No, you cannot purchase them ahead of time for many reasons I won’t go into here. However, we will announce at the conference where they will be for sale.

Yes, we will announce it, so everyone will know at the same time. But here’s a hint…get there early on Saturday.

~Jason

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There’s more to a conference than just the pitch session.

There are also the education tracts that we put in place to help you learn. This year, more than any other, we’ve focused on education.  We have to. The game is changing in publishing and for you to stay on top of it, you need as much information as you can get.

Steve Manning, our Education Director is a long time conference expert. He’s the one who started the DFW Writers Conference. He is the reason we are here today. I tell you this because Steve has also attended other conferences (like myself) and noticed the dearth in quality education. He is like a laser this year, lining up great speakers and attention-grabbing topics. He wants our education to shine! It does and it will.

Remember, your pitch session is 10 minutes of the entire weekend. You owe it to yourself to invest in your future by attending the education that is part of the conference. It’s an important piece, and setting it up, scheduling it, and logistically planning it, are all monumental tasks.

Our goal is to put on a conference that you’re excited to attend and actually get some value for your future and your current writing. We want you to leave invigorated and ready to pen that next blockbuster novel.  The pitch session doesn’t do that. The education does. The meeting with other like-minded people does.

This year, more than ever, you need to know what’s going on in this madhouse called publishing.

~Jason

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Wow! That’s a lot!  How many of you went to the Gong Show(s)?
<waits again>
Whoa! Even more!  That’s terrific.

The Gong Show, in case you didn’t attend, was where we had The Voice of The Gong Show read (anonymous!) query letters to a group of agents. When the agents were at a point in the query letter where they would stop reading, they bang the gong in front of them.

Once three agents bang out, The Voice stops reading and the host of the show asks the agents why they would stop at that point. Agents get to have fun listening to the letters, and we the viewing audience gets to have fun and we get to learn.  Who knew learning could be so much fun?!

Never let it be said we are one to rest on our laurels. (One? No, there’s a whole group of us!)

This year, we’re going to trick it up a little. On the first day, we’re going to have The Voice read query letters, just like last year.  However, on the second day, we’re going to have him read the first page of your submission. Yep. That first word, that first sentence, that first paragraph, (still anonymously, so the innocent can stay that way) all the way to the end (if the agents don’t start banging that gong).

We are doing this simply because, it’s the writing that matters most. You can have a great query that may elicit some reading of your first page, but if that first page doesn’t hook the agent (or editor) pretty darn quick, you’re wasting your time.

This should make for some pretty interesting feedback and we all will learn something about the thought processes that go into why a work grabs someone and why it fails.

You want to have your query or first page read at the conference (anonymously!) you can either let me know, or you can just bring it with you.  We’ll have a collection spot for them.  Will all of them get read? Probably not. We’ll be picking them in random order, so you may not hear yours—but who knows, maybe you will.

Don’t start freaking out just yet!

~Jason

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