29 Comments
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Brooke Turner's avatar

Hmmm… would you take a 36,104 word book?

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Daniel Puzzo's avatar

Throw in a few adverbs, that'll get you to 40,000 😂

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Brooke Turner's avatar

No!! Lol

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David Rothberg's avatar

Good for you Naomi! Big admiration.

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Julianne Werlin's avatar

This is great! I'm looking forward to reading the winner. Love the prize title as well!

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

Yes I was pleased with it =]

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Nick Mamatas's avatar

Fun idea! I highly recommend dqing the other commercial genres (thriller, mystery, romance) as well.

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

I thought about that. It just seems hard to do, in practice, without getting bogged down in a lot of tedious arguments about genre definitions.

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Annie Blackwell's avatar

One of the reasons I've gone with Substack serialisation is the issue with defining genre, and marketing to said genre's target readers (and publishers/agents). Apart from historical, what is my novel? There should be a genre called 'Like it or Don't'!!! So, Naomi, I'm really happy you've made it simple. Thank you.

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Courtney Sender's avatar

Great idea. Great list of judges.

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

Thanks!

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Cindy Duell's avatar

Is there a link to this that's easily shareable to our mailing list (statewide homeschool organization)?

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Randy K's avatar

So, if I’ve published POD with Ingram, who takes a percentage of selling price, that’s not self-published? Please advise.

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Carley Moore's avatar

Also, thanks for doing this! It's really cool!

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Carley Moore's avatar

I'm currently publishing a novel on Substack. I'd like to submit, but it won't be available for sale unless I paywall it, which I could and might eventually. It's in three parts and all parts will be out in the next month.

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

Once it's completely serialized, if you can format it as one document (either epub or PDF), you should feel free to submit

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Carley Moore's avatar

Perfect! Thank you!

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Claudia Befu's avatar

Amazing opportunity, thank you 🤩!

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

Thanks =]

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The Ivy Exile's avatar

What a great idea!

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

Thanks!

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Sandra Hardie's avatar

Whoa, talk about making your own mountain! I think it's a great idea but, my God, what a lot of work. All I can see is a mound of spreadsheets in varying states of disrepair as you try to keep track of all the books, reviewers, piles of manuscripts, and writers. Even the effort of verifying authenticity seems overwhelming. I wish you all the success in the world in this endeavor. Go get 'em, Tiger!!

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

It's intimidating, but let's see what happens.

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Sandra Hardie's avatar

I hope you will tell us as the project proceeds. Could be a story all on its own.

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Deirdre Lewis's avatar

Great idea!

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nostalgebraist's avatar

Exciting!

Question: if a novel is available for free on the web, and thus can't be "purchased" in the usual sense of the word, is it eligible or not?

I had assumed the answer was "yes, it's eligible" after reading the shorter description of the contest in an earlier post of yours. But the phrasing here seems more narrowly scoped to published and purchasable works, so now I'm unsure.

(The phrasing in question is "published and available for purchase by the public" here, vs. "available for purchase (or serialized online)" in the earlier post.)

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

I debated this question. I'm not averse to reviewing something that was fully serialized online. For me it comes down to convenience. If you have a version of the complete text formatted as a PDF or epub, you're welcome to submit.

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LennArrrt's avatar

Hmmm... Only on English I presume 🤔

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

Yes, it's the only language we (the judges) all speak and read

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