completed, polished women’s fiction manuscript to pitch.

For each of the groups above, if we have more registrants than availability, a lottery approach will be used. Click here to read more about why we chose to move to a lottery approach and details on how it will work.

Special Notes

  • Please see examples of pitches from previous WFWA Agent Pitch events that received multiple agent requests.
  • Because many of the agents participate repeatedly in WFWA Agent Pitch events, no manuscript that has been pitched in a WFWA Agent Pitch Event before can be included in this event.
  • All pitches must visibly (within the pitch) be women's fiction per the definition above.
  • Protagonists must be nineteen years old or older, as agents generally consider manuscripts with younger protagonists to be Young Adult. If you believe you should be granted an exception to this rule for your eighteen-and-under protagonist, go ahead and register for this event, but also email [email protected] for instructions on how to apply for an exception. You are encouraged to start this exception-seeking process prior to the registration date, if possible.
  • Completed, polished manuscripts must fall between 75,000 and 110,000 words. Any pitches over word count will be disqualified.
  • Dates and information subject to change.

Questions?

Please email [email protected].