Tuesday, January 16, 2007

American idols of books

A Reuters report.

Round one: First, you have to write a full-length novel by March 15th 2007? No problems there? I cannot find the part where it says how long it should be. I presume it should between 60,000-100,000 words. The novel must not be previously published meaning not self published nor vanity published - guess that includes POD. Next you send the full manuscript, synopsis and the first three chapters to First Chapters (be patient, I will give you the website address, in due course). Chapter 1will then be put on firstchapters.gather.com for a period of 14 days for members to read and rate each entry and vote on.

Cheng cheng chengggg …..

Round 2: 20 will advance to the next round. Chapter two will be posted. (Rising tension, The Exorcist music - by Walteer Carlos plays in the background.)

Round 3: 10 semi finalists remain. Chapter 3 goes up. (These song from Jaws.)

Round 4: 5 finalists remain. The Grand Prize judging panel will select the Grand Prize Winner to receive a $5,000 cash prize from Gather.com, and publication of the book by The Touchstone imprint of Simon & Schuster.

It doesn't say if readers will be allowed to post nasty comments on the websites of the pieces they read. How are they going to maintain interest otherwise? One must have insults.

And the website is (drum roll, please): http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976883192

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous6:54 PM

    :( Unfortunately we (non-US residents) aren't able to join... Shame...~


    Q) I am not a U.S. resident. Am I eligible for this competition?

    A) The laws governing content & copyrights vary from country to country. The
    First Chapters contest is governed by the contests and sweepstakes laws
    specific to the United States. Thus, we are not able to accept international
    entries.

    Fortunately~

    In the future, however, Gather does plan on having separate writing
    competitions for specific countries with large Gather.com memberships.

    ReplyDelete