Okay, I’m not as pessimistic as the title sounds. After all, why enter a contest at all if I don’t believe I have a chance?
However slight.
Last night Amazon’s Breakout Novel Award contest opened for submissions. I stayed up until 1:45 am to complete my final edits of “The Red Dagger,” including a 300-word pitch. Although the submission deadline isn’t until February 7, they are also only accepting 10,000 entries, 5,000 for the general fiction category, and 5,000 for the young adult. It’s quite possible they’ll receive the entry limit before the deadline, so I decided to submit mine as soon as I could.
Luckily in the meantime I can still go in and edit my entry until the deadline or when the 5,000 entries are reached.
But it’s still a bit nerve-wracking. I won’t know until February 25 whether or not “The Red Dagger” made it to the next round. 1,000 entries will be chosen for the second round. Assuming they receive 5,000 entries, that gives me a 20% or 1:5 chance. Not horrible odds.
The great thing about making the second round is my entry will be critiqued by a top Amazon reviewer. Since few people have seen any part of my book, I could use the input.
In fact, if you’re interested in giving me your own thoughts (especially since I have some time to edit my entry), you can download a pdf of the pitch and the first 5,000 words HERE.
Question for you. If you keep a blog, how many times do you read through and edit an entry after you submit it? For this one, I’m on edit #6.
Make that seven.
Eight.
Andra's Blog 
LOL Andra! I don’t edit my blog entries unless I see something glaring after posting, and then I’ll go back and fix it. I write it and throw it out there.
I’ll download and look at your entry. And I’ll wish you best of luck even if I’m not an Amazon supporter. 😉
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I thank you!
Oh! Did you know Amazon will no longer require Indie authors and publishers to go through Createspace (formerly Booksurge) in order for their books to be listed?
You can read all about it HERE.
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I read that a couple of days ago, but as far as I can tell, it applies only to Booklocker since they are the only ones who sued. On my first three books, my indie publisher has to give them 55% off to use their Advantage program, which leaves me with almost zilch on my sales there. I do think things will shift, though, especially with Sony and BN.com using epub for their readers – open format not restricted to one purchase place – and with Apple coming out with theirs. Amazon’s monopoly attempts are failing because people are fighting back.
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I noticed that too. Hopefully it set a big enough precedent, Amazon will cave when other publishers jump on it.
It might take a while though. Big companies tend to drag their feet, and like the article said, a lot of publishers already signed agreements with Amazon that likely can’t be broken unless there was a time line attached.
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