Anti-Shurtugalers in ABNA
Hello my fellow antis!
Some of you have posted in past years about participating in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition. I haven't seen any buzz about it this year in this community, so I wondered if anyone else entered.
If you don't know the contest, it's yearly, free to enter, international, and takes up to 10,000 entrants for the first round. Pitches are read to determine who gets into the second round and 2,000 participants are chosen. Then of those 2,000, 500 are chosen to go to the quarter-finals based on two experienced Amazon readers' opinions/ratings/reviews. The quarter-finalists were picked this month, and the semi-finals (down to a tiny pool of 25) will be announced in April. There will be 5 winners and they will all get published.
Quarter-finalists get a couple cool perks. Their first 5,000 words or so are made into a downloadable, reviewable excerpt that can be read and rated by any reader! And right now, Publishers Weekly is reading and reviewing the quarter-finalists' full books. HUZZAH!
Believe it or not (gasp!) I entered and did not make the quarter-finals this year. Shocking, eh? I made it in 2011 and 2012, so who knows what weirdness occurred this year, but this contest was far from my only iron in the fire--as you may recall from a previous post, I got signed to a literary agency last year and another book's on submission to the biggest publishers in the world, currently being considered by more than one . . . okay, more than two . . . okay, more than thr--never mind, an undisclosed number of major publishers. That's plenty for me to be jazzed about.
I'm posting to tell y'all two things:
1. My friend, critique partner, and fellow Anti-Shurtugaler jaeten entered the contest with me and DID make the quarter-finals, so I am endorsing his slick and awesome fantasy entry The Queenschair. You can download, read, rate, and review his excerpt at that link if you wanna. As a fellow anti, he obviously will be perfectly happy with constructive criticism should you have any, and would probably enjoy seeing actual informed opinions from discriminating readers who read a lot of fantasy.
2. If anyone else is still in the contest and wants me to review THEIR excerpts, I'll do it for you if you're a community member. I reviewed The Queenschair here (My Review!) if you want to see the kinds of nice meaty reviews I give.
Good luck to anyone else who's doing it! I'll keep y'all up to date on my publishing situation as soon as I'm given the green light to announce stuff.
Some of you have posted in past years about participating in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition. I haven't seen any buzz about it this year in this community, so I wondered if anyone else entered.
If you don't know the contest, it's yearly, free to enter, international, and takes up to 10,000 entrants for the first round. Pitches are read to determine who gets into the second round and 2,000 participants are chosen. Then of those 2,000, 500 are chosen to go to the quarter-finals based on two experienced Amazon readers' opinions/ratings/reviews. The quarter-finalists were picked this month, and the semi-finals (down to a tiny pool of 25) will be announced in April. There will be 5 winners and they will all get published.
Quarter-finalists get a couple cool perks. Their first 5,000 words or so are made into a downloadable, reviewable excerpt that can be read and rated by any reader! And right now, Publishers Weekly is reading and reviewing the quarter-finalists' full books. HUZZAH!
Believe it or not (gasp!) I entered and did not make the quarter-finals this year. Shocking, eh? I made it in 2011 and 2012, so who knows what weirdness occurred this year, but this contest was far from my only iron in the fire--as you may recall from a previous post, I got signed to a literary agency last year and another book's on submission to the biggest publishers in the world, currently being considered by more than one . . . okay, more than two . . . okay, more than thr--never mind, an undisclosed number of major publishers. That's plenty for me to be jazzed about.
I'm posting to tell y'all two things:
1. My friend, critique partner, and fellow Anti-Shurtugaler jaeten entered the contest with me and DID make the quarter-finals, so I am endorsing his slick and awesome fantasy entry The Queenschair. You can download, read, rate, and review his excerpt at that link if you wanna. As a fellow anti, he obviously will be perfectly happy with constructive criticism should you have any, and would probably enjoy seeing actual informed opinions from discriminating readers who read a lot of fantasy.
2. If anyone else is still in the contest and wants me to review THEIR excerpts, I'll do it for you if you're a community member. I reviewed The Queenschair here (My Review!) if you want to see the kinds of nice meaty reviews I give.
Good luck to anyone else who's doing it! I'll keep y'all up to date on my publishing situation as soon as I'm given the green light to announce stuff.