Free entry? Check.
Huge prizes? Check.
Writers love feedback--and the chance to seek validation. But that usually comes with a price. Twenty and thirty-dollar entry fees really add up when you're not making a lot of money from your writing.
So it's refreshing to see that the Write to Done site is offering a contest with real [read: substantial] prizes, AND no entry fee!
Write to Done's Freeditorial Long-Short Fiction Contest offers a whopping first prize of $15,000. Second place brings $5,000, and third place is $2,000. No small potatoes here.
Write to Done has teamed up with Freeditorial, an online publishing house. What is Freeditorial? Here's a quote from them:
Freeditorial is an online Publishing House and represents a great opportunity for new writers. In our purchases, we give preference to books from new writers and to short stories or articles from established authors.Our goal is to expand the literary world by fostering more writing talent. Here at Freeditorial, we buy digital publishing rights while incorporating innovative methods to the publishing field. While Freeditorial writers get paid for their work to reward their efforts and maintain motivation–just like with any traditional publisher–there is a significant difference: the reader has free access to all books and articles we publish.This is possible due to our innovative business model, which is mainly based on using advertising space on our online platform.
Your story will go on their site, and winners will be selected after June 4th, when the contest closes. Winners are selected depending on literary quality and the number of downloads.
Since the contest is participatory, you'll want to enlist your tribe, your writers groups, your friends, your relatives, and your neighbors (a good reason to shovel their walk!).
Submissions can be 10,000-40,000 words in length. Not many contests allow this kind of latitude.
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| Free ebook for signing up. |
When you sign up (even if you don't actually enter), you'll get a free download of the report 10 Vital Self-Editing Tips.
For contest details, see the main contest page and the FAQ page.
There's not much to lose. Check through your files to see if you have a story of the right length, and get it submitted. The sooner you enter, the better chance you have of winning readers with your submission. And if you're not interested in submitting, you might want to check out the other contest submissions and make another writer's dream come true.
Question: Have contest entries strengthened your writing?
Note: One reader alerted me to some concerns about Freeditorial. To read them and evaluate for yourself, go to Absolute Write (a great site for writers) and search for Freeditorial. As with any contract, you want to be sure you know what rights you may be relinquishing and for how long. Thanks for the heads up, Bill!
