First-time novelists pitch their proposals to fifty agents and forty publishers only to receive a stack of form letter rejections, if anything at all. No one is immune to the process. Then there are all the poets who can’t sell their wares. And who buys short stories anymore?
You can spend $1,000+ self-publishing your first book with no promotional help to back you, or you can pay an entry fee and enter your book in a competition that wants to publish and promote your work. Before you balk at the entry fees for contests, think about the postage, paper and ink you spend sending queries and sample chapters to agents and publishers.
Contests like these can catapult a career. If you are devoted to your book, with a passion that keeps you awake at night, why not take the chance at a royalties contract to propel you into the world as an "author?" Don't have the entry fee? You can surely blog for a few bucks, write articles online or publish magazine features and columns, earmarking your earnings for competitions. Where there's a will, there's a way.
£25 entry fee. Send the opening chapter(s) up to 3,000 words – and a short synopsis of a proposed crime novel. The Debut Dagger is open to anyone who has not yet had a novel published commercially. First prize is £500 plus two free tickets to the prestigious CWA Dagger Awards and night’s stay for two in a top London hotel.
No entry fee. The prize of a book contract for a hardcover and a paperback edition, including an advance and royalties, will be awarded to encourage the writing of contemporary or historical fiction set in North America, for readers age 9–12. The award consists of $1,500 in cash and a $7,500 advance against royalties. The Delacorte Prize is open to U.S. and Canadian writers who have not previously published a novel for middle-grade readers.
Emily Dickinson First Poetry Book Award
No entry fee. The competition is open to any American citizen 50 years of age or over who has not previously published a book-length volume of poetry. The winner will receive a prize of $10,000.
Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize
No entry fee. A $12,000 advance and publication by Graywolf to the best previously unpublished, full-length work of literary nonfiction by a writer not yet established in the genre.
$25 entry fee. Open to any writer who has not yet published a full-length collection of short stories or poems. The winner receives book publication, a $1,000 cash award, ten copies of the book, and an interview in The Adirondack Review.
Don't discard writing competitions for your first manuscript. Winning a book contest is a two-fold win. Agents and publishers see you've been judged and deemed worthy, and you get published at someone else's expense. Contests might be the interim opportunity that shortcuts you to publication and holding that long-awaited book in your hands.
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