1. Should the entry be sent as an attachment or sent within the email?
Either method is acceptable.
2. Can a writer submit more than one entry?
No, writers may only submit ONE entry per submission period. If a writer submits more than one, only the first entry will be considered.
3. Can a writer submit an entry in two consecutive contest periods?
No, a writer must wait one contest period before submitting again. So, if a writer enters the July competition (June 27- July 31), and is not selected during the July contest period, he/she cannot re-enter with a new submission until the September contest period begins (September 1).
4. Is a winning writer eligible to participate in more than one contest period?
No. After winning a contest period, winners are no longer eligible to participate in this contest.
Winners are however able to submit additional short-form work directly to Amazon Shorts, and will have those shorts reviewed for publication on a case by case basis by the Amazon team.
5. What kind of short-form work can I submit? Is poetry acceptable?
We are accepting ANY previously unpublished (except on Gather.com) fiction or nonfiction works between 2,000 and 10,000 words.
6. Can my submission have been published before?
Your entry must be previously unpublished EXCEPT on Gather.com. If you have published it on Gather.com, you must remove the article from the site or use our editing tool to make the article visible only to you before submitting to the Short-Form Writing Competition.
7. How do I submit my entry?
Simply email your submission, along with full name and word count, to amazonshorts@gather.com
8. Are published authors eligible to participate in the contest?
Yes. Published writers can enter our competition but their submission must be previously unpublished (except on Gather.com.) If you are a published author with a title currently for sale through Amazon.com, you can also choose to submit a short for consideration through Amazon directly.
9. After I have submitted my entry, how long until my story is posted for voting?
Your story will be posted within two (2) business days of the date it is received. Judging will begin as soon as the story is "live" on Gather.com.
10. How will I know my submission been posted for voting?
You will receive an email from the contest administrator when your entry is live at http://amazonshorts.gather.com
11. How long is the voting period and what happens to my story when the voting period ends?
Each story will receive a 14-day voting period, starting the day it is posted on the site. At the end of the 14-day period, the Amazon Shorts Administrator will remove the story from the site, officially ending the voting period.
12. How are the winners determined?
Each contest period there will be up to 4 winners published on Amazon. The top 3 recipients of Gather members' votes, plus 1 author chosen by the Gather Editorial Team, will be submitted to Amazon.com to review for inclusion in the Amazon Shorts program. Amazon reserves the right to refuse any story.
13. What formula will you use to select the members' choice winners each month?
14. Is this contest open to international members?
Yes. As long as the stories are written in American English, we welcome entries from around the world.
15. Who owns the rights to my story?
We will copyright each story with the author's name. However, Gather reserves the one-time publication rights to all entries. If your entry is selected as an Amazon Short, you will grant Amazon.com exclusive rights to publish your short for six months from date of publication on the Amazon.com site.
16. What do the winning authors receive?
Winning authors whose stories are accepted into the Amazon Shorts program will have their winning short for work published on Amazon.com and be available for digital download for $0.49 each.
17. What royalty does a winning author receive on each $0.49 sale?
The royalty split of $0.49 is part of Amazon's contract with the winning writers and therefore confidential — standard in the industry. We can say however that it is a fair royalty split. As many of you have said in your comments, the big prize here is the marketability and visibility for winning authors on Amazon Shorts.
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Comments: 24
For determining the members' choice winners, we use our rating system, which averages all of the individual ratings an article has received. At the end of the voting period, we will take that rating and multiply it by the number of votes the article has received for a total points score, thus undermining the chance that someone who has only 2 votes of 10 will win over someone who has 7 votes of 9. We have used this same system for all other members' choice picks in our previous writing competitions and we feel it is the fairest way to select the winners.
If you have any further questions, do not hesitate to email amazonshorts@gather.com.
1. How do you safeguard against manipulation of the rating system. Specifically, those with large Gather connections/ networks can galvanize support to give them a big advantage over those with small networks?
2. Can I submit, say, 10 separate poems but which have a common theme and which collectively fall within the 2k-10k length?
3. Yesterday I submitted an entry, 'The Naming of Nicholas' as an attachment to an email signed as Magi. Do I have to resubmit it with my full name, and can I use a pseudonym?
Magi
The "adjustment" of weighting seven 9's over two 10's is only going to reward those with the large networks and vast numbers of friends on here, and people who have personal enemies and trolls will still get hammered.
I can imagine that something along the lines of "votefortheworst.com" can also manifest here, where people will artificially inflate something that is completely frivolous and stupid. Maybe that pikachu guy will end up a winner...wouldn't that be a laugh!
PIKA...pilka....PIKACHU!
There has been some discussion about what system we will be using to determine the members' choice winners in the contest each month. Earlier in this comment thread we told you that we will be using a system of average rating * number of votes to determine a total score. I'm afraid we have oversimplified our answer, and while average rating and total votes are the primary factors used in our calculation, we are also using a standard weighting system to normalize the scores. To ensure fair results we are not publishing that calculation. Please email us if you have any further questions regarding the voting and good luck!
Just my imitation of a Marxist response to this post!
As I am sure most of you already know, getting published for the first time is hard and can take up a lot of your time which could be better spent writing. Winning a contest, especially one that is sponsored by a widely recognized company, such as Amazon, can be a terrific career booster. It might even be the stepping-stone that gets you recognized. If nothing else you will be able to list yourself as a 'published author' on your resume. Your goal should be to get published, not to get rich. Look at it this way, first of all it's not and should never be, just about the money for a serious writer. Money helps, of course, but if you're only in it for the money do something else. Good writers write because they feel compelled to, because it's part of whom they are and because they can't imagine living without being able to express themselves in such a vital and therapeutic way. Money is the icing- not the cake. No matter what you do, if you only do it for the money then your work will suffer, regardless. Concentrate on being able to tell a good story, or poem, something that will touch someone else in a good way. If you can do that then the rest will follow eventually.
I do understand the concerns about some people having larger networks to vote for them and I believe that is a valid concern but there isn't much that can be done about it, other than to make sure that we vote for those who don't have a lot of votes, within the time periods during which we personally haven't entered submissions. If your story is good then you just have to trust that it will show through.
Also lets not forget that the editors also pick a winner and that choice will have nothing to do with votes and everything to do with good writing. That said I want to wish you all good luck and here is to hoping that your work will get the recognition it deserves!
The royalty split of $0.49 is part of Amazon's contract with the winning writers and therefore confidential — standard in the industry. We can say however that it is a fair royalty split. As many of you have said in your comments, the big prize here is the marketability and visibility for winning authors on Amazon Shorts."
~~
lmfao.
But to her proposal that writers ought to write for the love of it, well, I can't feed my kids love every night! And the mortgage needs to be paid. And then there's tuition and clothes and gasoline. Er, what's the reason I should write for the joy of writing and not get paid what my product is worth? (said gently, without malice)
Which sorta brings me to Jean M.'s comment about fairness and that published writers shouldn't be allowed to enter.
The really big writers, the ones who'll walk right over us all aren't going to bother entering this contest. So there's no need to worry about them. And the two-bit writers who work for less than ten cents a word, while they maybe be published, they're struggling and working their fingers to the stubs and could use a nice break like winning a contest.
It's a world of difference between writing for your local community newspaper and hitting the pages of Newsday or the Washington Post.
Paix
Because, as almost everybody would know, some of the best writing is usually the non-verbose one.
Specifically, I have something but falls shorty of 1k by one or two words. Now, would you like to have a look at it?
PS wen do the next lot of stories get posted? im looking forward to them.
o and i might be posting one up myself! - watch out world =P