Contest Ratings

[Robinne Weiss]

This came across my Twitter feed today, and I thought you all might be interested to have a look. I know most of us at least think about entering contests, and this might just help weed out the ones you shouldn't consider.
Award and Contest Ratings | Self-Publishing Advice Center

 

[Bernard Stacey]

Interesting - thanks. None of the competitions I've entered so far this year are listed (is that good or bad?!) but I suppose there are so many that they can't possibly cover them all.

I also followed some links to read about POD services and they seem to rate Ingrams very highly when it comes to this aspect of self-publishing and printing copies: above Lulu and CreateSpace. Anyone here have any views of those three? I've used the latter two and found them good and very similar in terms of just getting proof copies printed but Ingram hadn't crossed my radar.

 

[Bernard Stacey]

For instance, how does this one rate on the Worthy-to-Dodgy scale?

 

[Steven McC]

Interesting post Robinne

Bit of an eye-opener to see how many are listed as "Caution!" but perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. Paying $10 or so in the hope of winning a prize and literary glory is bound to tempt large numbers of entrants.

I make a rule of never paying an entry fee nowadays. If I was given feedback or had a way of affirming my entry had actually been read I might do so, but how many paid competition entries are just skipped over then thrown on the slush pile?

 

[Paul Whybrow]

A very useful list of competitions; I hadn't heard of most of the dodgy ones.

I quite liked the look of the Storgy Short Story Competition, with its affordable entry fee of a tenner and prizes of 1,000, 500 and 250 quid...enough for a new laptop!

One aspect of competitions to look out for is how they're read and judged. Is it a blind tasting, as it were, with no mention of the author's name in sight, solely assessed on the worth of the writing?

 

[Robinne Weiss]

I do wish they'd included information on why they decided each competition was dodgy or not--particularly with the ones that were somewhere in the grey zone.

 

[Peggy Lou]

Thanks Robinne