And Yet Another Contest

The Sobol Award died a merciful death. The contest, a pay-to-enter competition, would have brought the organizer somewhere in the vicinity of four million dollars if he had gotten enough suckers (make that authors) to enter. Needless to say, the blogosphere went into full on alert mode, and only 1,000 people sent in $85 for the privilege of maybe getting a book published by a reputable house. The whole thing smelled so strongly of scam that it was no wonder it gave up the ghost.

Now Touchstone, a division of Simon & Schuster, is trying their own version of the "win a publishing contract" game. Information is available at Gather's website, where the general rules of the contest are explained.

If you have a novel you'd like to get published, you can submit the first chapter to Gather. Then, you get all your friends to vote on your chapter as the best ever. Naturally, you'd want to be on good terms with someone who could hack the site and pack your personal ballot box. There's a publishing contract involved, isn't there, and all's fair in war.

Having successfully accumulated the most votes, you then are asked to submit your second chapter. Repeat ballot stuffing operation, and you will be permitted to move on. Another chapter, another round of voting, and at the end of the process, your oeuvre will be voted the best novel ever and Touchstone will publish it.

Entry is free, and the judges for the contest are people who belong to the Gather website, which is free to join. Can't go wrong, as long as you are very computer savvy. Besides getting your novel published, you'll get $5000, which is not a bad advance for an unknown, first-time author. Borders has signed on to promote the novel, which isn't shabby either.

So far, there hasn't been anything negative said about the contest, other than the problem with voting on-line and the ease of skewing the results. That's why it's highly likely that a Chicago author will win. Now there's a town where the dead rise on election day and make their way to the polling places.

Vote early...and vote often.