Last year Amazon and the Penguin Group (USA) unveiled an interesting new contest, the Breakthrough Novel Award. They accepted 10,000 manuscripts, largely from unpublished authors, and over a period of several months whittled down this list to a group of 2,000. Amazon Vine users were encouraged to vote on excerpts from this batch, narrowing it down to a group of 500 novels.
The 500 were evaluated by Publishers Weekly editors, and Penguin’s editors used those evaluations to pick a group of 100 semi-finalists, which were voted on by the hoi polloi to choose three finalists. A panel of guest editors picked the winner, the mystery novel Fresh Kills, by Bill Loehfelm. Last year TWS alumna Gurjinder Basran made it to the semi-finals.
Amazon just announced that they’re doing it again. The prize is a publishing contract with Penguin and a $25,000 advance. The submission deadline in February 2009. Here’s what you need to enter:
Entrants must provide a full Manuscript (Between 50,000 and 150,000 words), an Excerpt from the beginning of your novel (Between 3,000 and 5,000 words), a novel Pitch of up to 300 words and accompanying contest and biographic information such as title, genre, book description, and contact information. (as well as an optional author photo).
So polish that novel that’s been wedged between Fallout 3 and that folder of Facebook messages to your ex- that you write but never send because she won’t accept your friend requests.
And then check out how to enter for more information. Be warned that submissions are rolling and they only accept the first 10,000, so the earlier the better.