Writing Contests are Important: How To Tell the Good Ones from the Scams

Winning writing contests can build your self-esteem and raise your profile. 

By C. Hope Clark, Founder of Funds for Writers.

Writing contests sound simple enough. You enter and hope you win. Winners, however, take contests more earnestly, using them as a serious tool in their career. Contests represent opportunity, measure, and hope. FundsforWriters.com treats writing contests no differently than other calls for submissions, whether grants, markets, agents, or publishers.

FundsforWriters has existed for 20 years, hand-picked by Writer’s Digest Magazine for its 101 Best Websites for Writers for 18 of those years. FFW believes writers should identify multiple funding streams for their careers, to include contests. We knows contests very well after years of not only advising writers but also assisting contest sponsors in creating guidelines that are fair and appealing to potential entrants.

Writing Contests are Nothing to be Afraid Of.

Whether fledgling or well-seasoned, writers compete in the marketplace on all levels, for sales, shelf space, agent representation, publishing contracts, advertising, and speaking appearances, so contests should come natural. However, a good many authors fear competitions, labeling them a different animal. . . a ferocious beast hunched in the shadows, waiting for the naïve to walk by.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, others take contests lightly, without serious thought into the entry – shooting off pieces from their portfolio, pieces rejected elsewhere with no home. There’s a firmer, smarter middle ground.

My first agent admitted my writing contest involvement caught her attention more than my FundsforWriters label, and convinced her I was earnest about writing novels. Afraid of rejection, and anxious about whether my fiction work was worthy of agents’ attention, I chose to enter writing contests first in my mystery career.

Once I received enough first, second, and honorable mention nods, my self-esteem felt strong enough to weather queries to agents and publishers. I landed an agent, then a publishing contract, and that was nine novels ago. Winning awards indeed raises the odds that someone out there will take more notice of you whether agent, publisher, conference sponsor, or reader.

Sure there are scams, but they usually don’t exist for long without being outed by the writing community. They are easily identified, and there aren’t enough of them out there to deter you from entering contests. Just because sharks swim the ocean, do you not visit the beach?

Let’s simplify contests and make them more appealing.

What Can Writing Contests Provide for You?

• Money
• Publication
• Name recognition
• Skill development
• Self-esteem

To simplify it further. . . what have you got to lose? An entry fee and writing time.

But what about unscrupulous contests taking your rights? Crooks taking the entry fee and not paying the winners? Yes, what about those concerns?

Unfortunately, There’s No Contest Regulatory Agency.

Contest ethics are not in stone. No governing organization legalizes or defines acceptable rules, so it behooves the writer to self-educate. Contests are no more littered with scams than any other aspect of writing, and the intelligent writer learns to identify those gray areas.

FFW stands firm on the premise that contests are good for your writing, good for your writer’s soul, and good for your writing future, and like you study any other submission destination, you apply the same energy to contests.

Frankly, your odds of winning a contest are often better than the odds of submitting to an agent, publisher, or magazine editor.

It doesn’t take much for a serious writer to spot the contests with ulterior motives, because they usually aren’t hidden very well.

How Can You Spot a Con Job?

Questionable contests prey on writers who are so emotionally eager to be accepted somewhere by anyone that they skim the guidelines, overlook the red flags, and throw their submission in the ring without doing their homework. Writers are often their own worst enemy.

And because a contest does one questionable thing doesn’t necessarily mean they are a con job. For instance, a poetry contest may take all rights to a work if you win. Is that bad? Depends on you. All the other factors of the contest might be legit, but this contest sponsor prefers not to see the winning piece pop up elsewhere after they select it for a winner. You have to decide whether you can live with that.

A contest may charge a fee and only hand out trophies. If the competition is seasoned and highly respected, does a monetary prize matter if the recognition gets you published or places your book before the eyes of some serious movers and shakers?

Some of the largest professional writing organizations in the world pay nothing to the winners of their contests. Contests like the Edgars by the Mystery Writers of America, or the RITA by the Romance Writers of America.

You are the judge as to whether a contest is predatory or legitimate or worth your while.

Analyze your take-away value, and be serious with yourself. While you won’t pay an entry fee, someone else would. While you might not enter a contest that doesn’t pay $500 or more, another author would.

But what’s key is whether this contest furthers your career in the style you wish, and can this contest fit in your wheelhouse of writing ethics. Your choice.

Entry Fees Aren’t Bad – Excessive Entry Fees Are.

To a fresh-faced writer, fees are all the same with no differences between them. In essence, all they see are people charging to read their submissions, and they do not like that.

In reality the differences are many. Literary magazine fees are considered legit, literary agent fees are horrendously wrong, fees for publishers to read your work is a brow-raiser, and pay-for-review is completely wrong unless you submit $425 ($575 if you want it in four to six weeks) to Kirkus in which case it’s supposed to be okay.

Contests need income to cover prizes, advertising, judges (they don’t all volunteer, especially the bigger names), and often publication. Why anyone expects contests to be free is more the question. Where did that free concept ever come from? It’s illogical.

Be more concerned on the amount of the entry fee. FundsforWriters frowns upon any fee that exceeds ten percent of the first prize purse and prefers five percent. As a rule (and in honor of our name), we only post contests that pay $200 first prize or more, but that doesn’t mean other contests are not honorable.

Rights are the More Important Issue.

The grand majority of contests do not take all your rights. Even the winners usually give up only first rights or one-time rights.

However, and this is a big however, if a contest says they want all your rights just for entering, be extremely wary. There will be ulterior motives. They want to populate a website or create a book to which you have no rights. They might even take credit for your piece with you becoming no more than a ghostwriter not entitled to a byline. FundsforWriters has turned away many of those when they queried to be posted on the site.

On another level. some contests, not many but some, want all rights of just the winners. If you believe that contest is credible enough and has the potential of aiding your career, then consider entering. Assuming you win, giving away that piece might hold merit. After all, you’re a wordsmith. You have thousands more stories in you. To give up that one in exchange for recognition, cash, and publication might be worth it.

However, if the contest is small, or you have future plans for that submission, then pass on entering. Giving up rights isn’t necessarily always wrong. It just depends on what you receive in exchange.

Other Myths about Writing Contests.

Some believe you must know somebody in order to win. That’s how blind judging originated.

All sponsors of legit contests fight hard to maintain the integrity of their competition. A contest is a marketing tool for most sponsors and builds upon a brand. To label a contest as disreputable is to taint the sponsor with the probably of discrediting the judge, and the parties running the contest will jump through an incredible number of hoops to bar this possibility.

Blind judging means the writer’s name appears nowhere on the submission. It’s pretty sacrosanct in the contest business. The red flag comes when a contest does NOT have blind judging in its guidelines.

Some feel they need an MFA to win a contest. Unless a contest specifically asks for applicants to have an advanced degree, it doesn’t matter. That’s also what blind judging is for.

Then there’s the concern that when a contest deadline is extended, the judges hate the original entries. Deadlines can be extended due to: ailment of judges or staff, quirks in the submission mechanism online, down websites, or advertising glitches resulting in a low number of entries.

Find the Right Fit.

As with any other venture in this business, you study where you send your work. Not all agents fit your career. Not all freelance markets suit your writing abilities. And you don’t enter just any contest. To take that deeper, the short story writer doesn’t enter all short story contests. Not all poets enter just any poetry competition. You study which ones fit your story, your future.

Contests can open some incredibly important doors to a writing career. Insure you include a handful of them in your writing calendar each year. Keep yourself competitive. Reach for accreditation. Strive to be vetted and found worthy. Just be smart in doing so, insuring that the contest you vie for is one you would enjoy winning and not regret afterwards.

by C. Hope Clark  February 10, 2019

***

Do you enter writing contests, scriveners? I always list some contests here at the end of a post for all the reasons Hope gives. Her newsletter helped me through a dark time in my career. My book publisher had gone under, the magazine where I had a column died, and the local paper I wrote for stopped paying writers. Then somehow I found Funds for Writers and subscribed…and every week there would be encouragement and a list of contests and places to send my short work. I won money in two poetry contests she listed and placed a number of short stories. That really helped.

Have you ever had a contest win that brought your confidence back after a losing streak with your writing? 

Hope Clark is founder of FundsforWriters.com, a blog, website, and newsletter that reach 35,000 readers who happen to call themselves writers. FFW has been on Writer’s Digest’s 101 Best Websites for Writers for 18 years.

Her right brain writes award-winning mysteries in the form of The Carolina Slade Mysteries and The Edisto Island Mysteries, and she’s currently working on a third series.

She delves into the self-publishing world with her nonfiction books, the next being Writing Contests with Hope, due out in February. www.chopeclark.com / www.fundsforwriters.com

BOOK OF THE WEEK

Edisto Stranger

Book Four in the series. A cold case heats up . . .

A dead man in Big Bay Creek, spring break, and a rogue FBI agent would be enough to drive Chief Callie Jean Morgan to drink . . . if she hadn’t already quietly crawled inside a bottle of gin to drown her sorrows over a life ripped apart by too many losses. When her investigation into the stranger’s death heats up an unsolved abduction case, Callie finds herself pitted against the town council, her son, the agent, and even the raucous college kids enjoying idyllic Edisto Beach. Amidst it all, Callie must find a way to reconcile her grief and her precious taste for gin before anyone else is killed.

OPPORTUNITY ALERTS

The Mary McCarthy Prize for Shorter Fiction. First prize: $2000 plus publication by Sarabande Books and 2-week residency at their Kentucky retreat. They’re looking for a collection of stories or novellas or a short novel of 150 to 250 pages. Entry Fee: $29. Deadline: February 15

Wild Women Story Contest $20 entry fee. $1,000 prize and publication in TulipTree Review. Write about “women who are the heroines of their own lives.” Submit a poem, a story, or an essay of up to 10,000 words. Deadline: February 23.

Glimmer Train Fiction Open: Fee $21. 1st Prize $3000. 2nd Prize $1000. Any genre. 3000 to 28,000 words.  Deadline: February 28.

SEQUESTRUM EDITOR’S REPRINT AWARD  Fee: $15.  Prize: $200 and publication in Sequestrum for one previously published piece of fiction or nonfiction and one previously published piece of poetry. A minimum of one runner-up in each category will receive $25-$50 and publication. Maximum 12,000 words for prose and three poems. Deadline: April 30, 2019. 

Don’t let those published short stories stop working! Here are 25 Literary Magazines that will take reprints.

7 PUBLISHERS FOR MEMOIRS! You don’t need an agent. From the good folks at Authors Publish.