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.

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.