Your Ultimate Guide to: Feedback Sessions 2022

We have a total of four feedback sessions this year, split between literary agents and published authors. They will be looking at queries, 300 word pitches, full picture book texts, and first pages. You can find details for each listed below.

Feedback sessions will not be held live. Instead, our speakers will record their sessions, and the recordings will be posted during conference weekend at their scheduled event time.

This means that you need only a Basic Admission level to view our feedback session events. You do not need paid admission to submit to the events (but you won’t be able to access the feedback without it).

Here’s how to submit your work for the feedback sessions:

Submissions will be accepted from Friday, July 01 to Monday, July 11 @ 11:59 pm EDT. We will be unable to accept late submissions.

Submissions must be submitted to our feedback session form here.

You may submit to more than one feedback session. In order to make the events fair for everybody, we will randomly select the submissions presented to the speaker.

Once a submitted piece is chosen for a particular event, it will be placed on a reserve queue for any other feedback sessions to which it was also submitted, to allow submissions that have not yet been selected to have a chance. If a session does not reach its submission cap with not-yet-selected submissions, then the remainder of the space will be randomly filled from the reserve submission queue. This will allow all of our attendees to have a shot at being selected for a feedback event.

Submissions that do not adhere to the speaker’s guidelines below will be disqualified from that event.

Because feedback sessions are recorded, speakers have more flexibility in event length. They will be going through a list of submissions that we present to them. This list is compiled randomly and does not reflect the order in which submissions were received. Please have patience with the speakers; we request your understanding if your submission was near the end of the list and they ran out of time before getting to it.

For speakers requesting query pitches, please provide only the body of your query – the full pitch and the summary/comp/word count paragraph. You do not need to include salutation/other personalization or your bio. You may include your manuscript title if you feel appropriate but please do not include your (the author’s) name in the body of the submission.

For speakers requesting first 300 word pitches or first pages, you can round your submission up or down to the end of the nearest sentence. Don’t include the manuscript title or author, or any info from your query. If your book starts with a prologue, start from the prologue rather than chapter 1 (as you would when querying).

Feedback Session Rule Summary

Each user can post one manuscript per feedback session event. If multiple pitches are posted, only the first will be accepted. You may submit to multiple events.
Incomplete WIPs are allowed, but please include “(WIP)” with the title. “TITLE OF BOOK (WIP) is a MG suspense…”
Once submitted, the pitch is final and cannot be edited.
Submissions used in the actual feedback session event will be selected by random number generator after the submission window is closed.
Once a writer’s submission has been selected for a feedback session, it will be placed on a reserve queue for future feedback sessions and submissions that have not yet been selected will be given priority, to give everyone a chance to participate.

As feedback sessions are recorded, agents/authors should hopefully get through their whole list of selections. However, please understand that our speakers are human with other commitments and while they are trying their best, being selected is not a 100% guarantee that your submission will be read during the event.