Writing Contest Cautions
By Dana K. CassellÂ
At their best, writing contests provide motivation to complete those stories or poems, encourage winners to keep writing, and even pay top winners a bit of cash.
At their worst, writing contests rob you of your rights – and sometimes of your money.
I’ve been administering a national writing contest for 24 years, and have been reviewing contests for posting approval on our Writers-Editors.com Contests page since 1998 — and I think I’ve seen everything. I refuse to post at least one contest almost every week. The good news is that most writing contests are on their “best” behavior. But here are some “worst” things to watch out for and be aware of:
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Entry fees. Actually, no entry fee is a warning sign. Contests cost time and money to administer, judge, and provide prizes. If there are no entry fees, who’s paying for it all? Too often the no-entry-fee means the contest sponsor will be coming after entrants for something later.
Sometimes the “later” is in the form of a book of winning entries. And everyone who buys a book is a winner. The book may be fairly expensive, and surely the winner wants multiple copies for friends and family. Too often, these are not really contests, with one’s work judged on its merits by professionals in the industry; but rather publishing entrepreneurs playing on writers’ (especially poets’) vanities. You buy books, you win.
Other times, the contest producers take it a step further and put on conferences with poetry readings. Entrants receive engraved invitations — because you are a winner, you get to attend and read your poem. Everyone is a winner. The producers make their money on the conference packages and books sold to attendees and entrants.
This is not to say that all no-fee contests are bad. But when you run across one, keep digging deeper into the fine print until you can find out who’s funding the costs. In a very few instances you will find a legitimate corporate or educational sponsor, but these are rare today. Even university-supported contests usually have minimum entry fees to 1) keep the not-serious writers out, and 2) help defray the costs.
Typical legitimate contests have entry fees of $2 to $5 for poems (sometimes three poems for $10), and $5 to $25 for articles, short stories and novel chapters. A complete book contest entry fee may run as much as $50. Such fees will cover much of the prize money, some administrative time, and decent honorariums for multi-level judging. No one — not the sponsoring organization nor the judges — will get rich off it, but it will cover enough of the time and dollar costs to make the contest viable.
Ridiculously high prizes. Typically, contests within these entry fee ranges and with several hundred entries will have multiple cash prizes of $25 to $100 or $300. Contests with no or low entry fees offering $25,000 awards do not make financial sense. Keep digging. And hide your pocketbook, checkbook, and credit cards.Â
Rights grabs. A number of websites have contests with entry fees, where each and every entry is posted to the site — either for reading or judging. When you enter these contests, be aware that 1) you are paying to provide these sites with their content (nice business model for them); and 2) you can no longer sell first rights to the material because it’s already been “published” as soon as it’s posted.
Other contests state in their rules that they retain the right to publish all entries (!) — with nothing said about any remuneration to the authors. It’s one thing to ask for one-time print anthology rights of a dozen winning entries — quite another to assume any rights to all entries.
And some of those “free” contests sponsored by corporations retain all rights to all entries, especially the advertising jingle and greeting card verse contests. Of course, they can’t do that unless entrants sign a statement transferring all rights, so be especially aware of lengthy entry forms with lots of fine print that require your signature.
Bottom line. Being among the winners in a writing contest can motivate you to keep writing, help place your book with an agent or publisher, or simply make you feel good. Just make sure you aren’t giving your work away — or worse, paying them to take it!
Dana K. Cassell is a full-time author and runs the Writers-Editors Network. Learn more about Dana »
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Dana,
Nice post with lots of good information for contest entrants.
In the Rights Grab paragraph you said: “2) you can no longer sell first rights to the material because it’s already been “published†as soon as it’s posted.”
Our magazine’s staff has been questioning the problem concerning articles or stories being posted on the Internet and whether they still qualify as unpublished. Is there any industry standard on this dilemma? Some editors say publishing means published in print only, not virtual publishing such as Web pages, group or blog posts, or Internet databases. What is your take on this?
Leon Ogroske
WRITERS’ Journal
Hi, Leon,
The industry source is the U.S. Copyright Office. They have an excellent user-friendly site at http://www.copyright.gov . Basically, copyright (or the right to copy) occurs as soon as a work (words, photos, art, etc) is put in fixed form (on paper, on the Web, in e-mail, on a recording, on film, and so on). It does not have to be published (distributed to the multitudes). That said, publishing on the Web is no different from publishing on paper – but they may be different rights offered by the creator to the publishers.
When a contest posts the winning entries or all entries, that does not in itself change the copyright ownership. The only way the creator can do that is by signing his or her name to a document transferring full copyright.
The concern about contest “entries” being published on the Web (which could also apply to print, but that at least usually has a more limited audience) is that it might later on limit the sales potential for that work. Some major magazines want to be the first to publish a piece – that’s why they pay higher fees. If they only want to have first print rights, then the Web posting will not matter. But if they want to be the first, period, then the prior posting may jeopardize that sale.
Hope this helps – I didn’t mean to go on so long – but it’s a good idea to peruse that Copyright site.
Dana
Writers-Editors Network
As usual, an “on target” article filled with useful information.
Hi Dana,
Thanks for the cautionary note.
If you could help me answer a few questions, I would be really grateful. Will entering my novel into a contest that wants to retain the first publication rights negatively effect the chances of this novel being published with another publisher? From what I have read so far, the safest contests are the ones wherein the author retains all rights. However, I do not know how effective such a stategy would be . That being said, other than the adds posted above on this site and the issue of renumeration, what other issues regarding rights should authors be wary of when entering these contests?
Hi, Camilla,
There is no cut-and-dried answer to your questions. It would depend on who (and what size audience) published it the first time as to who would still want to publish it later. Some book publishers want first rights, period. Others may look at a Website or print publication with a very small audience as no impediment. Also, having a manuscript – whether short or book-length – published on the Web means the cat is out of the bag — it will always be available, even if deleted from the server, at Internet archive sites such as the Way Back Machine.
You’re right – ideally, the contest will not publish any entries anywhere. Next best, the contest will publish the top entries in a well-respected literary print journal with a limited readership.
Beyond that, it “depends.”
Dana
Hi, Dana,
I am interested in hosting an on-line writing contest, with winning entries to be included in the family Christmas book I am writing. Could you refer me to resources which could teach me the in’s and out’s, or share any thoughts of your own?
Thanks!
Erica
Afraid I cannot offer any specific resources, Erica. We started our contest way before the Internet. Those who helped get it started had been long-time literary contest participants and judges, so used their experiences in the beginning; then our guidelines evolved over the years. If you and your partners don’t have this experience, then you will need to visit many, many other online contests to see how they are doing it. You might also check out our Contests listings page at http://www.writers-editors.com/Writers/Contests/contests.htm – where we have a “what we don’t post” – to get an idea of what you want to avoid. Hope this helps a bit — Dana