by Anne R. Allen.
Recently I’ve been seeing a bunch of ads for writing contests in my Facebook feed. Plus I’ve been getting unsolicited mass emails advertising similar competitions. Some of them look pretty legit, but I couldn’t help asking myself why. If it’s such a great contest, why do they need to use spam to promote them? Why not contact me as an influencer and ask me to promote the contest here on the blog? (Many contest promoters do this and if the contest looks good, I add it to our “Opportunity Alerts” section at the bottom of each post. )
Then last week I saw a tweet from industry watchdog Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware saying much the same thing. She said she’d suddenly been hearing from a lot of writers who were getting direct solicitations from writing contests and she’s seeing the same stuff I am on Facebook. So I thought I should probably give our readers a heads-up.
Legit Writing Contests are Valuable.
First I want to say I encourage writers to enter legit writing contests. Contest wins have got me through some times of self-doubt as a writer, and they sometimes can pay better than actually selling a book or story to a publisher. Plus they raise your profile and attract new readers.
That’s why I always include a few contests in our “Opportunity Alerts” feature at the end of each blog post.
And few months ago we featured a post by C. Hope Clark here on the blog. Her Funds for Writers newsletter is a great source for announcements of vetted contests. She also has a fantastic new handbook of writing contests.
When choosing “Opportunities,” I search out contests that keep their fees reasonable and offer good prizes like prestigious publication, big money, or another valuable prize like a critique from a respected professional or a read from an agent.
Contests are especially good for short form writing: short stories, creative essays, and poems. Short form contests do have their share of scammers, like the venerable poetry anthology scam, but a good percentage of short form contests are likely to be legit.
On the other hand, the contests for book length fiction or memoir—especially self-published books that are already in print—present juicy opportunities for scams.
Victoria Strauss thinks you’re better off staying away from all novel contests. I’m not quite so negative about them, and I feel some can actually be prestigious, but she is absolutely right that you must be wary.
Here are some tip-offs that you’re probably dealing with a scammy contest:
1) Testimonials
A real contest doesn’t have to showcase a bunch of unknown writers telling you how happy they are they entered a contest.
If all those people had really won $10,000 and a major publishing contract you would have seen a big splash about it in the mainstream press.
Those “publishing contracts” these people were awarded are probably with a vanity press owned by the contest promoters. The money they “won” often doesn’t quite cover the cost of the ridiculously overpriced publishing package.
I can’t think of any legitimate reason a book contest would need testimonials.
If a contest is legit, they’ll say something like, “Last year’s winner is now represented by The Bigge Deele Literary Agency” or “The 2018 winner was the bestseller, Gone With the Tattooed Girl in the Train Window.”
If it’s a legit indie contest, they’ll show you the book cover and crow about sales. They won’t show you a photo of the author looking like one of those “I lost 50 lbs. in 3 days eating corn dogs and funnel cake” ads you see in the back of pulpy magazines.
2) High Fees
There are a whole lot of for-profit contests out there. Be wary of any contest that charges high fees (over $30).
If a contest is brand new, be especially careful. They may promise a big money prize, but you have no way of knowing if that prize will actually be awarded. The promoters often take the money and run.
Novel contests are more likely to be legit if they’re attached to a well-known book festival, writers conference, or well known organization–or if they’ve been around for a long time.
The most prestigious contests, like Minotaur’s Malice Domestic prize , the Bouchercon, Hugo or Edgar Awards do NOT charge fees, although you probably need to become a member or attend a conference to enter.
However do note that no-fee contests are not always benign. No-fee poetry contests are often simply solicitations for scammy anthologies. Everybody who enters “wins” the prize of being included in a super-expensive anthology. It’s free to enter, but you have to pay $50-$60 to see your “prize-winning” poem in print and you’ll be slammed with endless requests to buy more copies for your friends and relations. For more, here’s my blog post on scammy anthologies.
3) Iffy Sponsors
A few years ago, I got an email about a contest that sounded like a good addition to the “Opportunity Alerts.” No entry fee…prizes…and they said the winning piece would be submitted to big name literary agencies. But it sounded a little too good to be true.
So I checked out the sponsor of the contest and found this entry in agent Janet Reid’s blog and discovered the contest was sponsored by a query service. They were running the contest to collect email addresses of aspiring writers to target with their bogus services.
BTW, query services are pointless scams. A query letter is a job interview. You don’t want somebody to go on a job interview for you any more than you want Cyrano De Bergerac to woo the object of your affections. 🙂
Besides, agents can spot a phony in the first sentence.
And even if they couldn’t, imagine what would happen when the real you answered the phone if “the call” actually came. “Did I say I’m a major fan of your client Bess Selling? Then I guess I am. Do I consider my books to be in her genre? Um, what genre does she write….” Yeah. You don’t want to end up there.
(I’m not talking about legit, helpful agent databases like QueryTracker and AgentQuery, which I highly recommend.)
But it’s a bad idea to enter a contest that’s run by an iffy organization. You’re not just wasting your money. You could damage your reputation by associating your name with a shady outfit.
4) Rights Grabs
Always read the fine print. Some of these have got by me into the Opportunity Alerts, so do pay attention, even if you see the contest here. A legit contest never asks for exclusive, long term rights unless they’re giving you a whole lot of money for those rights. And even so, think long and hard about what you’re giving up and if it’s worth it to you.
Poetry and verse contests sometimes ask for all rights because they want to use them on greeting cards, posters, mouse pads, or whatever. If it’s $1000 for a few lines, that might be worthwhile for you.
But it might not. It’s up to you.
But journals should only ask for first publication rights for your region (say North America, or UK/Eire) and that’s all. Online journals and websites may ask for first international rights. They may ask for exclusivity for a certain amount of time, say six months to a year. That makes perfect sense. An online journal doesn’t want you to publish the story on your blog a week after it comes out in a journal they ask people to pay for.
But a contest that demands rights for “the life of the copyright” or anything more than a year is making a rights grab. Don’t do it unless you’re getting major bux and you’re not going to want to write about the characters or setting again
5) Small Prizes Compared with Fees
“Exposure” isn’t a prize. When a contest charges a fee, make sure the prize is appropriate—not just a tiny percentage of what they take in.
A few hundred dollars and a shiny sticker that says “Booky McBookface Award-Winner” isn’t worth that $95 entry fee.
Worse, if the only prize is publication with a vanity press, you’ve been had.
6) Hidden Judging Criteria and/or Unknown Judges.
Legit contests tell you the criteria they use for judging: originality, characters, pacing, plotting, setting, etc. Often they have high profile judges. Some writing contests, like the Women on Writing contests feature agents as judges. If you’re agent hunting, I don’t have to tell you why this is a good deal. I know of several successful authors who got their starts through a contest where an agent was the judge.
But if the judges aren’t named, there could be problems. If the judges are simply the staff of the contest, check for complaints. The awards may go to pre-chosen cronies.
7) Advertised via Unsolicited Emails or Social Media Spam
This is what prompted me to write this post. These days, my Facebook feed is filled with more and more ads, especially writer spam, and lots of it is for contests. Some seem legit, but others not so much.
Always Google an organization before entering their contest. Use keywords like “scam” and “complaints.” And check with the watchdog websites I list below.
8) Bad Marks from Writer Beware, Alli, and Other Watchdog Sites.
Victoria Strauss’s Writer Beware has been keeping writers safe from bogus agents, publishers and scammy contests for over a decade. If you haven’t heard of a contest, always check them out with Victoria.
You’ll also find up-to date warnings at the fantastic website of Alli, the Alliance for Independent Authors. You don’t have to be a member to access their data base which is a treasure trove for writers.
Absolute Write is another watchdog site. It is not entirely reliable, since it’s a forum and anybody can post. They tend to be dominated by a lot of anti-self publishing people who call anything self-publishing a scam, so take comments with a grain of salt. But it’s worth checking them to see if there are a large number of complaints.
To Find Good Writing Contests, Check with Ethical Sites.
So how to you find legit, solid contests to enter?
I find most of the contests I list here in the “Opportunity Alerts” at the Poets and Writers website. I also recommend Authors Publish magazine, C. Hope Clark’s Funds for Writers and also the wonderful blog “Publishing and Other Forms of Insanity” where Erica Verrillo lists great contests and calls for submissions every month.
Also The Alliance for Independent Authors, Alli, offers a vetted list of awards and contests on their site, a valuable resource for all authors.
You can find another couple of great lists at “30 Book Awards for Self-Published Authors” by Joel Freidlander and “32 Book Awards Authors Should Pursue” by Scott Lorenz.
I’ll leave you with some advice from Marcy Kennedy from Janice Hardy’s blog.
“Some of the best awards give the winners media exposure (leading to more book sales), cash prizes, and opportunities to speak with agents/editors from traditional publishing (if that’s a path the winner wants to consider). Beyond that, having an award win, or even an honorable mention, adds credibility to you and your book. But not all awards are created equal. Some are scams. Some won’t give a good enough return on investment for your time and entry fees.”
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) May 5, 2019
What about you, scriveners? Have you entered any book contests? Was there a fee over $30? Did you feel it was worthwhile? Did you win? Have you ever been scammed by a writing contest?
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Thanks, Anne—Super valuable advice about how to avoid ScamWorld. A bad, bad place to be!
Writer, Beware! They’re out to get you (and your $$$$).
Ruth–And Scam World seems to get bigger all the time! 🙁
Hey Anne – excellent advice, as usual. I am continually boggled by the number of people who seem to think running a scam is a good idea. I just don’t get that attraction of it, but obviously there’s an attraction. Such a shame that good people get drawn in.
CS–Running scams does take a lot of work. You wonder if they wouldn’t make more per hour just doing a regular job. Sigh.
Very helpful list. Thank you, Anne.
Leanne–Many thanks for stopping by!
Hi Anne! Thanks so much for all this fabulous information. I knew about some and didn’t know about others so I subscribed to a couple of new ones. Thank you!!!
Patricia–Those newsletters are great. Authors Publish Magazine is fairly new, but it’s reliable and full of information.
Collecting emails to spam with their phony services – that’s scummy.
That’s why we try to get some name authors or agents for the IWSG anthology contest. Give it more credentials.
Alex–They ARE scummy. Scummy spammy scammers. 🙂 You’ve got some very impressive judges for the IWSG anthology this year. I’ve put it in the Opportunity Alerts.. The IWSG anthologies are an excellent way to break into print and/or increase your visibility.
A treasure-trove of links and common sense advice. In other words, it’s Sunday and Anne has another column out.
I find writing short very challenging, and I can’t wait to get back to it. But I seldom submit to contests. I’m tempted like the next indie, but unless I do this level of research I always fear I’m being taken. For now, I’ll keep working to make them actually good if I can, and use them to help widen my platform (have something ready to contribute to an indie anthology, maybe another give-away tale, and of course expanding my own Book of Tales).
I never thought about how the sponsor could be a bad sign- nice catch!
Will–I’m with you. My last short story took me a full three months to write. I could have got half a novel written in that time. I don’t know why stories are so hard for some of us, but they are. My ideas generally take at least 60.000 words to spool out. But I think it’s good for us long-formers to try our hand at the short ones every so often for all the reasons you mention. Getting into anthologies is one of the best way I know to increase readership.
I entered a lot of writing contests during the few few yeas of my writing career (such as it is), but the bulk of them were for literary journals, where the basic entry fee got me a year’s subscription to their “fine outstanding journal” (if you know anything about me, literary non-fiction/fiction is a big pet peeve of mine). Stopped applying when I came to the belated realization that my writing was more suited for the general masses than for the narrowness of colleges/universities.
G. B. You’ve hit on something that I really need to blog about. There are two separate kinds of writing careers and new writers don’t often realize they’re being pushed onto one or the other. Literary journals usually belong to the MFA-College teaching track of writing, where writers make money teaching, not from writing. The other track–the popular fiction road, where the goal is to make money from writing, is very different. There are prestigious journals and contests for popular fiction, but they’re not easy to break into–like Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Women’s World, or Amazing Stories. The entry-level popular fiction magazines have disappeared in recent years and the new ones tend to be online and don’t pay.
Yes, please write about this. I encounter writers all the time who think “they can’t write” because what they perceive as good is literary and if they can’t do that, why try. But then I read their work and they are brilliant at writing commercial fiction.
Thanks for this good advice, Anne. I’m happy for the shout-out about Women on Writing. A few years ago a short story of mine was runner-up in one of their quarterly contests. They’re great opportunities.
Also a few years ago, I saw a ‘contest’ advertised on a couple of sites that publish lists of contests. The contest was for sure a joke, but when I made my case to the sites, they refused to believe me and left the listing up. Get this–the supposed journal was called “El Chapo Review”. (In case anybody’s forgotten, El Chapo is a Mexican drug kingpin now in prison in the U.S., if I’m not mistaken.) Anyway, it was so obviously a ‘joke’ that I was amazed the people didn’t remove it. Oh, there’s information at the links, including supposedly high payments for submissions to the “Review”, no entry fee or submission fee, photos of El Chapo and packet after packet of money, a reference or two to jail, etc. While no one was getting scammed, since there was no real way to submit, in spite what looks like a submittable page. . . still! I couldn’t understand how they couldn’t see it.
Tricia–Oh, my! It sounds like when people pick up satire from The Onion and pass it around as real news stories. (It can be hard to tell the difference these days. 🙂 ) But those sites should really have done their homework. I try to research all of our Opportunity Alerts, but sometimes fine print stuff gets by me. But I sure am grateful when somebody tells me I’m running info on a bad contest. If you ever see anything here that looks iffy, do tell me!
Tricia–BUT, I did some more checking and they have a funny policy of “no contracts”. That’s, um, odd. And dangerous. Victoria Strauss says stay away!
Tricia–I just did a little checking on El Chapo. It turns out it is a real literary magazine. They often have absurdist titles. There was one called Bad Writing. (It didn’t last long) It is brand new and claims they did pay their writers those big bux for their first issue. It’s not unusual for journals not to charge fees and pay their writers–it used to be that all journals did that. But this one looks as if its business model is not sustainable.
Tricia–BUT, I did some more checking and they have a funny policy of “no contracts”. That’s, um, odd. And dangerous. Victoria Strauss says stay away!
I don’t want to be argumentative, but I still don’t think it’s real. Did you find an actual way to submit? Also, when I tried to follow links to some stories they supposedly published), they led to no stories.
Tricia, the submissions are by email. so there’s no way to tell if they actually respond. They did post two of the winning “stories” but, um, I’m not sure I’d want to be associated with them. https://elchaporeview.wordpress.com/tortoise-and-the-whore/ Definitely fringe-y. And as Victoria pointed out, you probably don’t want them to respond, because there’s no contract and they could use your story for anything.
You asked if anyone had been scammed by a contest. Unfortunately, I was. I entered a contest from a company that was a sponsor of a huge writer’s organization’s conference (to remain nameless unless you ask.) It all sounded legit. The entry was supposed to include individualized feedback so I waited anxiously for mine. I was disappointed that I didn’t “win” but thought the feedback would prove useful. Instead it sounded like a form letter response that had nothing to do with my actual novel. A few days later, a local writing buddy emailed me his “individualized feedback” and it was the same as mine, word for word, and he writes in a completely different genre. So much for contests that come through big name organizations. I did report them, but I never heard back.
All that said, I support entering legit contests, but I learned my lesson on how to seek the right ones. I serve as President of my local writer’s guild (non-profit, 100+ members). We host monthly short story and quarterly poetry contests. Our judging is done blind and members are never allowed to judge, except for the President’s and Poet Laureate’s contests, where the entrants know who is judging, but the judges don’t know who submitted. We announce the judges at the end of the year. All winners and honorable mentions are published in our annual anthology. For many, this is their first publishing credit, as it was mine over 5 years ago. Our fees are small and we award cash prizes. Our goal is to provide new writers with a safe place to learn the craft and the contests are an incentive to create new work each month.
Jeanne–Please do let me know the name of the organization. Email me at annerallen.allen at gmail.com. Thanks! That’s rotten. I know a number of writers who have been scammed by phony critiques, even at prestigious conferences. I used to do critiques at conferences myself and they’re hard work, so I understand the urge to skimp on the feedback, but paying customers should get what they paid for or get their money back.
I agree about contests like yours being a great way to break in. In fact I started our “Opportunity Alerts” in order to promote a contest for our local Nightwriters club. Unfortunately it got too big, so they cut back to members only.
Wonderful post, Anne! I certainly recommend entering contests put on by legit genre organizations: Crime Writers of Canada, Mystery Writers of America, the Daggers in the UK, the Derringers, and those associated with well-known conferences like Bouchercon or Malice Domestic. I’ve won twice through those channels and those wins got me an agent. But I tell my students to be very careful about spending money on contests, if they aren’t well-known. I’ve heard of small publishers holding contests for their own authors, even. Meaningless.
Melodie–Thanks for mentioning some more great conferences that sponsor prestigious awards. And yes, they can get you an agent and/or a publishing contract.
But OMG I didn’t know about publishers having contests for their own authors. I hope they don’t make them pay to enter.
Thanks so much for all the valuable info you share with us Anne. I’m a pretty good investigator when it comes to internet things and emails, but I always learn something new here. 🙂 I’m happy to say I’m not spammed much from these types of sites preying on writers, but omg, it’s a different story with soliciting emails that never seem to miss a day requesting to post on my blog, along with some bogus compliments, without even including a credential. I think there must have been a flashing internet alert that my blog has, making me so fascinating everybody wants to write on it about topics that have nothing to do with my blog. After snooping out a few with the breadcrumbs they leave, seems like many of these websites have no about pages and are full of content ‘promotional’ writing. Seems spammers and scammers trying out new methods. But I really wish I knew how they find me. 🙂 Probably FB selling us out, lol. 😉
Debby–Those people drive me nuts. I must be on all the same lists as you. Every Monday I have at least 5 of them in my inbox, even though I send them all to spam. This seems to be what these scam outfits do these days instead of just leaving spam on blogs that gets blocked by spam blockers. They ask me to run posts on everything from make-up tips to dating in Tokyo. Never about writing, ever. Because hey, this blog’s tag is “Writing about Writing. Mostly” How could they know it’s a writing blog? That would mean they bothered to read four words. That would strain their teeny tiny brains. Grrr.
Exactly!!!!!! And funny enough, I had someone email me 3 times asking if I’d seen their original emails. Instead of deleting again, I replied asking them what they are selling and how would they benefit me on my blog and ….how come no mention of their website in the email. Guess what . . . no more replies! 🙂
FYI There is a $50+ member fee to enter the RITA Awards, and it’s even more for non-members.
https://www.rwa.org/Online/Awards/RITA/RITA_Contest_Rules.aspx
Iola–Thanks for the heads-up! It used to be free for members. But I haven’t been a member for a long time. Thanks!
Thanks again Anne. I had been thinking about entering a writing contest. Now, I will know what to look out for. A little healthy skepticism is not a bad thing. Much appreciated.
Ken
Ken–The best kind of contest for you to enter when you’re publishing a memoir is creative nonfiction essays that can be based on chapters taken from your book. This is fantastic way to promote a memoir, especially if you can get into an anthology. I’d also suggest submitting creative nonfiction to anthologies like the Chicken Soup series.
Anne,
Thank you for pointing me in the right direction!!!
Ken
Really useful input. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you so much for the blog post! I am new to trying to publish, and I was suggested to use Submittable. Do you have any best tips about the contests on there? I read the fine print, but I don’t usually know all of the names or reputations of the judges on there for example?
Sam–I wish I knew more about Submittable. A lot of literary magazines use them for their submissions (free to the user.) And that is a great service. But I don’t know anything about their contests. I would assume they’re legit, since they’re reputable as a submission tool. Try Googling their name with words like “scam” and “rip-off” to look for any red flags.
Thank you for writing this!! I’ve only ever entered one a writing contest twice. It was run by some people called Kids World Of Fun. They did offer a money reward but only if you paid the entrance fee. Free entries (like mine) got a certificate and publication on their site. They seemed legit enough considering, like your points said, that they said how they judge the stories and that the entrance fee was only around ten dollars, but I DO have to ask permission now if I ever want to publish my entries anywhere else (they let me post it on my personal blog and writing blog, thankfully, as long as I linked it back to their site). I don’t know if that’s iffy or not, but so far I haven’t had any other negative experiences with them (they were mostly positive actually, considering I made it to highly commended stories the first time and won the next, which was unbelievable to me considering they were my first writing contests), which I’m grateful about.
I haven’t actually entered any other contests yet but after reading this I’m thinking perhaps it’s about time! thank you so much for this valuable info. I’d hate to see anyone scammed when all they want to do it enter a contest.
P.S., I AM still happy that I entered the contest, though! It was a great learning experience for me.
Ms. Write–The best way to find legit contests is to subscribe to the Funds for Writers newsletter. It’s compiled by Hope Clark, who wrote this post.