On Contests

[image error]

[image error] typically don’t talk about it here when I enter contests because a part of me worries that it might be bad luck, but considering that even when I don’t talk about it, I still don’t win anything, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt just this once.

A few months ago I scurried to enter Goddess of Carnage into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel award. I didn’t get in, and needless to say that did nothing good for my self esteem as a writer, but it got me thinking about contests and whether or not they’re ultimately worth the time and effort it takes to attempt to enter them.

Depending on which writing blog you subscribe too, or which book on writing and how to get published you’ve read (I’ve read quite a few and they all pretty much say the same thing) it’s always worth it to enter into a writing contest. Even if you don’t win, it’s a new challenge for yourself and it gives you an experience you might otherwise not have had. And I’m totally all for that, as long as it’s free.

Recently I considered entering Writer’s Digests Self Published Novel Award contest but the entry fee was something like $50-$100 per entry and that’s a lot of money for something that you have no idea whether or not you even have a chance of winning. Sure, maybe it’s good publicity (and you could argue that a few ways) but if you save up you could get your book reviewed by Kirkus or Publishers Weekly for a few hundred dollars, and of the two of them, I’d rather take a professional review over a contest any day. You may not necessarily get a great review, but hey, it’s attention you otherwise wouldn’t have had, and truthfully any press can be good press if you spin it right.

Ultimately (as with almost everything in life these days, at least for me) you have to do a cost-benefit analysis. Or, if it’s free, consider the cost the time and effort you have to put into it. It’s hard to see the benefit if you’re in the middle of writing a novel (that you’re already behind on), that said, since I’m not writing anything anyway, maybe taking a little side trip and entering a contest and writing something completely unrelated to my novel could be beneficial. It’s worth a shot and at any rate, being free I don’t have a whole lot to lose. Except my time and my sanity, two things which seem to be in short supply as of late. But that’s a blogpost for another day.