Announcing Pitch Madness!
The Pitch Madness submission window will be open for 24 hours on February 24!
What is Pitch Madness? It’s a contest held every March, where writers enter for a chance to win requests from the participating agents. Writers submit a 35-word (max) pitch and the first 250 words of their completed manuscript on submission day. Then a team of readers choose the top sixty (60) entries to go onto the agent round. Though Pitch Madness has a game theme, the next contest will transition to more of a critique based contest with agents simply requesting in the comments of the entries’ posts instead of having the agents play for requests. Also, hosts will coach our team members, helping them polish their entries and first pages.
We’ll have an agent introduction post up next week.
The submission window will be open from 12:01 AM EST on February 24 until 11:59PM EST. You should have plenty of time to get your submissions in. There is no limit of how many entries will be accepted. Please note: All entries sent before or after the allotted times will be deleted.
There will be 60 finalists moving onto the agent round. Pitch Madness will accept Middle Grade, Young Adult, New Adult, and Adult completed fiction, novel length (no novellas) completed and polished manuscripts only. This time around we will not accept non-fiction. Only one entry per writer this round.
What do you need to enter? A 35-word (max) pitch and the first 250 words of your finished manuscript. If the 250th word falls in the middle of a sentence, go to the end of the sentence. I will post formatting instructions before the submission window opens. There will be a form on the submission post to enter your pitch into.
Pitch Madness will be on six blogs and each blog host will have a co-host helping them choose their top 10 entries.
We’ll have a small team of first readers ranking the entries for the host round.
All the twitter fun will be happening on the hashtag #PitchMadness!
Meet our first round readers …
Jami Nord
Phone monkey, former Lit Agent intern, freelance editor for @Chimera_Edits, & writer under a pen name. Bi, pagan, nerdy, & liberal. I don’t bite, promise.
Kerbie Addis
Writer. Feminist. Slytherin. Bacon mage. Future librarian. Lit agent intern. Army wife. Lover of dark stories & dark lipstick. #PitchWars co-mentor. #WNDB
Mary Anne Marlowe
Author of SOME KIND OF MAGIC @KensingtonBooks Feb ’17 * Repped by @mike_hoogland at @DGLM * #PitchWars Mentor, Whovian, & Sassenach
Samantha Joyce
Author of the LOVE IN DISGUISE series. FLIRTING WITH FAME and DEALING IN DECEPTION out now from Pocket Star! Repped by @KatRushall of ABLA. Broadway Geek Girl.
Here are the links to the host blogs and their co-hosts for the contest …
Team Ice Cream Sea hosted on Brenda Drake’s blog …
Brenda Drake
NYT bestselling author of YA fiction. Latest, THIEF OF LIES & CURSING FATE. Next, GUARDIAN OF SECRETS 2/7/17. Rep’d by @petejknapp #PitchWars & #PitMad Creator