Paying for Contests: Breaking Along Genre Lines

Looks back over the week...tallies up the votes...and is not the least surprised to find the pay to play votes break right along genre lines. Anyone who's been a part of RWA has, to this point, been open to paying a contest entry fee. Conditioned? Yes. We are. For good reason.

RWA is unique among professional writing organizations in that membership is open regardless of publication status. The membership is tiered within the organization based on publication status, but the organization's goal is 'advancing the professional interests of career-focused romance writers'. That means that RWA welcomes writers of every level into the organization and then invests time and energy in teaching them anything and everything they want to learn about the craft and/or the business.

But, and this is a big 'but', there are no report cards, you know? If you're a writer still seeking publication, how do you garner constructive feedback from objective sources? Critique groups get to know you and your writing style fairly quickly - to the point that your crit partners can read between the lines of your writing and fail to call you on your BS. RWA's answer to objectively gauging your progress is contests. However, reading entries and commenting on their content takes time. Time is money. Therefore, in trade for someone else's time, contests within RWA charge a bit of money by way of entry fees.

So no, I have no issue with paying for contests. However. I will suggest that you should be very, very clear about what you're paying for when you fork over an entry fee. Before I was published, a contest had to promise me one of two things - feedback on the writing from someone who knew more than I, or a read by an editor/agent if I made the finals. The entire point of entering a contest was to find out where I needed to do more work on my craft and/or to get my work in front of an editor or agent and bypass the slush pile.

But just like kids grow up and graduate from high school, writers outgrow the need for contest as objective feedback loops. The RITA was the last contest I paid to play in and it was worth every penny just for the fun of it. But really, once a writer is published, feedback comes from agents, editors, critics, mothers . . . not kidding. Mom's single comment about my first book, "She swears a lot." Yes. Chick was a POW. She has reason to swear a lot. So no. I don't currently pay for contests.

To answer Jeffe's question from earlier in the week: Contests are a tool. Both for a writer's org and for the writer. Save the heaps of scorn for the writers and orgs that forget that fact.

Book Contests

The topic this week concerns whether or not those book contests that authors pay to participate in are moral/ethical.

Here's what I know:

I've never paid to be in a book contest.

It seems to be a standard thing in the Romance genre circles.

Here's what I think:

If you see value in it and have the money to do so, why not? I figure if you do well, that's exposure and bragging rights. (Because "Hey, I won this contest!" posts are far friendlier and exciting than "Buy my book!" posts.) Worst case scenario is you're out a bit of cash. If there is feedback from the judges, it might be worth it.

Writers' Contests: Should You Pay to Play?

Should you pay to enter a contest? Depends on what you want from the contest and whether that's worth the cost. Below are three types of contests in which I have participated--for better or worse.

Starting out as a writer, I had a hella hard time finding critique partners that read in my specific sub-genre. So I entered special-interest groups' contests that--for a modest entrance fee--would have three judges critique the first 50 pages. Winners of the contest would get their submissions in front of an agent or acquiring editor specific to the genre. The contests that provided critiques from published authors were more valuable to me than those who sent it to unpublished peers; though, both were helpful. While winning would have been nice, what I wanted from the contest was the feedback. And for $25-$50, 3 reviews completed in a finite period was totally worth it.

Eventually, due to litigious individuals, those contests stopped providing actual marked-up docs and/or development summary sheets. They had to revert to useless numbers on a sliding scale. Those contests became utterly worthless to me.

At the other end of the spectrum, is a writer's craft magazine with wide national and international distribution. Their contest offers a nice cash prize, a feature article in the mag--both digital and print versions, your book sent to big-name review houses, and inclusion into a sales catalog distributed to mainstream and indie booksellers. They also pay your way to their annual conference and give you access to a handful of their in-house experts on marketing, branding, sales, etc. Cost to enter is ~$100. Not a bad price for the grand prize package mentioned above. However, the pool of participants is vast and the contest is not genre-specific. Hell, it's not even restricted to fiction. Odds of winning that grand prize? On par with winning the Powerball. Once you submit, you never hear from them unless you win. No feedback. Nothing. What do I really want from that contest? The cash would be nice, not gonna lie. The amped up opportunities for discovery--those are really appealing, but if you read how they phrase the winnings, they're not guaranteeing you a review from the big houses. They're not giving you a full-page slot in the catalog either, you'll be lucky if you get a 1/16th slot. And as wonderful as their in-house experts probably are, what I want are new readers not advice on building a platform. So, while there are three levels of "winning" this contest, if what I'm really after are new readers, I'm better off spending my $100 on targeted facebook ads.

Now, the third point on my triangle of contests is run by a best-selling author in my genre. It's open only to self-published fantasy works that are either stand-alones or first-in-series. It's free to enter, all I have to send is a digital copy of my book. I'm not giving up rights, I'm not paying an entrance fee. I'm not going to find my work pirated by participating. The grand prize is 10 reviews by respected bloggers in the genre. It's a minimum of six months before knowing if I've passed the semi-finals. Probably a year before the winner is known. Might be sooner. Might not be. Everyone involved is a volunteer. Worst case for me? Dead silence.  Good case? I don't win, but I still garner a review from a person entrenched in the community--aka, my book gets exposed to my ideal audience. Not even facebook can target their ads that precisely.

So, are contests that demand an entry fee "unethical"? Are their awards somehow less valuable or respectable? It's not the fee that defines that. It's you--the author--who assigns value to 3rd party accolades. It's the organization behind the contests that paint or taint the issue of ethics.

Just make sure you retain the rights to your work. Don't pay someone to take your rights from you.

Are Pay-to-Play Published Book Contests Unethical?

To celebrate that THE TALON OF THE HAWK won Best Fantasy Romance of 2015 from RT Book Reviews, I got this amazing tattoo of Ursula's sword. I'm thrilled with how it turned out. (Freshly finished and a little red here - it looks even better now!)

If you haven't yet signed up for my newsletter, one went out today with an exclusive, never-seen-elsewhere, juicy deleted scene from TALON. If you sign up today, you can still see it. Yes, I'm totally luring you. Is it working?

You'll see this in the newsletter (hint, hint) - Kensington is sponsoring a Goodreads Giveaway of 25 copies of THE PAGES OF THE MIND. Hie thee hence to enter!

This week's topic in the Bordello poses the question of whether book contests you pay to enter are immoral or unethical. I confess that this was a topic I suggested, so it works out well for me to kick off the topic this week. I'm posing the question to the rest of the Word Whores and I'm really interested to hear their answers.

Allow me to explain a bit.

I entered the fiction-writing world via Romance Writers of America (RWA), and the highest award there is the RITA. It's essentially the Oscar of the romance-writing community. There's even a golden statuette! The RITA is open for anyone with a published novel or novella to enter. The author (or publisher) pays $50 and provides five paper copies of their book. Judges are sent packets of usually six to nine books to read and score, and the top scoring books are the finalists in their categories.

In contrast, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), which I joined later because their membership requirements are stiffer, have the Nebula Awards. To have a book nominated, it must be first put on a recommended reading list by SFWA members, then nominated by a certain number of those members, with the top contenders becoming the final nominees. (The nominees don't HAVE to be on the reading list first, but it helps.) The salient point here is that authors cannot enter their books - they can only provide copies for the reading list. The Hugo Awards for science fiction, fantasy and horror work much the same way, with "members" of the WorldCon convention that year nominating and voting.

What came as a surprise to me was that it came out in conversation with other members of SFWA that they look down on the RITAs for being "pay to play" awards. They see the Nebulas and Hugos as having greater integrity because the authors cannot enter the books - someone else must nominate them. However, to me this feels like a perpetuation of cliques and old-boy networks, with certain authors always nominated while others are overlooked for various reasons. Also, as we've seen with various scandals like Sad Puppies, these awards are subject to slate-stacking for various political purposes.

The RITA system, however, is far from perfect also, with bias against authors who cannot afford to enter and judges reading subgenres that are not ones they necessarily love. However, I do like that I can at least enter my books in the RITAs, even though they have yet to final. I suggested that SFWA entertain the notion of a new award where authors could pay to enter, which would be an excellent fundraiser - RWA made upwards of $100,000 on this year's contest - and was met with withering scorn. I'm not kidding. The phrase "withering scorn" was used in comment responding to my suggestion.

This is how strongly some members of SFWA feel.

So, I'm curious - what do you all think of this issue? I frankly don't get the withering scorn, but is that just me? Feel free to comment! And I'll be following with interest this week to see how my Bordello-mates weigh in.