We begin February with the Superbowl on Sunday. So what, right? 
Writers can kick off the month by entering Amazon.com’s ABNA (Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award) contest on Monday, the 2nd. For those who are regulars to the blog, you might remember my November post about ABNA.
This is the 2nd round. I entered the first contest in October 2007 becoming obsessed with checking the cat fight forums on a daily basis, and abandoning all interest in the contest after I didn’t make the second cut. For those who read the POD Diary, you know that my manuscript later became Stealing Wishes and was published in June 2008. I felt there were a lot of holes in the contest the first go-around, but it was probably due to Amazon not being prepared for the overwhelming response the contest received. Their new guidelines in place for this year’s contest will hopefully change that and keep the forums from being weighted down with unanswered questions from people who didn’t read the rules correctly the first time.
The winner of the first contest was Fresh Kills by Bill Loehfelm, already a bargain book on Amazon. With only 26 reviews averaging 3 and half stars, it seems Penguin might have been wrong about their winner. Hope they sold enough to break even with what they paid out in prize money. I also wish they could have afforded a much better book cover (POD quality anyone?). I was actually rooting for Dwight Okita, who did make the top three.
As a consolation prize, those who enter get a free chance to publish their book with CreateSpace, Amazon’s version of Lulu except your book is only available through Amazon.com. There are 10,000 slots to enter. Wow! That’s 9,9999 chances for Amazon to profit from this by adding one more book to their inventory (if everyone used CreateSpace after it was all said and done.)
Alas, I’m not entering the contest this year but good luck to all of those who do! It’s good exposure and a great chance to get your writing out there and receive a bit of feedback in return. Online magazines, websites, anthologies, other publishing contracts and more were all born out of the first contest so the possibilities for publication are endless.
Read all the details about this year’s contest here!
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I received an email today from Katie Musselman who works for MWW Group. They have something to do with the ABNA Contest but Katie didn’t clarify. However, she did ask that I clarify that not only is your book available on Amazon, but it’s also available on the CreateSpace website, and on any website the author links to.
There is one point that you made to which I’d like to add a bit of clarification. In the sentence which reads, “As a consolation prize, those who enter get a free chance to publish their book with CreateSpace, Amazon’s version of Lulu except your book is only available through Amazon.com,” there is a slight inaccuracy. Anything published on CreateSpace, be it a book, CD, DVD or MP3, can be purchased on Amazon.com, as you stated, but not only there. It can also be purchased on the CreateSpace Website (www.createspace.com) as well as on any personal Website the writer selects. For example, if a writer publishes a Website and wants to sell their work from there, they can.