December Amazon Shorts Entries Are Live!

Where are the entries posted?

Thanks-this looks interesting

Where are they?

Why is it that I have submitted an entry but have not gotten my confirmation? Where do we find the stories to read and vote on?

hi salam how are you all i am parvaiz ahmed

Thank you for you answer Admin!

Yes, thanx for the answer admin, i'm waiting to see my entry posted...

i sent via email a article for the dec. contest. have you recieved it???

Are all "recent entries" supposed to be short story competition entries? Because they are not. Or I just don't know how "gather groups" interface works.

Well.. please do tell us where the stories are posted. Thank you

Where do I find my entry - "Man in the silver mask" ,please help me to locate it - Mandira

I think the voting time for so many stories is too short, don`t you?

Hello everyone,

Great to see everyone's enthusiam! To answer your questions:

All competition entries are posted in the "Recent Articles" section at amazonshorts.gather.com. You receive confirmation once your entry has been posted to the group. Due to the large amount of submissions received, if you submitted before Dec. 1, then your entry will be posted within the early days of the competition. Any entry received Dec. 1 and after will adhere to the "two business day" rule.

If you have any other questions, feel free to email amazonshorts@gather.com or send us an on-site message.

Best of luck to everyone!

--The Amazon Shorts Admin

I sent my first submission in in September for the October contest. They did not post it. I was then told it would be in the December contest. On Friday I was a sent a link to my posted story, which was not, in fact, my story at all. Nick Hanneman from Marketing, apparently (?!) then told me my story would be posted that afternoon. Once again, nothing there.
This is the most disorganized writing contest I have ever been a part of. Absolutely ridiculous.
I hope that the administrators of this contest manage to get their act together because the whole experience, for me, has been entirely disrespectful.

There was a time, I was wandering within the worlds widest website, a place called Gather and I decided almost by instinct to create a corner for my very own.

There was a whirlwind over there of words, rules, suggestions and entries you know, and I can hardly bear my own in daily life, so I estimated I could not cope with it. It sounds strange, maybe, but, even finding a small, safe corner within that overcrowded place was very tough, because outside there, it did feel like a labyrinth of entries, so I could never estimate what would happen if I took one as my safety space, because it was a sea of options and corners and dead end streets. You never knew who, or what, could be passing by.

There were also rumours about entries,man, that could lead to special entries, to enter a list of competition entries in the past, but somewhere there would also be an entry within one of these, to get through it all and finally reach the entry where one could see were we all got, participating in a kind of short story entries competition where others judge on our entries and wave with dollars and fame. A ratrace within a ratrace.

I felt like Jones was coming down.

So, I got an idea, my friend. As a young boy, I already was a loner, because of something that had happened in my early years. In those days, every evening I was looking at the sky in search for the moon and when I could find him, I created a very large ladder and step by step I finally was on the moon. That made me feel proud and safe. And you know what? I could see and look at the world as a small blue globe, a colour that embraces all these very tiny creatures , like you and me, who live there and who seem to be very bussy in finding traces of themselves and discover what it really is all about, over there. like myself.

That skill of creating my own moon-escape has never left me and I use it now to rise above my own confusion, because of that maze of entries and to fly like a seabird over all our own tiny entries within the digital world ,full of messages, not only about how to create short story entries in all their phases, but also about how to find these creatures, to be confronted, at last, with their final destinations; heaven or hell, as part of the wide world of the short story entries competition of december 2006.

The only compromise was, I had to create an entry to create a ladder to the moon, this time.

I was blind, but Donna made me see.

"Who the hell is Donná?"

My secret. I won't tell.

Wónderful!

Also not in an special entry.


Greetings from Amsteram.

is saturday considered a business day.........hope to see my entry soon.......

I'm thinking I'm going to have to give this a shot. *ponders*

I wanted to make one word change in my story. HOw do I do that?

Hello everyone,

Great to see all the enthusiam! To answer some of your questions:

1) All entries received before 12/1 will be posted within the early days of December (assuming they meet all submission requirements). You will receive a confirmation email once your entry is live.

2) All entries received after 12/1 will be posted within 2-business days (again, assuming they meet all submission requirements).

3) The competition accepts all types of work, including poetry, as long as each individual piece is at least 2,000 words and less than 10,000. The contest is not topical (ie. we do not assign a general topic to everyone).

4) However, all pieces cannot be published anywhere else on the Internet, including Gather.com. If your entry is currently published elsewhere (blog, other website, Gather.com, etc.), it MUST be removed before we can accept the entry.

5) The competition is free and open to anyone over the age of 18 -- international participants are welcomed and encouraged (we've even had a couple international winners!).

6) We accept unfinished work, including chapters, as long as the entire piece of work is previously unpublished.

7) To submit an entry, email your submission to amazonshorts@gather.com


If you have any other questions, please send us an email at amazonshorts@gather.com!

Best,
The Amazon Shorts Admin

stop complaining and just write, it's only the fifth

amen! Silly writers...don't you see what's going on here? There are no winners or losers here. We're all just good sports and thrilled at the opportunity to be in the act of submission.

I have found out through the process of trying to get published that when you get too stressed out or think too much about things you are not in control of, your writing suffers and it definitely shows. If you don't win here, you coninue polishing up your stories and submitting them, plain and simple. It's a process all writiners that are aspiring to be published go through. Rejection, rejection, rejection, etc... Just write!

Besides, you have to consider how the winners are chosen in this contest. It's one big popularity contest! The leading winners are more than likely those that have or belong to large groups through out the internet, large circles of friends, and lots of family. And the meandering reader is usually attracted to real life inspirational stories and other popular genres such as sci-fi and romance. posibilities for a contemporary writer with limited internet groups are slim to none. As they say, consider your audience and criteria before submiting!

Hi everybody I just want to thank to the people that voted for my story "Death of a segull". It is an honour. I read every day wonderful stories and I feel small and humble for english is not my first lanuage. Thank you again. Wish you all the best and good luck to all the competitors. Gina Pavel

hey yall

I sent my story in december 1st, don't see hide nor hair of it anywhere. Writers work hard to get their stories or articles seen and read. So far Gather hasn't done a thing to help or amazonshorts. Being the persistant person I am, I have found many more writing contests on line that are free to enter, so get your act together Gather or you will be losing a lot of talent and your site will just be another "hangout" for people to chat.

still waiting for mine to appear as well and I posted it before Dec 1...I just figure they have a lot of them to post..

Where can you view your Amazon Shorts entry rating? It doesn't seem to appear on the article itself.

will there be one in january as well because votes will be limited
my story will only be finished at christmas
if i was to get any anyway (getting ahead of myself there)

I can not find the entries and where to go to vote! Please give a direct link!

It seems like everyone is still stressing out about this contest. Why? Not only do you have no chance, (unless you have a large connection of internet friends and family) but there are easier avenues to aproach in terms of getting published! And when you get published by them, you know that it is a polished, tight, and worthy story for publication. In this contest, your story is not chosen by profesionals and editors! So even if you do get published, who's to say you're really that good and not a popular internet nerd? I'm just saying that this contest is not something like a magazine submission, where you have to really have the total package (story line, content, dialogue, no grammatical errors, and origionality) to get your story sold and published. Only then can you truly consider yourself accomplished and truly published, not by garnishing the most reader votes.

2000 words for a poem seems a tad lenghthy .

" I'm just saying that this contest is not something like a magazine submission, where you have to really have the total package (story line, content, dialogue, no grammatical errors, and origionality) to get your story sold and published."

And that is why you decided to enter this contest huh?

BTW, my story is still not up even though I submitted it before Dec 1. I would hope that it is just that they are really busy, but when they say submissions posted after Dec 1 will be posted withing two business days, it does make one wonder what the deal is..A note if I did something wrong would be nice, but even nicer would be if they just did what they said they were going to do..

Hi
how do you feel on swearing my story seems to contain a lot (purley to make it more believable

I'm so glad you're doing this contest again.

Well Travis B., in response to your comment "And that is why you decided to enter this contest huh?", I have to say no. I thought initially that there would be a lot of short story fans reading our entries. Not to sound conceited (oh, but I am in a way) but I do believe my stories are very close to the total package. I have not been published yet, but that is because of my recent lack of motivation. I've had a couple of stories come back with raving reviews, they just wanted a little more information regarding the backgrounds. I have yet to sit down and complete the neccisary steps needed to put the final polish on these stories. Does that answer your question Travis, or whoever you are? (Yes, I've read the article naming you in the Random Musings group:)

Which is probably why you won't have your story posted. I heard you got zapped AGAIN. LOL.

This is idiotic. I've been waiting for nearly two weeks to have my story posted. I thought it was supposed to be two business days after 12/1. The damn articles page hasn't moved in days. Thsi is starting to smell pretty bogus.

um Seth you have me confused with James Stewart and the other 9/11 conspiracy trolls. That isn't me and in fact I started an effort to have them removed. I haven't had my account removed or any of that. You may have actually misread that article that Webwriter put up. As well please feel free to look through my stuff and you will find no 9/11 conspiracy video crap or any of that nonsense at all.

Well, there's the new batch and my story isn't there. Done with waiting. This is the most unprofessional crap I have seen on the web yet.

I think I should clear out some things for you people, I've been some time in ignorance myself and hence I should at least tell you what I know.

-The stories that are now prosessed so far are on:
http://www.gather.com/viewArticles.jsp?grpId=3659174697239512&nav=Groupspace
-It might take some longer time before you get an e-mail and before your story is posted.
-Having your story posted quicker or slower than any other, wont bring along an advantage or disadvantage since your story will only be online for 14 days, rather than staying online till the contest ends. So have some patience.

-As for how to rate a story/vote for; I'm not sure. Is the standard article rating used for this? (for this article for example: -6,9/10 (9 votes)-) Or am I mistaken?

Off the record we must all acknowledge that in general this is a way in which gather searches for new members. You talk people into checking out your story and they join and vote for you. Then again it also might be an oportunity in there for a few and well there is one story selected by a jury...

This being said; good luck to all contestants

Quote;

"It's one big popularity contest".

That's very true; it's not one group of people that give points, so to speak,
but it's competition in digital networking.
In itsef not bad, but with writing it hasn't much to do.

Greetings from Amsterdam

This looks interesting very interesting

This whole conversation is very confusing to me....sure am glad I am not entering what ever it is that is going on............................hahaha

Well...It's a big deal to me. I've been writing short story science fiction for a couple of years now, but I've never had the chance to be in a competition!

but you know... just the thrill of having others view my work is payoff enough for me! My family is ecstatic! (As am I!)

Hello from the High Rockies of New Mexico!

How do I pull my story so that I can offer it somewhere that is operated in some sort of logical manner? If my story appears here (which seems doubtful, I admit) then I will have a hard time selling first rights to a REAL publisher (as oppsed to these clowns). Gather ... pull my story. Don't fucking publish it. I'm done waiting on your sorry amateur asses. It's called "Transience" and it had better not appear on this site. Ban me while you are at it.

I hope I'm a good enough writer to compete with you guys.

I sent in my entry about two weeks ago but I haven't received a confirmation email yet from gather.com. I wonder if my entry was accepted and I wish there was some way for me to find out.

I just sent my article for the december contest.....when will it be posted????
pablacita

whats going on

How do I make changes in my December short story for amazonshorts? it has already been posted???
Thanks.

How do you vote for an entry?

Aloha!

New to amazonshorts.gather.com when I submit my first short story will I receive a confirmation? and when will it be posted? and where? please do not hesitate to email me with information on how to enter the competition.[dunningbarbara@yahoo.com]
Mahalo! thanks for the visit on gather.com today it has been very interested.

How do I edit my story once it is posted?

how do i post an article or story?

Enjoy hearing other conversations, being able to be involved saved my searching over boredom.

Why was my story entitled "Caliber" removed?

Bill aren't they only supposed to stay up for two weeks?

Mayhaps your're right Travis. How are you doing with your tale?

I made a terrible mistake publising my poems titled: my Musings. The tag should have been- Poetry. Though I corrected it, it is still featured in arts' tag. I request gather to rectify my error. Thank you.

Didn't read all the comments but have a question. How do friends and relatives find the articles we wish them to "critique" or comment on? I tried to help my partner find it and it was almost impossible until we found a search bar and we entered the name of the article then we found it. I just came in again and can not find it or the search bar. What kind of "contest" or writing experience is this?

how do you know the status of your posted story for the contest?

As I posted at the end of my December story, PROFESSOR OF DEATH, I was contacted by a book publisher about the story.(The complete message is located there). It had been recommended to him by someone who saw it elsewhere, not on Gather. Never expected that. But I haven't written the remainder of the novel I had planned and outlined, so it ain't going anywhere, though he's considering other works I've written. It would benefit anyone wishing an opportunity to promote his work to actually have the work completed so he can jump on an opportunity when it knocks on his door. If I hadn't finished the other novel, I'd be dead in the water with this thing. And there's still no guarantee. So far, I can't say there's any real benefit expected from this site. No editors or agents are going to troll here for talent. It just ain't going to happen. It is, however, a great space for connecting with others, if that's what turns you on. There are a number of well-written stories by skilled writers here, along with the lousy ones, and if you give it the time you'll see them. But if anyone is serious about finding treasure at this site, then you'd better chip in and help it grow--Get the word out to readers, writers, agents, editors, etc.-- make it all it can be for your own benefit. A lot of money goes into setting up a space like this, but it'll take a lot of imagination and grunt work to make it work for a writer.

Authors friends have been looking for my short story in Gather with the intention to comment and vote.
Gather says "reception is closed Dec 31 but you can vote though January 15"
That was a lot of bull, nobody can find nothing anywhere.
Gather...what gives?
Why can't we get an eyeful of ALL the participants and commentars and points standings?
Why the secret?

please tell me what does this exactly mean..ANYONE.

You are 2 degrees from Amazon Shorts Administrator through a Friend
- ♥Robin L - Amazon Shorts Administrator

I'm comfused when i SEE IT!