Don’t Pay, Don’t Play?

Every so often, it pops up: The case against reading fees. I mentioned it myself not long ago. But still, reading fees keep raising their ugly head, and recently I saw them arise in another context: Writing contests.

I got an email advertising a contest, from a publishing industry publication, focusing on unpublished or self-published novels. It offers a cash prize to one winner, but each and every entrant receives a personalized mini-critique, which I can tell you from past experience is the hook upon which a lot of fish will be caught. Unpublished and self-published authors pine for feedback of any kind, and this kind, with blurbs from award-winning authors and editors offered to semi-finalists and above, is certain to lure the desperate and unsophisticated by the hundreds. I myself was attracted enough to read further.

That’s when I got to the catch: a $99 entry fee per manuscript. I closed the window on my computer and deleted the email.

Now, I’m not saying that this contest is phony, or rigged, or that it doesn’t provide exactly what it says. I’m sure it does. But is what it offers worth $99?

Hell, no.

One entrant will win a nice cash prize. Others will be mentioned in a blurb in the magazine, and all will receive a critique, which judging from the samples helpfully offered, runs about a hundred words. That’s a dollar a word. I have belonged to a lot of critique groups where members can review each other’s works and give 500- to 1000-word critiques for free. Actually, it’s better than that, because they expect you to reciprocate, and there is no better way to see the faults in your own writing than to critique someone else’s.

And what’s more, there are a lot of contests out there that don’t require any entry fee at all: Writers of the Future, Minotaur Books First Crime Novel, Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award… Nor does that include publishers who have occasionally held open calls for unagented manuscripts, like Angry Robot and Harper Voyager.

If you want to spend money on your book, self-publish. It’s okay to spend money on editing, and a cover, and some advertising, and your chances of success are probably as good as any contest you enter. At least you’ll know where your money’s going.

If you want to be a writer, you have to pay your dues. But you don’t have to pay reading fees.

#SFWApro

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