Pitch Wars

This is a continuation and the final one in the series of blog posts concerning issues presented to Pitch Wars. You can read the beginning of the series HERE. This post will be addressing the issue of expectations tied to Pitch Wars and the culture that has risen around it.

This is a hard post to write because everyone comes to Pitch Wars with very different experiences. But we want to discuss and acknowledge some of the heightened expectations surrounding Pitch Wars in the past few years. Pitch Wars was started as a small contest where writers with industry experience and publishing professionals could guide mentees through the publishing trenches. Though it was posited as a contest, the heart of the program was mentorship. And to this day, this is still the point of Pitch Wars. It is meant to provide guidance and support to talented and hard-working mentees. (more…)

This is a continuation of the series of blog posts concerning issues presented to Pitch Wars. You can read the beginning of the series HERE. This post addresses the issue of inclusion and diversity in Pitch Wars.

I’d like to address the need for more inclusivity in Pitch Wars as well as what we hope to do moving forward. First, as mentioned in the previous post, there were mentors who expressed concern about a mandatory fee. Many of these mentors were from marginalized communities. Though it was never the intention of Pitch Wars to ignore any voice or opinion in our community, by not fully considering the concerns brought up by these marginalized mentors, we hurt the writing community. (more…)

This is a continuation of the series of blog posts concerning issues presented to Pitch Wars. You can read the beginning of the series HERE. This post addresses the (now-defunct) fee announcement.

Pitch Wars began in 2012 as a small contest providing mentorship to aspiring authors. The idea came while I was watching Cupcake Wars, a show where bakers had an assistant to help them prepare the best cupcakes possible for a round of judges. After watching the show, I thought it would be great to have a publishing contest where agented/published authors could mentor aspiring authors’ full manuscripts and guide them through the publishing trenches. (more…)

We are sure you and many others in the writing community have questions about and for Pitch Wars. Therefore, we are starting a series of blog posts to address the recent and important issues brought up surrounding things like: the fee; inclusivity within Pitch Wars; how Pitch Wars addresses concerns of the public; and what is happening with Pitch Wars going forward.

First, we would like to thank the community for its honest conversation surrounding issues related to Pitch Wars. We understand that your honesty cost many of you emotional labor and we want you to know that your voices have been heard. We want you to always feel comfortable sharing your concerns with us and asking questions, which can be done via the Pitch Wars Twitter account as well as the Pitch Wars curious cat account. We hope this will both allow open communication between the public and Pitch Wars as well as give us comments and suggestions for how to better the program. (more…)

We know that there have been a lot of questions about the status of Pitch Wars this year and our transition to a smaller program run by a committee of past mentors and mentees. On Monday, we’ll launch a series of blog posts addressing past issues and talking about the future of the program.

However, we do want to share a few important things with you regarding our mentors, our new Pitch Wars schedule, and our committee members. (more…)

Welcome to the Pitch Wars Agent Showcase! Young Adult entries …

For those unfamiliar with Pitch Wars, it’s a contest where published/agented authors, editors, or interns chose mentees and work with them for two months to make their work shine. Our amazing mentors chose one (some cases two) writer to mentor from nearly 3000 entries for this year’s for the agent showcase. (more…)