It’s that time of year.
Lots of people have been asking me about my thoughts on this contest, but for reasons of professional discretion I’d rather not weigh in.
However!
There are lots of knowledgeable people around these parts who would be able to tell you a thing or two about the contest and their experiences entering last year.
What do the real experts have to say? Anyone have any questions for them? Is this contest either a breakthrough or novel?
Nathan Bransford says
Thanks for weighing in, Bill!!
raballard says
Mira, I too am new at the writing thing. I am however not new to the dreaming, talking to mystical people, in my mind.
I really tried to ignore the poeple I have created, but they are louder than me.
Mira says
Yep. Sometimes I think I want to write to get those damn voices out of my head. Let them bug someone else for awhile. 🙂
Good luck with your writing, Ra.
KareFree Kennels says
Anyone know how to access “winning” pitches from last year’s contest?
Thanks,
Sheryl
FibCarver says
@Nixy Valentine — “if my book is good enough to win that contest, it’s good enough to get a good agent who will help me find the right publisher.” Says it all for me!
My feeling is, the writers who participate in this kind of thing were Gladiators in a previous life. And to them I say, enjoy the battle!
KareFree Kennels says
When you pitch an agent, you must disclose the ending…they want to know that you can structure a compelling story.
Does anyone know if the pitch required by the contest should disclose the ending?
Or, is it supposed to be more like a jacket blurb, where you don’t disclose the ending?
I’ve read the contest rules, particularly the instructions for the pitch, but they don’t specifically mention anything about disclosing the ending.
Thanks.
Sheryl
Wanda B. Ontheshelves says
Re: “I believe in freedom of speech also, but I fail to see the point in criticizing someone else’s work and possibly damaging their career (not that it is likely to happen in this case). Let’s hope that no-one does that to you. It is just mean. Last time I checked Stephen King wasn’t a young adult.”
SK hasn’t damaged anyone’s career. Critics and/or other writers bashing you doesn’t “damage your career.” People bash other people all the time. It’s just irrelevant, and plenty of artists/writers/musicians say they don’t even bother to read their reviews after a point, as it is simply irrelevant.
I have gotten and continue to get plenty of criticism – if only I were so lucky as to merit SK’s attention!
Wanda B. Ontheshelves says
Re: “My question is this: Is it unethical to enter a contest when you’ve agreed to a two-week exclusive that falls during the contest time frame?”
Well, don’t you agree upon entering the Amazon contest, to a certain contractual arrangement? Which would preclude an agent?
I dunno – I think if I had an agent with an exclusive, I would hold off on Amazon contest – simply because there are PLENTY of contests – but not so many agents offering you an exclusive!
Just my own (unagented) opinion, Wanda
Lorelei Armstrong says
I bought last year’s winner. The writing was great, but the story wasn’t there. After 58 pages of repetition, flashback, and nothing happening, I gave up.
Anonymous says
Thanks, Bill, I thought it must be something like that, and cogratulations, great achievement, and good luck with your writing career!
Eric says
Bill,
I caught Fresh Kills when the ABNA was in the early stages and thought it was a very strong contender. Congrats on your win. Well done. Yours is the story that gives the rest of us aspiring mugs hope.
Anonymous says
“Does anyone know if the pitch required by the contest should disclose the ending?”
It’s not the same as a synopsis for an agent. If you read a particular area of the instructions, it tells you that your pitch and your book description will be visible to anyone on Amazon and to keep that audience in mind. I’m assuming that means, don’t spill the beans about the ending.
LauraBruno says
I decided to enter this year because of some wild synchronicities leading up to the contest:
https://laurabruno.wordpress.com/2009/02/03/synchronicity-seattle-schizandra-and-amazons-2009-breakthrough-novel-award-contest/
It’s a long shot, but hey, it would be GREAT publishing story. 🙂
Steffan Piper says
Nathan,
I just wanted to add that having submitted work to you in the past, and receiving rejection, I can see the need for writers to find whatever avenue they can for their work. Getting an agent remains to be a difficult thing, regardless of how good your writing is or how fresh your ideas are. I submitted an older book of mine to you ‘Yellow Fever’, and then later ‘Waiting for Andre’. One which I decided to self-publish, and the other which I have locked in a drawer.
The idea that the finalists would’ve received agenting regardless is a misnomer. Published writers often say that after years of going through the grinder of agent submission, they were only able to find success by being creative and finding a work-around. The majority of author biographies are filled with stories like this and I don’t think that this is a trend that will change anytime soon.
The ABNA is just one more process in the multitude of options that are now out there for aspiring writers, which there seems to be no shortage of these days (aspiring writers that is – not open avenues). With the economy tanking, more and more people will inevitably turn to the arts or alternate ideas for their own purposes, whether it be for revenue stream or for following their dreams. Even if ABNA is a long-shot – it’s better than no shot. It’s also much better than the slush-pile or the long line of different people that a manuscript gets pushed through when submitted and odds-on rejected. I urge anyone interested to submit.
As I recall, you were eager to read my manuscript and asked for it within an hour of sending the email. Kudos to you for your response time. However, I didn’t hear back from you after that, but I did hear back in an email from another person and then received the boiler-plate rejection from a third person a few months later with no explanation. The point of clarifying this is that some writers seem to think (judging from the posts I’ve read) that the traditional submission process is a sublime thing and without the level of perceived impropriety or lack of professionalism that they came away with from the Amazon contest. My point is that I thought I would’ve heard back directly from you as I submitted my manuscript to you, and possibly some suggestions Make sense? Rarely is something what it seems. But I definitely bear no grudge nor find fault. My experience with you is the common story for most.
I’ll echo a few of the posts that stated that they had success with self-publishing. I self-published my book and received more feedback than I ever had before, which was helpful. I also made a number of relationships that have been beneficial. Having my book available on Amazon, which has been read and well-received … I’m happy. With little to no advertising, my book has made the rounds and done well in terms of sales.
The journeyman writer may not receive a purse of rubies at the end of every journey, but will probably be better off in the long run for just taking it to begin with.
I didn’t submit to ABNA last year, but I have this year. I am not holding my breath on winning, but it would be nice to get some level of feedback, recognition or consideration. And honestly, other than fame and fortune, that’s the most a lot of us should be looking for.
All the best …
Steffan Piper
Nathan Bransford says
Steffan-
If you didn’t hear from me you should have followed up with me after a month. I almost always respond in two weeks, and if you never heard back either my response, say, ended up in your spam filter, or something went awry.
So What says
Verrry interesting to read all these comments.
Bill – you have probably heard this a million times but congratulations!
Anyways, you could call me a troll or whatever they call it these days, but I do browse the ABNA forums, and I have to say that there are extremely nice people on there. Even if you don’t win, you do get to make good friends.
What are the reasons I entered?
1. Why not?
2. If I didn’t win, so what. It’s not like I’m going to die. The contest is freaking free to enter, the public doesn’t read your whole book, and I can still submit it to another publishing agency!
3. I want to see if I’m good enough to make it through the first rounds.
Also, this is ABNA 2009, not ABNA 2008. I didn’t know about ABNA last year, so of course I didn’t enter, but based on all your comments, last year seemed pretty disorganized. The reviews were awful. The process was confusing.
Oh, well.
We shouldn’t be looking at the past, we should be looking at the future. When I entered my manuscript, the process was smooth and swift, no problems, no crash. Everything seemed organized.
Nixy – I fully agree with what you said. But also, if the book is good enough to win the competition, then WHY NOT ENTER?
Mira – not to sound rude, I respect that you haven’t been able to finish a book, and that definitely makes you an author either way. BUT, there is a reason that publishing companies and ABNA ask to submit a complete manuscript, and that is because they want a guarantee that you will finish the book and not lose interest like so many of us authors do. What is a book without an ending? It does seem unfair, but it also seems logical.
Nathan – I hear you’re interested in young adult fiction. What a coincidence my book is young adult fiction. So if Penguing doesn’t like my book, look out for it.
Hope this didn’t seem to long, just expressing my opinion.
-M.A.H
dalecoz says
I don’t see a downside for a writer to entering this kind of contest if you approach it the right way. By definition ninety-five percent of the entries won’t make it to the public comment round. If you go in expecting to win and walk away angry then yes, chances are it’ll be a bad experience for you.
If you go into the contest with the idea that this is a chance to learn from fellow aspiring authors and make contacts, then you’ll probably come away from the contest in better shape than you started.
If you get into the contest, (a) Don’t obsess on winning because you almost certainly won’t. (b)Understand that some people will advance with stories you won’t think are as good as yours. That’s inevitable. In the early rounds one reviewer who really doesn’t get or like your story can knock it out of the contest. In the later rounds, going on will probably be determined more by what Penguin is looking for than by any objective measure of good writing–even if such a thing existed.
So, go in with those things in mind and there really is no downside.
dalecoz says
One other thing about ABNA-type contests: They can give a writer a little taste of what publishers and agents have to face with the huge number of manuscripts they see. I was in a couple of the Gather contests and actually tried to go through the other excerpts and rate them as fairly as I could.
I probably read most or all of more than 400 chapter length excerpts and the first couple of pages of maybe that many more.
Based on that, (a) I’m not sure how anyone stays sane doing that day after day. (b) The old trick of reading the first paragraph or two and deciding whether to go on doesn’t work as well as people in the industry seem to think it does. A page or two was usually enough to make a rational decision. A paragraph or two wasn’t. (c)A lot of the chapters in those contest weren’t awful. They just didn’t have anything new to say and they didn’t say anything old better than it had already been said. (d)There were stories in those contests that I would have loved to have seen the rest of. They had innovative plots, interesting characters and good writing mechanics. There weren’t many of them–maybe one out of every hundred I looked at. The majority of the good stories were effectively invisible. They went nowhere in the contests.
It’s frustrating in a way. There are good authors out there that the publishing industry will never find because it isn’t cost-effective to look for them anymore. Contests like ABNA probably won’t find them either.
New authors will be mostly the ones with the best pitches and the best networking efforts, and in most cases it’ll take ten years of effort to break in. That last part is a problem for book publishing. How do you get people in their teens and early twenties reading fiction when most of that fiction is written by people old enough to be their parents or grandparents? Answer: You might not anyway given the competition from other media, but you certainly aren’t when ‘young’ authors are authors in their forties.
Miss M says
Nathan,
You say: Regardless of how I feel about the contest itself, I honestly don’t put much stock in the results. Sorry! You can mention you were a semi-finalist, but I just haven’t really been impressed with the correlation between Amazon semi-finalist status and quality of manuscript.
Okay, here’s my puzzlement over this whole breaking-in thing. You, as an agent, want to see where I have some credibility as a writer–maybe I’ve published a short story, or come in third in a writing contest. Yet, you don’t want to see this particular contest as evidence of any credibility I may have.
Could you please tell us what you recommend?
And one other question, when did this query letter become the end-all in getting the attention of an agent? I must have missed that when I was raising my kids these past 14 years. I slaved over my writing classes in school, won a few awards but was never taught the importance of this query letter. Your manuscript is supposed to speak for itself were the parting words of advice from all my writing instructors–some of them NY Times bestselling authors.
So please, fill me in.
Nathan Bransford says
Miss M-
Eaaaaasy with the cynicism. First off, if you look at my recommendation on how to find an agent, the query is far from the be-all end all for finding an agent. There is also referrals and networking. If you don’t want to take that path, yeah, you’ll need to write a good query. No one is entitled to anything in this business.
Second, writing qualifications help, but they’re not everything, and I’m perfectly willing to look at someone’s work if they don’t have a credit to their name.
All I’m saying about the contest is that it’s something I take with a grain of salt. The fact is, it’s easier, percentage-wise, to be a semi-finalist in this contest than to be one of the two or three out of 10,000 that an agent will take on in a year, and I look at the results accordingly.
Miss M says
Nathan,
Forgive my cynicism, it’s all part and parcel of raising a 14 year old.
I am currently trying the networking route and the first 100 pages of my book are sitting in an agent’s office–keyword, sitting. When I first spoke to him, I asked him about the importance of the query letter. He dismissed it outright. He said you can either write or you can’t (he’d let me know) and some people are very talented at writing queries but can’t write anything else worth a damn. How do you feel about that observation?
Thanks again, I enjoy reading your blog. I’ll try and curb my cynicism.
Miss M.
Anonymous says
I’m so glad to hear from Bill. I would say he is the ‘authority’on this contest. Seems to have worked out nicely for him. On top of that, there were others who were published.
Times are changing. I like the idea of letting readers take a peek at the slush pile. They are the ones that put out the coin that keep us all in business. It could be a threat though, to those that make a living on that slush pile.It kinda sorta takes some power away too. Just thinking.
Mark says
“In the later rounds, going on will probably be determined more by what Penguin is looking for than by any objective measure of good writing–even if such a thing existed.”
I’m an old fashioned guy. I like to think the two are the same.
Geoff Thorne says
to answer the original question:
yes. i’m digging it. so far, so good.
and i wouldn’t have known about it if not for this blog so thanks.
Anonymous says
I think that all book and screenplay contests – when you cut to the core – are just scams, a way to generate business for sponsors. Only a few prizes are offered. So the chances of winning are less than slim. A writer is better off spending his or her valuable time writing, not rolling the dice, or hoping to win a writer's lottery.
Laraine Anne Barker says
I personally don't like contests that ultimately rely on "votes" from the public. The winner will invariably be the person who can persuade the most people to vote for his or her book. Why can't Amazon stop being lazy and get proper judges to do the work for them?