Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award

Just in case any of you aspiring writers out there are interested, now is the time to enter your 50,000-150,000 word novel into Amazon’s contest. I put Vodnik in the running for this last year, and I got a Publisher’s Weekly review out of it, which was kind of fun. You keep the rights to your work, and if you win, you get a 25,000 dollar contract with Penguin. Good luck with that. 🙂 I entered Ichabod this year, just because it’s batty enough to give it a shot. I’ll keep you up to date on how it goes this time around. It looks like they’ve increased the entry pool, so it might be more challenging this go round. If anyone else enters, I’d love to hear about it and root for you, too. You’ve got until the 8th, or until they get 10,000 entries–whichever comes first. The first round cuts it down to 2,000 based solely on your “pitch.” From there, they trim based on your excerpt, then based on your manuscript. If you’ve got a novel kicking around somewhere, why not give it a shot? Doesn’t seem like you’ve got much to lose . . .

2 thoughts on “Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award”

  1. ABNA
    Hi Bryce,
    I am a first time entry and looking forward to going through the process.
    Any lessons you have learnt from the first time round? Kindly send me a message when you get to the 500 entries mark. If you post your excerpt here do let me know as well.
    Cheers,
    Henry

  2. Re: ABNA
    Good luck, Henry. My advice would be to not get too wrapped up in the contest. If you don’t make it, don’t sweat it–I won’t, if I don’t. If you do make it to the PW round, be prepared for some criticism. My review was fairly positive, but the majority of them weren’t. The odds of winning this contest are long–have a Plan B in place for if you don’t. Who will you send the manuscript to next? Have your cover letter and query ready to go.

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