Hurry and Enter the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Competition
By SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 2/3/2010
Think you have what it takes to be the next Stephenie Meyer? Here’s your chance to prove it. Amazon.com, its subsidiary CreateSpace, and the Penguin Group USA are accepting submissions for the third annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition, an international contest that’s seeking the next popular novel.
This marks the first year that the competition is offering two grand prizes: one for the best young adult novel and best general fiction. Novels that have been previously self-published are also eligible.
Publishers Weekly, Amazon.com, and Penguin editors will evaluate and narrow down the pool of submissions, and professional Publishers Weekly reviewers will also provide full-manuscript reviews for novels that go on to the semifinalist round.
First, Amazon editors will select 1,000 entries from each category to advance to the next round. In the subsequent round, expert reviewers from Amazon will read excerpts of the 2,000 entries and narrow the pool to 500 quarter-finalists (250 in each category). Then reviewers from Publishers Weekly will read, rate and review the full manuscripts, and 50 semi-finalists for each category will be selected in April. Penguin editors will evaluate the manuscripts of the 50 general fiction and 50 young adult semi-finalists, and choose three finalists for each award.
Two panels of publishing professionals will then read and post their critiques of the top three manuscripts on Amazon.com. The panel for the young adult fiction category includes authors Sarah Dessen (Along for the Ride) and Nancy Werlin (Impossible); Ben Schrank, president and publisher of Razorbill; and Amy Berkower, president of Writers House. The panel for the general fiction category includes author Tana French (In the Woods); Molly Stern, editorial director and executive editor of Viking Books; and Julie Barer of Barer Literary.
In the final stage, Amazon customers will have seven days to vote for a Grand Prize Winner in each category. Each winner will receive a publishing contract with Penguin Group USA, which includes a $15,000 advance.
Last year’s winner was James King’s fiction debut Bill Warrington's Last Chance, about a man long estranged from his children and now faced with Alzheimer's, who decides that kidnapping his belligerent and beguiling 15-year-old granddaughter April is the only way to mend his family.
Register and submit your manuscript following the instructions on the entry form. But you better hurry—the deadline is February 7, 2010 at 11:59 p.m. EST or when 5,000 entries have been received in each category, whichever is earlier.Once the submission window has closed, the entries will be evaluated and the selection process will begin.