ABNA 2012
General fiction submissions are now closed and fear and trepidation descends on 10 000 hopefuls. Don’t know what ABNA is? Here goes.
The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award brings together talented writers, reviewers, and publishing experts to find and develop new voices in fiction. The 2012 international contest will award two grand prizes: one for General Fiction and one for Young Adult Fiction. Each winner will receive a publishing contract with Penguin, which includes a $15,000 advance.
Just another writer’s competition? Perhaps not. I scoured the internet for information from other writers to try and gauge the benefit of entering and it looks like it is possibly one of the best competitions around.
Stephen M. Swartz has this to say on ABNA on his blog. ‘Based on last year’s rough, cutthroat, backstabbing, heartshredding experience (somewhat for me and distinctly more for some of my colleagues), I know some of us do not relish the idea of diving back into those shark-infested waters, to use a dumb cliche. Some of us don’t mind, of course, because we are, by nature, masochists.’
http://stephenswartz.blogspot.com/2012/01/am-i-masochist-entering-abna-2012.html#comment-form
I concur. On every single one of Stephen’s points. But it certainly seems that those who make it through receive excellent feedback on their manuscripts. And that is something every writer relishes. Except if said feedback makes you want to drink a bottle of scotch on your own, or worse a shot of arsenic. Then, of course, it’s not very helpful at all.
‘In addition to getting general feedback as to where you fit, ABNA also provides feedback to the writers from the reviewers. In my case I got two very good reviews after making it into the top 20%.’
http://whenameoksings.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/hello-world/
But, as with everything, there are concerns as pointed out by Katherine Gilraine. ‘Penguin’s credibility had been sliding for a while. Some of the worst-edited manuscripts that I have seen recently were Penguin books, and to release a vanity-press subsidiary is a nice sneer of contempt at authors, both at the self-pubs who are trying to get to the market,and the published authors, who had seen a steady decline in how much Penguin manages for them. More and more do I see authors – trad-pubs! – running their own marketing. This is with a Big-Six publishing house. Um, what the hell? I thought that the reason that people would go trad-pub would be to avoid having to do their own deal.’
http://katherinegilraine.com/2012/01/01/abna-2012-and-flexing-my-style-muscle/
It’s a mixed bag really, but it does certainly seem like a worthwhile competition to enter. Good luck to everyone.
