I wanted to know what you think about the Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest, from the POV of an agent and an author. Discussions are working their way through various blogs, but I would love to know how you weigh in.
Answer:
They don't charge you any money, they don't require you to sign with some ludicrous faux agency, and the winner gets published by Penguin. Ok, no problem there at all.
Look at the second prize and the prize for being a finalist. "Self publishing packages." If you self publish your book, guess where you sell it? Amazon of course.
Amazon didn't survive this long by being stupid. What they've done here is created a contest that furthers their brand name, funnels you into doing business with them (Amazon doesn't sell your books for free you know) and put a nice enticement at the top of the pile that they don't have to pay for.
I do feel a little sorry for whoever is reading the 5000 entries, although it does look as though those people are volunteers as well.
My favorite part though? Requirement #3-submit the cover art if available. You'll notice they want ONLY material that hasn't been published so any cover art is the dreamwork of the author him/herself and I can tell you from long experience, there will be some covers that burn your retinas. Heck, that's the stuff I want to see. Forget the novel, bring on the home made art.
As usual there are the disaffected, dissatisfied and disgruntled writers in the comment pile talking about how this is a good way to bypass evil agents. The usual claptrap about how agents don't take on anyone new or unpublished. Well, I just sold Patrick Lee's first three novels to Harper and he's never been published before, and he introduced himself and his work to me through an unsolicited query letter just like most of my clients including Jeff Somers did. The reason it worked for those guys is they write REALLY REALLY well.
It won't kill you to enter this, and it would be nice to win but 750 agents are actively looking for good projects every day in my area code alone.
6 comments:
Curiosity, Janet- if a writer was to win a prize in a contest like this (where all parties are well known and no scam is detectable), but chose not to avail themselves of the self-pub services, would a win like that carry any clout with agents during querying?
Would "This title won second prize in the HottentottBigBoy Gimme Your Best Shot contest, but I have chosen to continue querying agents rather than take advantage of the self-publishing prize (better written for query, of course)" make an agent or publishers more likely to take notice, do you think?
Writing really, really well is so hard, though. And then people read your stuff and say mean things like, "You need a comma here," and "I don't understand what this sentence means," and then they're CHANGING YOUR ART! And when you want to introduce aliens and magical powers into the middle of book two of your near future dystopic assassin novels they say things like, "But you've never even hinted at magic in your world before," and "You can't introduce aliens in the middle of the second book without any setup at all."
OK, in all seriousness, I don't like how the contract is non-negotiable. The more obvious clauses may be fair to the writer, but what about the rest of it? I think Kristin Nelson has blogged on some of the contract changes she regularly negotiates, that the publishers are always trying to leave in because they're to their benefit but not the writer's. I don't know enough to think of an example, though (payment schedule of the advance, maybe?) Anyway, that was the one thing that stood out to me about the contest.
One person in 5000 might end up happy. The rest will be either ignored or insulted with "offers" of self-publishing packages.
I was wondering if the extremely fast turn-around time to publishing meant that the winner wasn't going to get the same amount of attention from the editor that they'd normally get...
PS... I thought that cover art requirement was odd, because so many would be so horrible... but it wouldn't bother me! If you want to see some self-made author covers, check out mine: http://www.KathleenMacIver.com/misc/cover.jpg
I know it's not as good as an art department of a major publisher would do, but hey, it was fun. :-)
That's very beautiful, Katie.
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