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David Farland’s Daily Kick in the Pants—Writing Contests

Every year many fine novels, even from major publishers, don’t get noticed.
So I wanted talk about winning awards.
JimWolverton
5/29/2012
David Farland’s Daily Kick in the Pants—Writing Contests

About a year ago I noted that the world of publishing is changing. With so many people self-publishing (Bowker’s Identifier Services says that it has sold over three million ISBN’s this year), we’re entering an age where authors are going to be struggling for notoriety.

In short, if you don’t get great reviews, win awards, or figure out how to create a strong publicity campaign, your novel—however fine it may be—may just sink into obscurity.

Of course, this is true even if you do have a major publisher. Every year many fine novels, even from major publishers, don’t get noticed.
So I wanted talk about winning awards.

Part of the reason is that it’s just on my mind. I spent some time last week making the final cut for the award winner for East India Press, and I was very impressed by the entries. Stephen Nelson came away as our winner, but several other fine authors were nipping at his heels. Beyond that, I’ve been invited to become the Coordinating Judge for the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest, a position that will require a good deal of time to handle, since I will be evaluating thousands of stories each year, along editing the annual anthology, and teaching writing workshop. And in the past two weeks, my novel Nightingale has won a couple of awards (it was a finalist for the Next Generation Award for Best Young Adult Novel of the Year, and won the International Book Award for Best Novel of the Year). So even when I didn’t want to think about awards, I kept getting reminded.

There are some things that you should know about awards. First, you should know that they are worthwhile. With my first novel, On My Way to Paradise, it came out to great reviews. To my surprise, it hit high on the science fiction bestseller list and stayed there for three months, I think, before it slid off. But then it was announced as a finalist for the Philip K. Dick award, and so it crept back onto the list, and it eventually won an award and got boosted even higher on the list. So sales were strong, with the book staying on the bestseller list for about five months. I’m not sure, but I suspect that the extra two months on the bestseller list earned the book around $10,000 in royalties. This was just a paperback novel, but that was a significant amount in royalties back in 1990. As my editor at the time said, “It takes most authors 20 years to get this high on the bestseller list.”

Of course, some awards are more prestigious than others. I once had an author say that he believed that he’d made an extra $25,000 for winning a Nebula for his book. Another once said that when he sold a book after winning a Hugo, his publisher raised his advance by $50,000. I have no idea how winning a Pulitzer or a Nobel Prize might raise your worth in the eyes of publishers, but obviously it does.

I found recently that there are a lot of “new awards” out there, and I wondered at that. Is an award prestigious when it’s new? Not really. Publishers can’t easily affix a value to a new award. It probably has some value, but no one knows for sure. Just remember, at one time, the Nobel Prize was also new and had an uncertain value.

All awards are not equal. Winning a prize from your state’s art council might not make you any money at all—but it could get the attention of editors or agents, and that could lead to a sale, and a big sale can lead to advertising that creates a bestseller. In other words, it might well be worth trying for just because it can start a chain of events.

To win an award, you first need to apply, in most cases. You should know that putting on a writing contest takes a lot of time, and often requires a bit of money. For example, with the Writers of the Future Contest, the winners can earn a good amount of money—tens of thousands of dollars is spent on prizes. But the winners are also flown to the awards ceremony, put up in hotels, given free workshops with celebrity judges, and so on. Add in to that the cost of renting a venue to put on the ceremonies, and the cost of bringing in special guests, and I suspect that it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars each year just to put on the contest.

Few contests are so lavish. Most of the time, the author is sent an award in the mail. That award may or may not have a cash prize attached. So it isn’t expensive in that way. Still, there are real costs in time and money. With many awards, you have to rent office space, hire readers, and so on. Because of this, someone (either the author or the publisher) may have to pay an entry fee to enter a contest. These fees range from nothing (in a few cases) to hundreds of dollars. You will also need to submit copies of your work, and pay for postage and handling. So if you’re entering a novel in a contest, it’s not uncommon to have to invest, say, $100 to pay for various aspects of entering.
Does that sound onerous to you? Chalk it up to advertising costs. It really is cheap advertising, if you manage to win.

In many cases, if you’re publishing with a major house, your publisher may pay the entry fee for you. In fact, your publisher might enter your book for the National Book Award, for example, without you ever knowing it.
There are of course all kinds of awards, and you may not qualify in certain fields. There are awards for Catholic writers, Mormons, and Jewish writers. There are awards for American Indians, women, teens, and unpublished writers. You really shouldn’t submit your book for an award that you can’t honestly accept. Please don’t even bother.

But here is the point that I really wanted to make: Let’s say that you’re a struggling young author, and you’re trying to decide whether to enter a writing contest. You have $200 to spend, and you can only afford to enter two or three contests. You have to ask yourself, “Should I even bother trying to win this contest?” “What will it get me?” “Or would I be better off buying lottery tickets?”

Recognize that some contests are not worth entering. They’re closed. Years ago, as a new author, I thought of sending a novel manuscript out to a state-wide contest. Upon studying the authors who had won, and the judges who had won, I learned that it looked as if the contest (which was sponsored by the state) was something of an “old girl’s club,” where various unpublished writers gave each other awards each year. They may have actually been good writers, but I doubted that I really had a chance. So I didn’t enter.

At every level, this happens. Certain writers win popularity contests not because they’re consistently the best in their field, but because they’re charismatic. They may be excellent public speakers, and that gives them an edge.

Other times, contest administrators have hidden agendas. Perhaps the administrator is trying simply to popularize a certain type of art—say imagism in novels. Or maybe the administrator will only give an award to a winner who has the “proper” political ideals.

Very often, contests have a stated goal. For example, the contest’s aim might be to “Discover works that we believe have a huge potential for sale in the international markets.” If your novel fits the bill, then enter.

Just be aware that your story won’t be a fit for every contest. I used to take my Irish Setter, Gallen, to dog shows. He had a gorgeous face, beautiful coloration, and a nice coat. But his back legs were just a bit too long. I once traveled five hundred miles to a dog show and noticed that the judge was strongly biased toward conformation. Immediately I suspected that Gallen just couldn’t win in that arena. Sure enough, when I trotted him around the ring, we came up without even placing third—even though he’d taken first at his previous three shows.

Your novel will be that way, too. Some contests are heavily weighted toward style. Your book might have a stellar plot, blazing pacing, and fascinating characters, but unless it is written with an eye toward lyricism and a powerful voice, don’t bother to enter. Other contests might be weighted toward tales with strong social content—such as feminist themes, or right-wing political leanings.

In order to find out if there are unwritten biases toward a certain type of book, you have to do a little research. Check out the previous winners to the contest, read a few pages, and see if you can discern what those biases are.
As you enter your story for awards consideration, remember that the larger your pool of contestants, the harder it will be to win. Often, you might not know how many people you are competing with. In my little writing contest for East India Press, we had about 540 short stories entered. In one of the contests that I just entered, I suspect that about 600 novels were entered in my category (over 6000 were entered into the contest as a whole), but I don’t know the number for certain. Yet there are contests you can enter that are quite small, where you might only have a couple of dozen competitors.

In short, we’re entering an age when we as authors are going to be competing for exposure. One way to get that is by winning awards. Entering your book for awards consideration has its costs—both in time, materials, and money. So do your research before you invest your energy in a contest.

David Farland will be teaching his Million-Dollar Outlines Class in Dallas, Texas this coming Friday and Saturday. We still have openings in this class. To register, go here

Dave also has a couple of openings left in his Novel-Rewriting Class. If you have a novel that you think has strong potential, but you just need to get over those past few hurdles, check out his class here

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