Author Entrepreneur Magazine
You’re Published... Now What? Why You Should Enter Writing Contests Submission Tests Our Mettle
Fee-Based Contests Are Not Scams By Ezra Barany
October 2012, Issue 4
About Us
Credits
Author Entrepreneur Magazine is published monthly by Barany Consulting, an education and consulting firm located in Oakland, California. The magazine goes out to nearly 1,200 subscribers via email and is also distributed via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to reach over 10,000 people. For information on advertising please contact the editor at beth@ bethbarany.com, or call her at (510) 332-5384.
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief: Beth Barany Designer & Layout: Ezra Barany Editorial Assistants: Peter J. Ferguson, Michelle C. Geary Contributors: Barbara Millman Cole, Catharine Bramkamp, Cheryl Derricote, Ezra Barany, Annmarie Lockhart, Suzanne Waligore
Feel free to forward this to your staff, colleagues and clients. If this magazine was forwarded to you, you can receive free future issues by signing up here: www.AuthorEntrepreneurMagazine. com. If you’d like to use one of our articles in your newsletter or blog, please contact the respective author for permission. All materials and photos in this magazine are copyright protected. Publishers, Writing & Book Professional Associations: Interested in advertising with us? Contact Beth Barany at Beth@BethBarany.com or call her at (510) 332-5384 to find out how you can reach your audience and save money over print publication advertising. Š 2012, Barany Consulting, Oakland, CA. All rights reserved to the respective authors. If you wish to use any materials in this publication you must contact the author first for written permission. Thank you for protecting our copyrights.
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Letter from the Editor Thanks for reading our fourth issue of the Author Entrepreneur Magazine! I’m excited to have launched this next issue to help authors create sustainable and successful careers. Our theme this month is Competitions and Contests. As one of our new authors, Suzanne Waligore, says, “If you don’t enter you can’t win!” The possibility of winning motivated me to send my manuscripts and published books off to contests, including several run by chapters run by members of the Romance Writer’s of America. These contests are open to members and non-members alike, for published and unpublished authors, and focus on giving lots of feedback to the readers. Final category winners often get reviewed by editors and agents. These contests are a great way to potentially get in front of the agent or editor of your choice. Chapter contests are listed here: http://www.rwa.org/cs/chapter_conferences_and_events#contests. Yes, I am a member, and have placed in a contest for a paranormal romance that’s in revisions. The RWA chapter contests do focus on romance, so if you write in other genres, check out your genre’s writing association to see if they run contests. Many writing associations do hold annual contests and confer great prestige to new and experienced writers. Good luck! Please support our advertisers who make this publication possible and free to you! Click on their ads for more information, and forward the magazine to your clients and customers so they can read this magazine, too! Thanks! Ace Services 4 Authors Creativity Transformational Write Shops
The Torah Codes Overcome Writer’s Block The Writer’s Adventure Guide YourBookStartsHere.com WorldAuthorsConference.com/Beth-Deal 30 Minute Manager, LLC UnboundContent.com AuthorsBroadcast.com K. S. Collier, Author of The Veil
Some links in this magazine (“Magazine”) may be affiliate links (“Affiliate Links”), including links to Amazon.com. From time to time, the Magazine includes featured books and/or product giveaways. Should AE Magazine receive compensation as a result of featuring any such books or giving away any such product, that fact will be disclosed. AE Magazine earns a commission from the Affiliate Links which commission is based on the number of sales that are made as a result of readers of the Magazine clicking over to the Affiliate Link and purchasing from the Affiliate Link a product and/or service.
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Featured Story:
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Fee-Based Writing Contests are Not Scams
By Ezra Barany
6 10 18
Increase Your Book Sales with Anthology Submissions Ezra Barany
You’re Published... Now What? Suzanne Waligore
Every Hand’s a Winner Annemarie Lockhart
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22 26 32
Submission Tests Our Mettle Barbara Millman Cole
Why You Should Enter Writing Contests Catharine Bramkamp
Grant and Residency Opportunities for Writers Cheryl Derricote
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Increase Your Book Sales with Anthology Submissions By Ezra Barany Many authors think getting their work published in an anthology is great for visibility. They’re right. But not for the reason they think. Often the author thinks, “Hey! My story’s published in an anthology! Now the publishers of the anthology are going to make me famous!” The actual publishers of the anthology will probably not market the book as much as the author expects. Even if the publishers do market the anthology with tremendous gusto, that marketing isn’t what creates the majority of the book’s attention. It’s the authors that do the most for giving the book its visibility. Think of it this way. If you self-publish, you then tell all your friends and family about the book. But with an anthology, you now have all the contributing authors tell all their friends and all their families about the book. The amount of people who hear about the anthology and see your published name can be ten times as many!
“Being published in anthologies does look good on your resumé.” Knowing how much visibility you can get from anthologies, the next thing to note is that you should already have at least one book for sale that’s in the same genre as your anthology-bound short story. Once you’ve published your first book, getting
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a short story published in an anthology is a great way to get discovered by your fans-to-be and make more sales of your published book. If you don’t have a book up for sale, that’s okay. Being published in anthologies does look good on your resumé. How to know what’s a good anthology 1. One Genre – Make sure the anthology is composed of your genre or at least a single theme representing your story that only one market will enjoy. It makes no sense to publish your romance story in an anthology that contains horror, sci-fi, cookbook recipes, business articles, classified ads, and pictures of shoe laces. Who’d buy the damn thing?! 2. Picky Editor – It’s better to be in a compilation of works that are wellwritten than in an anthology of mostly poorly-written stories. If the call for stories says they’ll publish everyone’s works, don’t expect much visibility. Readers will likely give the anthology bad reviews and that will stop sales cold. 3. Retain Rights – You should only be giving the publisher permission to publish your work. There’s no reason why the publisher should get exclusive rights to your stories. That said, if you reprint your story in tons of other anthologies, it may mean that fewer people will buy the original anthology, so I understand why a publisher would want you to wait a year before regaining reprint rights. Continued on pg. 8
Nevertheless, I feel very uncomfortable at the idea of an artist losing rights to their work. Even if it’s only temporary. It just seems wrong. (And yet, I have still participated in KDP, losing the right to sell my work elsewhere for 90 days. Go figure.)
“More sales means more readers discovering your work.” 4. Don’t Pay – You should never have to pay to get your work in an anthology. If anything you should BE paid. It’s true that the publishers have to pay for formatting and cover design and print on demand fees, but if they pay all those fees, then they’re more invested in marketing the book to make back the expenses from sales. More sales means more readers discovering your work. 5. Don’t Expect to Be Paid – As I mentioned, the publisher does have to cover all the costs of publishing, so paying the authors means having to recoup the additional costs with book sales. The purpose for getting your book in an anthology shouldn’t be to get paid, it should be for getting your name out there, for people to see what your writing is like, and for readers to want to buy your other work. The most ideal anthology I teach courses on how to write suspense in any genre. My favorite part of the course is the final assignment: the authors need to write a short story using all they learned and, with their permission, I publish the stories in an anthology. I did this for 6 Short Stories of Suspense. Here are some guidelines I go by:
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6. Be with Great Writers – If you can, find out who the other authors are. They don’t have to be famous, but if they’ve published other material, check their reviews. You can tell how well the anthology will sell by how good the reviews of the other authors are. Anytime a reader gives an author rave reviews, chances are they’ll look for anything else the author has written. Such as a short story in an anthology. By being in the same anthology as that writer, your work may be discovered by that writer’s fans. 7. Be Edited – Imagine if the publisher offered suggestions on how to improve your writing before accepting it. There are a few reasons why that’s ideal. One, you get a free critique of your work. Two, the publisher is clearly motivated with making this anthology be a great read. A great read means more sales and more visibility. Three, the experience can help you improve your writing overall. Four, your story will be among great works of fiction. In my course I have all the authors critique each other’s final story so that everyone is happy with the quality of the story submitted for the anthology. As the publisher, I get the veto vote if I still am not satisfied with the quality of the story. 8. Agree to Help Market – If all the authors agree to help market the anthology, it’s the best way of maximizing the publicity for your writing. 9. The Publisher Includes Her/His Own Story – By including a story of his/ her own, the publisher likely wants to get as much visibility as possible for the anthology for his own writing career. That’s certainly the case with the 6 Short Stories of Suspense. My Continued on pg. 9
incentive was to increase my reach to readers by being a part of an anthology of great writers. 10. The Anthology is Affordable – I go back and forth between the value of whether an anthology, a book whose purpose is to get as much visibility as possible, should be free or 99 cents. The problem with being 99 cents is that readers have to pay for it and won’t be as quick to download it. The problem with being free is that while many people will download it, few will actually read it. At least those who spent 99 cents will be likely to read it because they invested in it. I decided to set the price of 6 Short Stories of Suspense at 99 cents to not only guarantee the buyers will read it, but also to provide at least some return for the costs of my time to do the cover design and book layout. The point of all this is that if the book is $30.00, who’s going to buy it? The anthology should be affordable. 11. Links! – Inside the anthology, there should be web links in the bios of the different authors. If the anthology is an ebook on Amazon, the links can connect to the author’s other book(s) on Amazon. If the ebook is on Barnes & Noble, the links can connect to the author’s other book(s) on Barnes & Noble. Ultimately, it’s great to make it easy for readers who discover they like your writing to go straight to your other books and buy them. So how do you find a good anthology to submit your story? One trick I’ve discovered is to go to Google and type the words “submissions anthology [your genre].” So if your genre is romance, type “submissions anthology romance.” If you want to find more anthologies, go to Twitter and type in the search
bar “submissions [your genre].” The results will include contests and regular publishing companies seeking full novels to publish, but among the search results are requests for submissions towards anthologies. Browse through the anthologies and if they have the components I’ve listed for being a good anthology to sign up with, send them your brilliant work.
Ezra Barany is an author and mentor to authors. He started his career of freaking out readers with his suspense and thriller stories in college. In March 2011, Ezra unleashed his first novel The Torah Codes, a thriller, now an award-winning bestseller in both the U.S. and the U.K. In his free time, he writes mushy love songs inspired by his wife and book coach Beth Barany. Ezra now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where he is working on his next book when not terrorized by his two cats. More at: amzn.to/TheTorahCodes.
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You’re Published... Now What?
Image from the Natl. Photo Co. Collection
Four Prize Winners By Suzanne Waligore Congratulations, dear author, you’ve scaled the mountain by writing and publishing your book. Now that you are on the other side, you are discovering if you want to sell your book, you must become an expert in marketing. This part of the journey is one I have been recently traveling and found that one of the many tools available to let readers know of your book’s value is to tell them when you have won a “Book Award.” Even mentioning that you are a Finalist or have an Honorable Mention creates credibility and adds to your positioning as an expert in your field. Placing a shiny Award sticker on the cover of your book tells the viewer that what lies beneath the cover is extra special and worthy of their notice. You can then tell the world (marketing) that your book has won an award on social media, on posters at book fair tables and on your web site’s media page. Perhaps you were handed your newly published book and told “Blessings, now go forth and market...on your own” and no one told you about book awards as a marketing tool. Perhaps “awards” don’t mean that much to you in your own currency. But, once you start looking for them, you’ll discover “awards” carry great weight in the book world. And, where would I find these awards listed, you might ask? There is no one place that lists every
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award. So the first step is the simple step, google “book awards” and you’ll find numerous websites to explore. Secondly, visit each section of a large bookstore where your book might be placed on the shelf. What are the awards mentioned on other books in those sections? Visit those websites.
“It pays to carefully read the submission rules before completion.” Then consider your own personal demographic. There are awards given for the first book written by a new author. Countries and states give resident and topic interest awards. Clubs and organizations give awards. There are awards given to members of specific races. There are even awards given for best book cover! You’ll find as you dig around, there are more awards to be found. There are large prestigious awards and small independent awards. There are awards that you can only be nominated for and not enter yourself. Take some time to do some detective work as one reference leads to another. Create a spreadsheet listing the award names, contact information, cost and entry date to keep track of so many details. Applications for each award have, of
Continued on pg. 12
course, different rules, times to submit, numbers of books to mail to the committees, cut off dates and yes, different amounts of money to be sent along in different ways. It pays to carefully read the submission rules before completion. What is your book’s date of publication? Currently, books published in 2012 are being submitted for consideration of awards issued in the Spring of 2013. Most contests have a final entry date of December 31, 2012, and yet, a few extend into January, 2013. Some programs require you to submit your application online only and mail the review books separately. Others want everything sent by mail only. Numbers of books sent to the committee members range from one to 24. Which genre you enter in each contest can vary as well. Multicultural or sociology? Self help or psychology? Lastly, there is the cost to be considered. Just how big is your marketing budget? Some contests are free to enter and others cost up to $95 per book per category. Some awards require that the publisher must submit the entry and others state that the author can self-submit. Several awards required a membership to their organizations and there a few that recognize the publisher and not the book. It’s up to you to decide to take this marketing journey. Is it worth it? There is a cost of time and treasure. It’s a gamble and your effort does get your book into many different hands to review. But as the saying goes...if you don’t enter you can’t win! Suzanne Waligore has taken her love of books and coupled it with her retail business expertise. Suzanne assists authors with bookkeeping, research and marketing their books. She likes filling out Award forms! She can be reached at regent.press@att.net. Image by the U.N. Intl. Telecomm. Union
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•A weekly lesson emailed directly to you •Instructions and Guidance in audio mp3 (3-8 minutes long) •A PDF downloadable workbook (10-15 pages) for each stage that you can print and write on •On-demand email support from Book Coach, Beth Barany •And lots of bonuses and special reports! Actual price: $197 Special Price for Magazine Readers: $99 only Call Beth Barany at 510-332-5384 to learn more and to sign up. Or: Email her at: beth@bethbarany.com
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Fee-Based Contests Are Not Writing Scams
By Ezra Barany Image by Kreg Steppe
Is having to pay a fee to be a part of a writing contest a scam? The answer is not what you think. The reality is that you need to consider the purpose of the contest and the purpose for entering the contest. People Wonder Are Fee-Based Writing Contests Scams? But that’s the wrong question. Both Beth and I have paid to have our work entered in contests. We paid $75 each to have our books judged in
The Hollywood Book Festival. Was it a “scam”? Depends on your definition of what a contest scam is. Was their interest more in making money than in helping authors? Probably. Bruce, the guy who runs The Hollywood Book Festival, is also the same guy who runs The San Francisco Book Festival, The Paris Book Festival, and others, all of the award ceremonies based in L.A. Both Beth and I won honorable mention in the Genre Based Fiction category. Continued on pg 15
Based off of the huge quantity of winners, at first we thought everyone who entered won. But later we learned that only a percentage of the entrants actually won. (A friend of ours entered and didn’t win). To check on the integrity of the win, I asked Bruce a lot of pointed questions. He was always upfront and didn’t sugar coat anything. Yes, books that right away didn’t look great were set aside and were never read, whereas the ones which showed promise were read further, maybe just enough to know the quality of the writing instead of reading every book. The contest was quite a money-maker for Bruce.
“What matters is your purpose for entering the contest.” So was it a scam? Again. That’s the wrong question. There are a lot of great blog posts on how to identify suspicious contests and where to find good ones. Instead I’m going to give you what I believe is more important information. Every contest has different goals in mind. So the real question is, “Which contest is right for you?” How to Decide Which Contest to Enter Some contests are for raising money for writers’ associations or clubs. Some contests that don’t have a fee are for generating content to sell online, making money from other people’s writing. Some are for promoting businesses such as book coaching or editing. And some are even for finding the next great authors by evaluating their literary merit.
You can decide which contest to enter based off of what the true purpose behind holding the contest is. But actually, the contest’s true purpose—be it to raise money, promote business, or help authors—doesn’t matter. What matters is your purpose for entering the contest. After Beth and I won honorable mention at The Hollywood Book Festival, we were invited to pay for logos, winning stickers, and all sorts of crap if we wanted to show off our win. Yes. This was clearly a money-making business. But it didn’t matter. Why? Because I was not looking to have a few judges read The Torah Codes and say they liked it more than all the others they read. I was not looking to be better than other authors. That was not my purpose. I was looking to be able to say to people I met “My book is an award-winning thriller.” That line has sold me so many copies of my book, it’s paid back the contest submission fee in spades.
“You can decide which contest to enter based off of what the true purpose behind holding the contest is.” Of course, there’s the risk you take of not knowing if your book’s any good, getting a faux award, and then promoting it as an award-winning book only to get one-star reviews from disgruntled buyers. Fortunately, that didn’t happen to me. I had enough people edit my book to know their priceless feedback made The Torah Codes great. Here’s another example of how a money-making contest helped us. Both
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Beth and I paid $50 each to enter the California Fiction Book Contest. My book didn’t win anything, Beth’s Young Adult Fantasy Henrietta the Dragon Slayer won grand prize! Since she won, we redesigned her book cover to have a gold leaf seal promoting her book as a grand prize winner and her sales have been better ever since. Was there something shady about the contest? Probably. Beth got a free coaching call, so the contest was more about promoting the blog and business than helping authors, it seemed. But it didn’t matter. Readers are finally noticing how great Beth’s writing is because the golden seal on the cover gets them to buy the book. I could instead find writing contests devoted only to evaluating my writing. But if I won grand prize solely based off of its literary merit in the Barstow Doctors Group Talent Contest, who’s going to care? The Right Contest Depends on What You Want If you want to be judged solely on your literary merit, find a contest that is known for reading every entry and has a system for judging the quality
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of the book (character rating, plot rating, description rating, ingenuity rating, etc.). These contests may be small, local ones. If you want credibility among other authors, find a contest that has a distinguished reputation in writing circles all across the nation. If you want to add perceived value, find a contest with a great name (like The Hollywood Book Festival), one that has a lot of opportunity to win. If you want to be published in an anthology of great work, find a contest/ anthology submissions request that is known to carefully choose the cream of the crop and whose anthologies are popular. This is also a great way for new readers to discover you. The right contest depends on what you want. So what do you want? Links mentioned in this article: Beth and Ezra Barany, Finalists in the 2011 Hollywood Book Festival (the first couple to final in the same category) http://www.hollywoodbookfestival.com/ winners2011.htm. Article on what contests to enter by Moira Allen: http://www.writing-world. com/rights/contests.shtml.
Every Hand’s a Winner
By Annemarie Lockhart Open your email on any given day and you can expect to find an invitation to submit to a writing competition. Contests are advertised widely in literary journals, women’s magazines, and lifestyle magazines. Open your Facebook page or log onto Twitter and you can expect to see ads and posts about submitting work to contests and competitions of all kinds. The prizes range from recognition to cash to publication and often comprise combinations of these elements. So what’s the deal? Are these offers legitimate? What are the odds of success? Should you encourage your clients to enter? Let’s decode.
“Subscribe to newsletters from publishers that offer contests that appear legitimate.” Contests with entry fees require investigation. These can be legitimate or they can be scams. Research the particular contest and see what other people are saying
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about it. There are specific websites that report on good and bad experiences with certain contests. Listen to your gut. If you get a scam vibe, don’t recommend the contest to your clients. There is a general debate in the publishing community about the validity of certain competitions and about the connections between judges and winners. Questions arise when judges have previous relationships with winners in the form of academic experiences. The thinking is that an established writer judging a competition might choose the work of a writer she taught in an MFA program five years prior. This would clearly be a conflict of interest, although it might not be so easy for the casual observer to identify the undisclosed relationship between the judge and the writer.
“Contests with entry fees require investigation.” Pay attention to the fine print. Look for information ascertaining that submissions are blinded. Blind submissions help to promote a tone of non-bias in the judging. It might not be the only thing that matters, but is one of the most prominent and it’s easy enough to find out about. Again, do the research and take your own temperature on the issue. If it feels to you like a specific competition is geared toward Iowa Writers Workshop alum and your writers are not part of that circle, it might not be a good idea to encourage submissions there. Subscribe to newsletters from publishers that offer contests that appear legitimate. Read the work that wins, stay Continued on pg. 20
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on top of updates. You can learn a lot from these subscriptions. If a contest organizer is a fly-by-night, there may well be hints along the way. If the newsletter is monthly for example and yet you only find it in your inbox sporadically, this might not be a reputable agency. If the same names keep appearing in the winner’s column (as either writers or affiliations), it’s a wise bet to stay away. If the quality of the winning selections is lacking, rife with grammatical errors, stylistically incomplete, riddled with obvious problems, steer clear. Consider contests and competitions the same way you would evaluate journals for submission. A reading fee might make sense in a certain context, but the venue needs to make a strong case for it in this day and age. Don’t be taken in. Research, ask around, make use of online research to see what others are saying. Take advantage of publishing industry contacts to gain a sense for a particular contest’s reputation.
“Pay attention to the fine print. Look for information ascertaining that submissions are blinded.” Choice competitions do exist. It’s up to you to weed through the muck to find and recommend them. If you’re coaching a client to enter a contest, be prepared to answer questions and to have done the research already. Do not advise a client to submit to a contest you don’t know anything about. At the end of the day, whether submitting work for publication at a journal or for consideration in a contest, the exercise of choosing material, writing to target, and polishing work has value in and of itself. Good coaching is good coaching and the
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focus of your work should always be on inspiration and attainment of goals. As a publisher I’m always happy to consider well-polished work that was originally written with a contest in mind whether the writer ultimately decided not to submit or whether another writer ultimately won.
Annmarie Lockhart is the founding editor of vox poetica, an online literary salon dedicated to bringing poetry into the everyday, and unbound CONTENT, an independent press for a boundless age. A lifelong resident of Northern New Jersey, she lives, works, and writes two miles east of the hospital where she was born. More about Annmarie’s work here: http://unboundcontent.com/.
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October 2012 AuthorEntrepreneurMagazine.com | 21
Scaffold Your Literary Life Would We Could We All Be: Submission Tests Our Mettle Few of us are like Forrester. Yet, we may be more like him than we think. We dream of being one draft wonders, though in truth, our drafts may number into the teens before we even consider submitting to outside influences. In Finding Forrester, a bright teenager chances upon the reclusive, genius Forrester and, against all odds, connects with him as a fellow writer and mentor. On the surface, they could not be more dissimilar. But, as with any story, there are layered meanings, in this case, of the title’s key word, ‘Finding’. Jamal finds Forrester early in the story, and finds his own writer-self little by little as the story progresses, but it is Forrester’s own selfdiscovery that is the prize at the end.
By Barbara Millman Cole Jamal: Did you ever enter a writin’ contest? Forrester: Yeah, once. Jamal: Did you win? Forrester: Well of course I won! Jamal: You win like money or somethin’? Forrester: No. Jamal: Well, whadchu win? Forrester: The Pulitzer. ~ Finding Forrester
“To win such a contest, having been viewed by one’s inspiration, would be supreme indeed.” Dreams are made of such stuff as these – finding ourselves by finding fellow travelers and mentors to guide us on our path. We writers search for pillars of our craft, those deemed better than us, to measure our own writer worth. And what better place to connect with those giants than through submission of our works to
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contests judged by them, preferably contests that offer feedback from these icons, whether one wins or not. Guaranteed correspondence with an established author one admires is reward enough, but to win such a contest, having been viewed by one’s inspiration, would be supreme indeed. The concept of submission is multilayered. What do we gain by pitting ourselves against other writers in contests and competitions – momentum, growth, and self-knowledge? When we submit to contests, we submit to someone else’s judgment of our work, and when we submit to outside opinion, we submit to our own fears. Submitting is letting go of the story, letting it be finished, letting it out into the world. In return, we receive impartial commentary and external validation as a writer, satisfying our need for feedback and acceptance. The definition of submit is to surrender, offer, present, propose, put forward. When we submit we are most vulnerable. We risk. And often, our meaning may be lost to the meaning the reader finds within our texts. Eddie Van Halen once said, “I can’t read music. Instead, I’d do stuff inside the piano; do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize - out of like 5,000 kids! The judges were like, ‘Very interesting interpretation!’ I thought I was playing it right.” Had he not risked entering the contest, would he have grown into the artist he has become? Perhaps, but, that feedback encouraged him to continue developing his own style. The illusive brass ring may not be so illusive. Submission causes us to experience a pendulum-like vacillation between the giddy thrill and crippling apprehension of putting our work out in the world. We endure the waiting, the agony, imagining
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the best and the worst outcomes. Will it be the thrill of victory, or the agony of defeat? No matter, for the challenge itself forces growth, the deadline motivates productivity, and the editor’s comments shed new light on the piece yet in progress. It is a win-win whether we place or not. We improve and we feel validated by professional commentary. Certainly the maxim “nothing ventured, nothing gained” holds true. When we strive, we grow, learn, evolve, and discover. Brian Thomas Littrell and Les Brown wrote, in their famous quote, “Shoot for the moon and if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” We can’t all win the Pulitzer, but if we aim for that singular, bright orb and miss, at the very least we will land among the dreamers, the contenders who dare to submit, let go, and find their true writer selves.
Barbara Millman Cole is an award winning author of Short Literary Fiction, content editor, and creativity coach, who helps writers delve deep to discover their true meaning. Understand why you create so you know what to create. Contributing author of Creativity Coaching Success Stories and author of the forthcoming book, The Painted Woman and Other Short Stories, she can be reached at bmillmancole@sbcglobal.net. Find Barbara online at http://www.meetup.com/TheWriters-Place/. ©2012 All rights reserved.
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October 2012 AuthorEntrepreneurMagazine.com | 25
Why You Should Enter Writing Contests
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By Catharine Bramkamp If you are a newbie writer, or a mid-list writer, or an accomplished writer, winning writing contests can be a huge boost to your resume, bio and sometimes, self esteem. For example, a local writer I’ll call Susie Successful was introduced to my service club with a long list of accomplishments: • First prize in the Mary Beth Sommers Memorial poetry prize (limited to white indigenous South Dakota residents); • First Runner up for the Farmington Prize (best lyric poem featuring a pitch fork); • Second prize (and collectible medal) for the Sasson Seasonal Short Fiction Award (best story with hair spray as the main character); • Best in Class (Mrs. Agar’s Sixth Grade Class PS 56) No one in the audience knew what the listed contests entailed or even if they were good contests. They nodded their heads and thought, wow, she is a winning author, she must have something important to say. I thought, wow, she has a lot of time to enter writing contests.
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Most people don’t know the difference between a Farmington and Newberry. So unless your bio begins with “Pulitzer Prize winner of 20...” no one really understands what the heck you’ve won. This is good. It’s the winning and the accolades that are important. All those prizes and publications are impressive when listed on your blog and web site -- and they should most definitely embellish any cover letter you fire off to a prospective agent or publisher. Contest wins connote value and effort. The bad news? You cannot gather up these accolades unless you enter.
“Contest wins connote value and effort.” So how can you stack the contest deck a little? Just as you study a periodical, newspaper or blog before you submit a proposal or article, carefully study the requirements for the contest. Open the link to past winners (wow, yet another perk of winning the contests, four more readers). Can you discern a trend in style or theme? Can you modify something you are writing or have written to accommodate the prevailing theme of the contest? I met a poet who published many poems in one particular periodical. Her secret to success was she realized that the editor favored poems that either featured or mentioned elephants. So she inserted elephants into every poem she submitted and voilà, publication. I did not make that up.
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Since flash fiction, stories, novels and poems are often labors of love, not just vehicles for recognition, another way to enter contests is to choose the best finished work you have, then hunt down a contest that will reflect your own best effort. Since I was not of the mind to just insert random elephants into my work (although, now that I think of it, I do have that one poem titled Elephant Hills. . . .) I copied my poem titled “Mother’s Day” and searched for the appropriate contest. Here’s what I found: • Murad, the prize being more skin care; • Passionate Worship Center; • Heritage blog with the prize listed as a “nice bouquet of flowers.”; • Safe Horizons, that moves victims of violence from crises to confidence. All good, except the first line of “Mother’s Day” is “Lord why didn’t you give me a gay child?” That additional minute of research resulted in the contest options selfselecting down to zero. There is one more way to manage contests. Search for and gather up contest options as they float across the computer screen. Consider the cost. You’ll need to keep to some kind of budget and a contest requiring a $100 entry fee may not be worth the risk, but a series of $5.00 entries may well work out. Scrutinize the contest rules before just marking it down as “possible”. Is this contest focused on highlighting the black experience in urban Chicago circa 1950 and you are a white woman born in Wisconsin in 1970? Next! Stack these possibilities into neat spreadsheet piles and highlight the due date. Once you have finished a fabulous poem, heart wrenching short story or insightful essay, check the spreadsheet
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for possibilities. Check the due date, and finally, make sure the whole thing is still viable by visiting the web site one more time. Is the entry fee reasonable? Can it all be done online with Pay Pal? Good, hit send. And keep track of what you sent to whom on that same spreadsheet.
“Is the entry fee reasonable?” Often the honorable mention certificate is suitable for framing. But the real goal is to collect your own inscrutable list of prizes and wins that will trip up the program chair of Rotary West during your introduction. Of course you can always invent contest wins, like I did for this article. But that would be cheating. The poem “Mother’s Day” has not found a good contest. You can read the complete poem on musings, www. YourBookStartsHere.com.
Catharine Bramkamp is co-host of the popular podcast Newbie Writers. She is a writing coach, author, and university instructor. Her most recent books are Ammonia Sunrise, In Good Faith, and A 380 Degree View. She divides her time between the California Gold Country and Wine Country. More about Catharine at www.YourBookStartsHere.com.
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Grant and Residency Opportunities For Writers The Foundation Center headquarters is in NYC, but there are field offices you can visit in Atlanta, Cleveland, San Francisco and Washington, DC. In addition to these stand-alone foundation center libraries, there are a number of cooperating collections housed in other libraries around the country. You can search for your city/town or download the full list of the cooperating collections on their site, as well.
Image by Carl Clifford, of Cliffords Photography
By Cheryl Derricotte Many writers struggle with finding the time to write. For those of us who work part-time or full-time “day jobs,” the time to write is an early morning or late night affair. But, what if you could get free money to support your writing projects? How about some free time to write? This article is for you! Let’s look at grant and residency opportunities for writers. Grants: Foundation Center The majority of grants go to nonprofit organizations, due to their tax-exempt status. Yet there are pots of money set aside for artists and writers. A great place to start is the Foundation Center. The Foundation Center is a specialized library devoted to fundraising. Free to the public, you can search their extensive online databases for grant opportunities.
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“Like money, time is also often in short supply for many writers.” The Foundation Center also has a number of helpful tools to make your search for funds and grant applications easier. On the main website, the Foundation Center offers a resource area for individual grantseekers. The resource area offers online courses such as “Grantseeking Basics for Individuals” and “Guide to Funding Research.” Last but not least, for only $19.95, you may get a one-month subscription to “Foundation Grants to Individuals Online” and search for grant opportunities from the comfort of your own home computer. Grants: Governments There are also sources of local government support for writers. Most local arts commissions administer grants to artists and writers. For example, this year the City of Oakland, CA Cultural Funding Program was open to visual arts, performing arts
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AVAILABLE SERVICES BOOKS Being The Grown-Up, a practical guide for caregivers of loved ones with terminal illnesses (Winter 2012). CONVERSATIONS Confirm Cheryl Patrice Derricotte, Chief Information Officer of 30 Minute Manager, for your upcoming special event, conference, radio and televsion show. TIPS Join the 30 Minute Manager community and get your free report, 30 Minutes To A
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and the literary arts. Artists and writers could apply for up to $4,999 in cash grants to implement work projects. A short application form, accompanied by a budget was required to apply. Use this link to see the application guidelines, as they are representative of many local government individual artist programs: http:// oaklandarts.org/IAP/.
“The largest and most well-known government grant programs are federal.” The largest and most well-known government grant programs are federal. The National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts are two of the most prestigious awards and as such are highly competitive. Yet every year, these agencies fund outstanding arts and humanities projects by compelling artists and writers. The Fulbright International Exchange Program provides opportunities to go abroad for periods of 6 weeks to 9 months to share ideas, teach, write and create. Fulbrights are also highly competitive, but the agency offers over 8,000 grants per year! Residencies Like money, time is also often in short supply for many writers. A residency is a great way to work in earnest on a writing project. A do-it-yourself residency could entail checking into a hotel or bed and breakfast for the weekend and devoting yourself to your writing. You may also choose to apply for residency at one of the many artistic centers devoted to writers. Ranging on average from 2 weeks to 6 weeks, these professional residencies are a great way to advance your writing. The Alliance of Artists Communities
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is a great resource to identify residency opportunities. A recent search on their site on “writing” revealed opportunities in diverse locations such as Lake Forest, IL (Ragdale Foundation), Interior, SD (Badlands National Park) and Bogliasco, Italy (Bogliasco Foundation).
“Costs vary for residency programs. Many offer scholarships that writers can apply for to defray the costs and some offer workstudy programs.” An added benefit of these settings is that everyone who attends is an artist or writer, charging the atmosphere with creativity at all times. Costs vary for residency programs. Many offer scholarships that writers can apply for to defray the costs and some offer workstudy programs. I have had very good experiences with grant and residency opportunities. Several years ago, I attended the Penland School of Crafts for my visual art work (glass sculpture) as a workstudy student to reduce my costs. I was going to make coffee at home in the morning anyway, so why not make it for 70 artists? Before I moved to California last year, I was also a past recipient of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellowship, a $5,000 cash grant to pursue creative projects. That was actually my second award from the DC Commission, my first award was a $500 Small Project Grant to support my attendance at a conference. So start now. I encourage you to seek out opportunities to garner money and time to implement your projects, as well as interface with other artists and writers in residency. Good Luck!
Resources Mentioned in this article for Grant and Residency Opportunities For Writers Foundation Center www.foundationcenter.org; their cooperating collections: http://foundationcenter. org/collections; resource area: www. foundationcenter.org/getstarted/ individuals/ National Endowment for the Humanities http://www.neh.gov/
Cheryl Patrice Derricotte is the Chief Information Officer for 30 Minute Manager, LLC, an indie publishing company she founded in 2011. Her new book: Being the Grown-Up, a guide to managing a loved one’s terminal illness and death will be published this winter. Stay in touch with Cheryl at www.30minutemanager. com.
National Endowment for the Arts http://www.arts.gov/ Fulbright International Exchange Program http://fulbright.state.gov/ Alliance of Artists Communities http://www.artistcommunities.org/
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Event Listings October 1-November 1, 2012 Please join the Silicon Valley Romance Writers of America (RWA) chapter for our 15th Annual GOTCHA Contest! Get useful feedback on your first 15 pages! http://www.svrwa.com
October 27-28, Texas Book Fair, State Capitol Building, Austin, TX, established in 1995 by First Lady Laura Bush, a former librarian. More than 45,000 attend. http:// www.texasbookfestival.org/.
October 13, 1-5:30 pm, Self-Publishing Boot Camp, Stanford University Campus. A halfday intensive that will set you on the right path to publishing your books with minimal hassle, using the most cost-effective processes, with the most reputable vendors. More at http://selfpubbootcamp.com.
November 9-10, Kentucky Book Fair, Saturday, Frankfurt, KY. Attended by up to 5,000 people including 150 authors. http:// kybookfair.org/.
October 14-16, Southern Festival of Books: A Celebration of the Written Word. Tennessee Legislative Plaza, Nashville, TN, attracts more than 200 authors from throughout the U.S. http://www.humanitiestennessee.org/ festival/current.php. October 19-21, World Authors Conference online. Want to be a better and more profitable author? Join Beth and over 17 other world-class experts for the World Authors Conference. Beth’s got a super special offer for you. Get the details at http://www.WorldAuthorsConference.com/ beth-deal.
November 11-18, 2012, Miami Book Fair International. Hosts over 350 authors to discuss their work and 250 publishers. http://www.miamibookfair.com/. December 8, 2012. 9:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. Self-Publishing Conference. Fremont Area Writers. Hyatt Place, 3101 West Warren Ave. Fremont, CA 94538 $55 for CWC Members$65 for Non-Members. Includes lunch. http://www.cwc-fremontareawriters.org/ January 18-21, 2013, Aloha Writers Conference, Kapalua, Hawaii. http://www. alohawritersconference.com/ February 14-17, 2013, The 10th San Francisco Writers Conference: A Celebration of Craft, Commerce & Community. http:// www.sfwriters.org Events are listed for free, space permitting.
“Brilliant!” “Creative” “Easy to follow!” Do you have writer’s block? You won’t with this bestselling ebook! Available now on Amazon.
October 2012 AuthorEntrepreneurMagazine.com | 35
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