We’re always looking for new kidlit voices to join our speaker lineup! If you’re interested in participating, please have a quick read through our eligibility criteria below.
All speakers must work within the kidlit industry — picture books, chapter books, middle grade and young adult. New adult is represented in our forums but we aren’t currently including speakers from this category as it is currently officially classified as a subcategory of adult fiction.
WriteOnCon is committed to offering high-quality and reliable content. In order to ensure that our participating professionals have the necessary experience and expertise to speak well on their selected topics or offer reliable feedback to attendees, we have established a set of criteria used when considering potential speakers.
Our conference has a primary focus on traditional publishing, which by its nature operates through a system of so-called “gatekeepers”. Because it is not possible for WriteOnCon staff to read the books of every interested applicant, we look to these organizations to help us evaluate whether the individuals associated with them would be suitable for our conference.
It is easier for us to determine that an organization publishes quality books than it is for us to consider the merit of any given book. We recognize that this is an imperfect system; some organizations excluded by our criteria may include among their lists some excellent books, while other organizations that we have approved may offer a few “duds”. But in looking at the list as a whole, and the overall practices of the organization, we can feel reasonably confident in offering a speaker position to one of their professionals.
We have listed below the criteria that we use in evaluating presses and agencies for eligibility.
Because we are primarily focused on traditional publishing, vanity presses and self-published authors are by default only eligible for our conference subsection called “Indie HQ”. Please note that IndieHQ will not appear in WriteOnCon 2022, but may return next year. Authors with outstanding self-publishing sales records may be invited to speak individually on self-publishing as part of the main conference, but are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.