The Powder Puff Derby was the world’s first all-woman air race; a 2,300-mile, nine-day odyssey from Santa Monica, California to Cleveland, Ohio which began August 24, 1929. Twenty of the roughly 100 women who then held pilot licences in the United States participated, and of them fifteen finished the race on September 2nd. After the days’ festivities, finalists including Amelia Earhart, Neva Paris and race winners Louise Thaden and Phoebe Omlie gathered under the deserted bleachers to discuss their future in aviation. Although the spectacle of an all-woman air race was a big draw, it did not translate to flying jobs for women. Not content to let the matter stand, these bold and independent women agreed to meet again to formalize their association and support each other’s talents. Just three months later, in November of 1929, invitations were extended to every female pilot in the United States, 86 of whom agreed to join the new association. Ultimately, 26 pilots converged on Curtis Airport, on the outskirts of New York City.
Neva Paris, a Curtiss School of Aviation pilot, had made arrangements for the assembly at one end of a busy engine-repair hangar. A tool cart was used for tea service. Their first order of business was to elect Neva Paris interim chairperson of the new association, in recognition of her efforts to organise the meeting. While the members agreed unanimously on the mandate of promoting employment for women pilots, naming the new association was another matter. Some initial suggestions were The Climbing Vines, Gadflies and Homing Pigeons, but none captured the grandeur they hoped to project. Amelia Earhart and Jean Davis Hoyt suggested naming the group after the number of charter members. The title the 86s was temporarily adopted, and over the next few days, as word spread, that number increased to 97 and finally to 99. The name Ninety-Nines stuck thereafter, though membership continued to grow into the thousands and, eventually, chapters spread to 35 countries around the globe. In 1950, five Canadian women created their own chapter in Ottawa, when membership was opened internationally.
Five charter members established the First Canada Section in Ottawa and, the following year, six pilots in Lethbridge founded the Alberta Chapter. The first 99s meeting in Winnipeg took place on May 26, 1971. Rosella Bjornson, who would shortly become Canada’s first woman airline pilot, was elected the first chairperson of the Greater Winnipeg Chapter. The Winnipeg Chapter focused heavily on education, and sponsored dozens of presentations and training seminars each year to support the rapidly expanding community of women pilots in the city. The chapter in Winnipeg eventually expanded to become the Manitoba Chapter, and offers the annual Rosella Bjornson flight training scholarship, to assist private pilots in attaining their commercial rating. A permanent display of uniforms worn by early women pilots can be viewed at The Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada. To learn more about this subject, check the Windsock Giftshop for the book No Place For a Lady by Shirley Render, the comprehensive story of women pilots in Canada from 1928-1992.
If you’re not sure who we are, please go here to read about us. (We’re a small team, so it’s a short read.) Otherwise, hopefully these FAQs will help you get a feel for who we are, what we’re trying to do, and all that other stuff that our site will help explain… when it’s up. (Sign up for advance notice here. No, you don’t need a special invitation – everyone’s welcome.) The ONLY place where published & unpublished writers can share their page 99s with a world of readers – and where those readers let the writer know if, based on that one page, they’d want to turn the page… or buy the book. Did it hook them? Did it grab them? Where did the idea come from? The Page 99 Test is a test that readers have been doing for a long time. (Co-founder Joanna’s been doing it since second-year uni.) You walk into Barnes & Noble or Chapters, wander around, find a book that intrigues you and check out the cover artwork, the title and author, and the snippet on the back – all of which are, of course, crafted to sell.
Then the savvy among us flip to page 99 and read that whole page. That’s where the quality of the whole book can be revealed. How can that be? Well, page 99 is a perfectly random page and likely not as overworked as the opening and ending. So it can reveal a lot about the story, the tension – basically, the writing – in about 25 seconds. Are there any other sites doing something similar? , come to mind. has been putting screenplays, films, and even whole books in front of readers for years. , which is sort of similar but not really. Nobody’s doing what we’re doing, though. So, how does it work for writers? Writers – published or not – come to the site, sign in (easy 4-field sign-up), and copy-and-paste their ‘page 99’ from their manuscript (MS) into the text field on our site. They enter a few details – like book genre, title, and publication status – and submit it. Writers can upload up to 3 page 99s (all from different MSs, obviously).
Each page stays up for 30 days or 50 reads/ratings, whichever comes first. We don’t want to fatigue readers. We’d like to spread the readers around as much as possible, so one book doesn’t get 100s of reviews and another gets, like, 12.) As ratings come in, writers go to their My Uploads page to see reader feedback, including comments. If the feedback’s bad – like, ego-bursting bad – they can choose to Hide A Page immediately, which pulls it down. Then they’re supposed to – and we know not everyone will, but – revise their whole MS based on reader feedback and upload a revision (marked as Revision). If the feedback’s decent or good, yay! Writers should take in the feedback and revise as they”d like. Upload a whole chapter for feedback. (Coming in Phase II, if peeps like Phase I.) And how does it work for readers? Readers come to the site, sign in (easy 4-field sign-up), select their preferred genre, and get shown a page 99, which is randomly generated within the selected genre.
They read the page from top to bottom (hopefully) and then answer these 2 questions: (OPTIONAL: Add comment for writer.) Once you hit Submit Feedback, you’re taken to a page that reveals to you info you didn’t otherwise know, like: You could be shocked to discover what you actually like and don’t like, based on that one representative page. Oh, dang, I would turn the page on a book from The Twilight Saga! And I wouldn’t buy Let the Great World Spin? A reader can only read a page 99 once. Okay, but what’s really cool about the site? Well, we think the design is sort of kick ass. It’s very easy to be BORING when it comes to books, so we wanted to steer clear of that… without turning off readers (who may be traditionalist in some ways – like those people who say “oh, i just love the smell of books”). Secondly, the idea that we’re mixing published and unpublished pages? And that we’re promoting anonymity during the reading process to ensure virtually unbiased feedback?
We really, really want to help people discover well-written books that are already published… and undiscovered talent that just hasn’t got a break yet.We don’t like ads. They get in the way. Sure, but does it work? Well, it’s not a science. It’s simply one more way – a fun way – to judge the quality of a book. What problem are we trying to solve? We’re dramatically cutting the guesswork out of the book publishing world. Everyone in publishing knows that even the best-written books won’t sell if readers aren’t buying them. But how do you know if a reader will buy?–ask a team of 5 ‘readers’/interns at an agency? As in any business, you ask the customer. Not by holding a focus group — ‘cos that’s how we got New Coke, right? (shudder) — but by putting the work in front of them and getting quick, real-time, unbiased feedback. I mean, if a publisher or agent knew that 50 readers – with no motivation or incentive but to find a great read – said they’d turn the page and buy the book, seriously, wouldn’t the smart ones at least consider that book?–pull it out of the slush pile of 300 unfiltered MSs?