How I Choose a #RevPit Winner

A Peek Behind the Curtain + Trends I Saw This Year

Every year I get a lot of questions about how RevPit works, what happens behind the scenes, etc. But people’s eyes really light up when they ask about how I choose a winner. I always post about it on social media around the Annual Contest, and on the advice of a lovingly bossy writer friend, I’ve compiled (and expanded) this year’s posts for posterity.

What’s a RevPit?

RevPit is a virtual community founded by several independent book editors in 2017. Every year in March/April, we run a contest for querying novelists where the winners get a free developmental edit by one of our volunteer editors. I am one of the co-founding editors a board member. 2026 is our 10th Annual Contest!

We’ve expanded to include other events like 10Queries, Camp RevPit, and Fall Into Fiction, with the goal of helping authors who are serious about a career in publishing to demystify the querying process and industry in general.

Annual Contest TLDR

Authors submit an application with their query letter, synopsis, and manuscript for consideration by a team of vetted professional editors. Each editor picks one submission and gives the author an edit letter on their full manuscript and a consultation to help form the revision plan. Then there’s a 90-day showcase on the website so that the community can gush along with us at how fabulous these stories are. The process is more complicated (and fun!) than that, but this is the gist of it.

What a RevPit Editor Is Looking For (and How That’s Different From Agents)

Let’s talk a little bit about how I go through my #RevPit submissions and what I’m looking for. I’ve been doing some version of this since 2014, so you’d think I have my process down to a science. BUT my brain is trained to see the potential in every story, and that makes choosing just one to work on extra hard.

Plus I’m an indecisive overthinker on my best day–reason 298758 I’d make a terrible agent. But this experience gives me a lot of insight into how literary agents have to approach query submissions when they’re doing this all year. But I want to point out some key differences.

Goal

An agent’s job is to sell rights for a product (your book) to a distributor (a publisher). A RevPit editor’s job is to choose a manuscript that will most benefit from editing guidance within the constraints of the contest (the main constraint being time).

Considerations

This means that an agent is looking for a manuscript they are reasonably certain they can sell, given the amount of time and energy they have to devote to revisions (this varies by agent, depending on their existing client load, other professional obligations, life, and preference).

A RevPit editor is looking for a manuscript they are reasonably certain they 1) have a strong editorial vision for based on how much of the materials they have to read before they have to choose their winner and 2) can guide the author through in the time the editor has to commit to the contest. More on these considerations below.

Timeframe

Agents often take weeks or months to review the submission package, request additional pages, and read partial or full manuscripts. However, they also routinely get hundreds of submissions per month when they’re open and are, in theory, racing the clock for submissions that other agents might want too.

RevPit has a specific timeframe. Editors get about 2 1/2 weeks to go through all of our submissions, read any additional materials (synopsis, more pages, etc.), and choose a winner. There are due dates that editors have to meet for the contest, but like agents, the actual time each can commit varies based on existing client load, other professional obligations, life, and preference.

How an Indecisive Overthinker (Me) Chooses Just One Manuscript for RevPit

We get #RevPit submissions on a big spreadsheet, which I love because nerd. The spreadsheet contains all the information from the submission form, which means the basic info about the author and the manuscript (age category, genre, word count); the answers to the questions on the form; and links to the files for each query, synopsis, and full manuscript.

It’s a lot to manage, so step one is I hide everything on the spreadsheet except the title, age and genre, word count, and link to the full ms. Then I start by reading pages to get a feel for the writing and any concerns that jump out at me. I color code the ones that stand out.

First Pass

This first pass is fast. I go through all the submissions in just a couple hours because I’m just basing this on first impressions. I have to take frequent breaks (every 5-10 subs) to keep my eyes fresh so each submission gets my full attention. Stale eyes aren’t good for anyone.

Any thoughts I have go into a new column on my spreadsheet. I *try* to make sure these are coherent so future Jeni isn’t like “wtf did you mean, past Jeni??” Thoughts at this point are strengths, what needs work, which subs might be good for 10Queries (anonymous feedback posts I choose based on advice that can help a lot of authors see how agents read submission materials and not necessarily my top choices). Again, overall impressions.

By the time I’m done with this first pass, I barely remember any of what I’ve read, but the notes and color coding help me on my next pass.

Second Pass

Pass 2 is a thorough read of the QL and 1st pages. I make notes for 10Queries, plus anything that stands out to me about the ms’s needs. Yes, I (and agents) can often predict from just those few pages what the ms will need for revisions. It comes from practice + experience. But where an agent is determining if the ms is sellable, I’m looking for promise and a clear vision of how to get the ms where it needs to be. It’s not that I don’t consider marketability. But it’s only one of many factors.

So Pass 2 is where I start forming an editorial vision. More notes. More color coding.

As an aside, I try to send at least minimal feedback to everyone I make notes about. This does not always go as planned, as my notes are not always shareable (aka they don’t make sense haha)

Third Pass

By this point, I’m often looking at about 30-40% of subs. Pass 3 is reading the synopsis and answers to the questions on the form. The synopsis helps me see the big picture, but I also have to account for a synopsis being damn hard to write. So if I’m unclear, I make a note to come back.

The answers to questions help me see how much feedback you actually need. Not every ms that needs help needs a full edit, and I can often give resources or advice that can be a huge help. For example, sometimes all an author needs is help fleshing out what makes their story stand out so that they can focus on that more in the query and/or pages. When I see that in a submission, I make a note and send that feedback to the author after the contest. Many authors who enter #RevPit but don’t win still get agents based on this level of help.

At the end of this pass, I’m down to about 10% of my subs, and it’s time to really dig in. I read at least 25 pages, skip around to important parts to get an idea about pacing (midpoint, climax, etc.), and go back over the other materials.

This is my shortlist. This is where it gets agonizing and I turn into a puddle of indecisive goo.

So then I’m good for a while, and that lets me percolate some ideas about what each ms needs and whether I’m confident my editorial vision matches the author’s vision.

Top reasons I pass on subs:

• I don’t think we can do the work in the time I have for the contest. RevPit has a relatively short timeframe for our work with our authors, and while I absolutely know from experience that there’s no such thing as an “unsavable” manuscript, I also know that some changes require more trial and error than others. Voice, for instance, can absolutely be taught/improved, but there’s no one way that works for everyone.
• I don’t want to put an author in the position of having to make big decisions about the ms without proper time to consider. Some decisions really need more time and space for consideration. For example, if I think the main issue is that the age category doesn’t match the voice and themes, my advice will be that the author needs to decide if they want it to be the age category they’re marketing it as or the age category that matches the pages. Whichever they decide will dictate which changes need to be made, and I don’t want to put pressure on the author to decide so we can get revising ASAP.
• Sometimes, I can tell from the first page what a story needs, and sometimes I need to read the whole manuscript to see the big picture. I generally don’t have time to read the whole ms before making a decision for this contest, so if I can’t determine what needs to change or I don’t see anything in the materials that points to specific changes, I generally have to pass.

This is the point where editors may be considering the same submission. One of the questions we always get is how we decide who gets that manuscript if more than one of us are considering it for our winner. I know it’s fun to contemplate editors duking it out behind the scenes, but the truth is much more boring. There’s a whole process for this, and the editors all have a lot of respect for each other. So it’s a lot more of “I mean, I really want this one, but if you also really want this one, I could let it go” and secretly not actually wanting to let any of them go.

I almost always end up with 2-3 subs I would love to pick as my winner, and I read as much of those mss as I can with the time I have and then generally end up picking the one I can’t stop thinking about the most.

Trends I’ve Seen This Year

Please keep in mind that RevPit is an incredibly small sample, and all of this is based on my own observations. In other words, this is not very scientific so don’t go turning this into Discourse TM or anything.

There are always character names that pop up a lot in a lot of #RevPit subs any given year. This year, the names in my subs were some version of Sebastian, Lucien, and Keir. What’s fun about this is that the stories were in different genres and age categories, had a variety of different tones, voices, settings, etc.

We definitely had an uptick in horror and dark fantasy this year in both YA and adult, which isn’t surprising because horror is a growing genre right now.

Which makes sense, given, ya know, the horrors.

I’m thrilled to see lots of feminine rage, Black joy, and queer normative stories. Even more so, I’m seeing a lot of subs where a character’s background is an important element but not at the center of the story, and I’d love to see this wider spectrum of rep in publishing overall.

The most common note I have on #RevPit subs this year is something like “strong writing but needs to stand out in the market.” I have mixed feelings about this. I love seeing that authors are improving their craft and putting out quality writing. But I know that feedback isn’t very helpful, so I’ll add this:

• General Advice: Lean hard into what makes your story marketable.
• Tough Love: If you can’t pinpoint what will make your story marketable, how do you expect an agent to?

(Side note: I got a lot of questions about how to know what makes your story marketable. The short answer is understanding reader expectations and using them for impact. The long answer is another thread.)

Cozy fantasy and romantasy are still finding footing as subgenres, ie, reader expectations aren’t fully set and there’s room for experimenting and pushing boundaries with word counts (lowish for cozy, higher for romantasy), tropes, rep, etc. It’s an exciting time for fantasy!

Scifi is also having a moment, but a lot of it is more grounded than, say, Star Trek. Lots of fears about technology, corporations, privacy, genetics, etc. Again, not surprising given the horrors but also Severence, The Beauty, The Substance, etc. making it into mainstream.

I got lots of #RevPit subs with elements related to:

• sleep/dreams
• characters who are dead but still interacting with the world but not ghosts or vampires
• but also ghosts and vampires
• varieties of human sacrifice
• scholarships, fellowships, apprenticeships
• healthcare

I’m seeing a lot of #RevPit subs being marketed as Adult that feel very YA in voice, theme, or both. Clarity on genre + age category is SO important for querying because it impacts which agents you can submit to. This is extra hard when so many YA books feel like they should be Adult, not to mention the state of New Adult in publishing always seems to be in flux.

Lastly, I just want to say that every year, there are people who sub to #RevPit who find us at the last minute and/or seems otherwise unprepared, but it really feels like that was at a minimum this year. Great job on your materials and submissions, y’all.

FAQ:

Q: How Many Submissions Do You Have to Choose From?

A: We actually don’t share how many submissions we get each year because participants go down the rabbit hole of statistics and odds and whatnot. That’s not really applicable to RevPit. It’s not a lottery. Winners aren’t chosen by chance but by intentional, often painful method.

But here’s what I can tell you: In the early years of RevPit, editors had a cap of 100 submissions each. In 2021, several editors reached that cap within minutes, and several board members hyperventilated (read: I hyperventilated). That’s when we introduced the First Reader role, to take some of the burden of submissions off of our editors so we could eliminate the cap.

Q: What Are the Issues You See Most in a Manuscript?

A: The issues I see most in manuscripts in RevPit or my inbox, regardless of genre, age category, or other factor are, in no specific order: voice/POV (I’m including interiority in this), plot structure, character arc, and scene structure. If you ever wonder why agent responses all say the same thing, this is part of it.

If you’re struggling with any of the structural pieces, I highly recommend a reverse outline. This is my favorite tool for developmental editing, and I use it with every client (and every RevPit winner).

You can also download the list of my most recommended craft reads.

Q: What’s the One Piece of Advice You Give All Querying Authors?

A: The one piece of advice I give all querying authors is to think about how others in the publishing world are thinking about your book: as a product. This means agents, acquisitions editors, readers, reviewers, even booksellers. Publishing is a business, first and foremost. It’s tricky to balance sensitive writer brains with demands of capitalism, but I promise, it can be done.

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What burning questions do you have about #RevPit that didn’t get answered here? Let me know!