Okay, before we go too crazy let’s work off of one premise first:
You wrote a novel, it’s solid, been edited (to death), beta-read (by objective readers), and you’ve either self-published or had it traditionally published (Big 5, Boutique, Indie – any and all count). In other words, you’ve got a well-polished story that is ready to be devoured by hungry, hungry readers.
Fantastic! Congratulations. That’s a huge accomplishment.
But now what? Do you start working on the next project? Well, yes, but what do you do with your newborn book? Leave it for the predators? Does it just sit there, waiting on Rakuten Kobo and Amazon Kindle, hoping that readers will stumble upon it and instantly decide it’s worthy of their hard-earned pennies?
Well of course not. You have to market the thing. Which, if I’m being honest, no one told me about when I set foot forward on my bucket list item of ‘writing a book and getting it published’. If I had only known…Marketing is hard.
From experience, I know that marketing can be time-consuming and often seems like you’re shouting into the void – like, really. I often ask myself “What are you getting out of all that effort”? Sometimes it really feels like a painful exercise. But what’s one of the easiest (if not gut-wrenching) and sometimes cost-effective strategies to get that book seen by lots of people? Enter it into an awards competition.
There are a lot of different ones out there, and each competition caters to different genres of literature. Seek and you shall find. And you shouldn’t limit yourself to just one. I say, enter as many as you can afford!
I stumbled across one last year and would have submitted something, but I didn’t have anything ready-to-go and wouldn’t by the deadline date. This year though…
And this competition is just a little bit different. You see, it’s all blind.
“But, J.P., how can you do a blind competition for literature?” I hear you asking.
Well, turns out it’s rather complicated, but basically, you take your story that’s made up of your blood, sweat, and tears, strip everything out of it that indicates who published it, the author’s name, and the title of the book, slap a watermark on it and then submit it.
Oh, and you’ll never know who the judges are. They’re all anonymous. So, they won’t know anything but the story in front of them, and you won’t know who’s judging the book. Blind. Very Blind. Very Dark and Blind.
For those of you who aren’t aware of this competition, I’m talking about the Gay Scribe Awards. They’re pretty new to the scene but have come up with a really remarkable strategy for judging that I thought was quite brilliant.
Why?
Well, having entered other competitions, and watched many others quite closely, it was sometimes evident that (like many things in life) the contest was quite political, potentially influenced by some factors:
- The publishing house a book originated from.
- The popularity or reputation of a given author.
Now, not always. Sometimes you see results from a competition and think, “Hmmm, I read most of those books, not sure I’d agree.” And that will happen everywhere. We all bring different histories and experiences to the stories we read, and that past life experience flavors everything we pick up. Other times you see the results and think, “Yup, that’s about right.” In the end, it’s all very subjective.
But what if you could remove some of the elements that might hold sway over others? And as much as I’d like to think I’m impartial, or able to set aside personal feelings, we all know we’re human and that’s not always accurate – despite the fact we try our damndest. So when I saw what the Gay Scribe Awards was attempting to do, I was immediately intrigued. There was just one problem.
I gathered up some other author friends and said – Hey…What would you think about removing the title, your name, and the name of your publisher from your work and giving it to a competition?
Immediately, people’s backs were up. And it didn’t take long to see why.
Everyone I talked to was terrified of the possibility that their work could be/would be stolen, plagiarized, or uploaded to a pirating site. These things already happen, but without all the stuff that identifies your work as yours, you know you’re just making it easier for someone to come along and do that. Right?
So with this concern in mind, I had a chance to talk to the owner and organizer of the Gay Scribe Awards, K’Anne Meinel. We had long discussions about the awards, what she had in mind, how she’d like to grow and expand, and her experience in running the Lesfic Bard Awards.
I gotta say – seems legit. K’Anne was the one who said “Put a watermark on your work. The watermark should say “Gay Scribe Awards”, but at least then you know that a watermarked, password-protected document put into PDF format isn’t going to be easily stolen. Plus, K’Anne also said that because of her experience within the publishing industry and with other awards and businesses, she had a legal team available to her, and if there was anything untoward occurring with people’s hard work, legal action was an option.
For me, that settled any qualms I might have had.
So for all you authors out there who are writing stories featuring gay and bisexual men, go on…what are you waiting for? Submit – who knows? You might just win, and the prize of exposure is priceless!
How to get in touch with the awards:
J.P. Jackson 