Meetings are approximately 15 minutes long. (Please be respectful of the time. Editors and agents will do their very best to keep the meetings on schedule, but please do feel free to alert them if it’s your meeting time and they’re still talking with someone else.)

If you need to reach your editor or agent, please contact them via e-mail at the address they will provide. Do not e-mail the Words & Music festival.

If time permits, please either email, or bring with you to the meeting, a query letter for the work for which you’ve sent pages. Write it as if you were submitting your work to an agent for possible representation. (You can address it specifically or just to “Dear Agent X.”) Don’t worry about perfection; a draft version of your letter is perfectly fine. This is a great opportunity to get feedback on this extremely important part of the process.

The main purpose of these meetings is to be informational. Feel free to present a very brief pitch of your book at the meeting—i.e., no more than a few sentences —but keep in mind the editor or agent will have read your pages beforehand, so you really don’t worry too much about this. The best use of the time is to have a discussion about your work (and, if you have one, your query letter), and for you to ask any questions you have about your materials or about the publishing process in general.