Unpublished Book Contests

[ausnos]

Hi,

I was thinking of entering into one of those unpublished book contests. The thing that I am frowning upon with this, however, is the fact that they charge a reading fee.

Do writers follow the same rules like finding agents when submitting their unpublished work for writing contests? It seems to me that the majority of these contests consist of some sort of fee?

And do writers retain all their rights when entering in these contests? Also, if they should happen to win that contest, do they retain their rights, as well?

Thanks.

[AlecAnaconda]

Do you undervalue your work so badly that you will pay somebody to read it?

Rule 1 is: publishers pay authors.

Any other arrangement is vanity publishing.

Maybe self-publishing (but take care) or e-publishing would provide an alternative.

[crystalwizard]

That has nothing to do with contests

I get very irritated at people who insist that books should only be entered in contests that don't have a fee. Most contests can't provide a prize without that fee and most contests are held to provide some income for the people holding them as well. Almost all contests that are worth entering will have a fee! And a lot of them have a very high fee.

Now, on the subject of reading fees for something that IS NOT A CONTEST: That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's a red flag to do more research, but that's all it is.

Go to Predators and Editors, and Absolute Write. Read through their list of "not recommended" publishers and agents. See if the people that want to charge that fee are listed there.

[Lyn McConchie]

Rule of thumb. Contest expects to have 100 entries each paying $5. Prizes should amount to 50% of this. The problem tends to be that contest organizers don't KNOW how many entries they'll get. And brother can things go wrong at times. A friend of mine ran a contest here. Some years the entry fees didn't quite pay for prizes, but she paid out. However - at the bottom of entry forms she had a note that if no story was judged to be up to winning standard, then prizes would be amalgamated and paid to best stories. So the last year she did this, none of the stories were up to winning standard. She said so, amalgamated first, and second prizes and paid half each to the best two. One of the winners complained officially to our major writer's group. Turned out that she'd downloaded her entry form from a site and the printer had dropped off the last lines that said the organizer could do this. What outraged me was that the organization blamed the contest organizer, and insisted she should pay out the extra. She did, and promptly folded the contest, which had been an annual one.

[AlecAnaconda]

Okay, one enters such a competition.
Clearly, almost all people don?t win, so what do they gain from the experience?
What can the lucky winner(s) expect, apart from the prize money?

[crystalwizard]

There are many different reasons people enter any competition. What each person gets out of the experience is personal. You might enter such a competition for no other reason that to get your name and your story in front of a lot of people. Someone else might enter it because they are hoping to win honorable mention but not first place. Other people have other reasons for entering.

That's something to ask yourself before entering any competition, whether you pay an entry fee or not. "What do I hope to get out of this? Is what I might get worth what I'll have to put in to get it? Will it be a problem if I don't win?"

[Lyn McConchie]

reasons for entering and what you get out of it can vary hugely. Some contests subsequently put out an anthology of the winners for which all contributors are paid. (the one I mentioned last did.) Some contests are sponsored by a local newspaper which publishes the winners, and may publish some of the other stories they liked - for a fee to the writer. And some contests, (we have an annual one here of this type) are judged by a very well known writer who is excellent at useful comments on the work as part of the entry fee. I enter maybe 2-5 contests here in NZ each year. I mostly enter for the above reasons, and because one of them is the annual one for my branch of our national writers association.