Thursday, November 13, 2008

The 2nd Annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel

Today Amazon announced the Second Annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Competition.

Amazon posted an explanation of how the contest works:
Enter your unpublished, English-language, fiction manuscript [by sending it here] beginning February 2, 2009. Entries will be accepted until February 8, 2009 or until 10,000 entries have been received, whichever comes first. The contest consists of four judging phases by expert reviewers, publishing professionals, and Amazon.com customers. The winner will be announced on May 22, 2009.

Initial Round: Expert reviewers from Amazon select 2,000 submissions from the 10,000 initial entries based each novel's "pitch." The 2,000 entries are then rated and receive two excerpt reviews from Amazon Editors and Amazon Vine Reviewers.

The field narrows to 500 entries...

Quarterfinals: Excerpts of the 500 are displayed on Amazon.com along with the reviews from the previous judging round. Publisher's Weekly now reads, rates, and reviews the 500 remaining full manuscripts.

The field narrows to 100...

Semifinals: Penguin Group (USA) reads and ranks the 100 semifinalists, taking into consideration the reviews from the two previous judging rounds.

Penguin chooses three novels to move to the final round of judging...

Finals: The three remaining manuscripts receive reviews from industry experts, including authors Sue Grafton and Sue Monk Kidd. Amazon.com customers select the Grand Prize Winner for 2009.
So get going, writers. Here's the link to the press release. Here are the contest rules.

1 comment:

Shannon Morgan said...

Thank you!

At first I bridled at the final stage--letting the customers choose--but Amazon wants to know it'll sell, so no surprise there.