QueryTracker Blog

Helping Authors Find Literary Agents

Friday, May 15, 2009

Publishing Pulse

Contests

78th Annual Writers Digest Contest - Deadline is TODAY, May 15th. Click here for details.

The Writer Magazine Short Story Contest – Deadline May 31st. For more info, click here.

Gival Press Contest– the novel length contest deadline is May 30th. Prizes include cash and publication. They have several contests, including some for poetry and short stories, so click here to check them out.

Non Fiction Academic Writing Contest – The University of Utah will be awarding the Don D. and Catherine S. Fowler Prize. The deadline for submissions is June 30th. They are looking for a manuscript on anthropology, archaeology, ethnography, ethnobiology, ethnolinguistics, biological anthropology, and paleoecology as it pertains to human behavior. Prizes include cash and publication. Visit their site here.

New Letters Literary Awards Contest – Deadline May 18th. They are holding a contest for Poetry, Short Stories, and Essays. Prizes include cash and publication in New Letters. Click here for the details.

Industry News

From the Publishers Marketplace Newsletter: A free book is being offered at Simon & Schuster, "to promote the release of DJ McHale's final Pendragon book, THE SOLDIERS OF HALLA (the series is a previous Jonah's Picks selection). The first book in the series is available as a free download from Google Book Search, via a PDF file on the Simon & Schuster website, and on the Kindle. The Sony Reader store also has it for .99 cents.” Click here for the download site.

Blog Posts of Interest

The wonderful folks at the Guide to Literary Agents Editor's Blog have a great post on Agents and the Slushpile: 10 Reasons They Stop Reading HERE.

Nathan Bransford discusses why it is necessary to jump through those querying hoops HERE.

Janet Reid writes about whether or not to include quotes or blurbs from readers in your query letters HERE.

And Rachelle Gardner addresses the question of what happens after a successful query has snagged some requests HERE.

STAY TUNED NEXT WEEK!

Next week kicks off our QueryTracker 2nd Anniversary Carnival Celebration with our first two games. Click HERE to visit our Carnival page, and be sure to check in on Tuesday May 19th and Thursday May 21st for details!



Michelle McLean writes YA fiction, children’s picture books, and adult non-fiction, and has been published in three Chicken Soup for the Soul books. She holds a B.S. in History and a M.A. in English. If her nose isn’t stuck in a book somewhere, you might want to check her pulse.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for such great information on the contests and providing those links. The slushpile link was helpful and Nathan Bransford's blog is always a must read for me. Thanks again. :)

Anonymous said...

Hey thanks for the info about the free kindle book. Ran over and downloaded it right away.

You all are doing a great job on this site. Keep up the good work. :o)

Yamile said...

Thanks for all the wonderful links!