ABNA is back for 2009

If you read the beginning of the POD Diary, you know that my book STEALING WISHES was entered in a contest at Amazon.com last year, The Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Award.  I made it through the first round of cuts, but was out of the contest after the semi-finalists were narrowed down to 800 back in January of this year.  Excerpts of those 800 were posted on Amazon for people to read, review, and rate.  Then, a panel of judges narrowed it down to 10.  Then, the winner was announced a few months later ultimately having his book published through Penguin.

I received an email yesterday letting me know ABNA is back for 2009.  They’ve created the page at Amazon and people are already posting discussions in the forums.  Submissions won’t be accepted till February 2009, but this is an excellent chance for those of you out there sitting on a manuscript to finally get it edited and ready to enter for consideration (it cannot have already been published).

Those interested should sign up now at CreateSpace, Amazon’s online version of self-publishing.  While there are some nice prizes and publishing contracts for the top three winners (some of the top 10 from last years contest have also been published), Amazon also gives a free option to be published through CreateSpace to all other entrants.  I chose to ignore my invitation and published STEALING WISHES through Lulu because if you published through CS your book is only available on Amazon.com.

Yep, it’s two months away until time to upload your manuscript, and there will be leaves on the trees again before the winner is announced in May; so you are going to have to sit this one out for a long time.  Last time, the forums grew out of control with people who were mad about things and not getting answers, cat fights and name calling ensued; there were supposed to be 1,000 semi-finalists but there were only 800, Amazon also let some of the exerpts slip out early and people actually rated them, only to have them taken down again until the appropriate time.  So, the contest was very unorganized and chaotic during the waiting period. Let’s hope Amazon learned from their mistakes, and that this next go-around will be much smoother.

I, myself, do have a finished manuscript which could use another edit, so I’m debating on entering it.  I remember how addicted (and how mad) I became with the forums last time.  So, I may (or may not) opt out this time.  But for those who do, good luck!  If anything, it’s an excellent way to get your work noticed even if you don’t win.

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