Amazon.com et al shall again be offering the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. The 2009 version bumps up the entry cap to 10,000 manuscripts, but this time there is only a 7-day window within which to get your entry submitted. The rules specify ‘This Contest is intended to identify the “next great novel.”‘, so don’t be submitting if you’re not ready for the publishing limelight.

There’s a coherent timetable on the Amazon.com site and a quick read of the rules sounds very doable and agreeable to me. Some areas of interest:

• English-only submissions must consist of 3 components:
  • a 50k-150k manuscript
  • an up-to 5k excerpt
  • an up-to 300 word pitch
• Subs are capped at 10k or 2/8/09, whichever occurs first, then the pitch is evaluated for advancement, with only up-to the top 2k pitches making it through
• Those subs will then have their excerpts evaluated and only up-to the top 500 of those will move ahead
• This is where the public comes in and remains - at this point, expert and public reviews will contribute to promoting the top up-to 100 manuscripts
• Then Amazon.com members will vote for “the next great novel”

Rights and publishing deals sound fine to me, though the ‘as is’ non-negotiable bit could prove troublesome (many of the terms of the publishing contract can be found on Amazon.com, but not all); prizes are impressive – wouldn’t mind snagging a few of them myself.

My recommendation? If you have or can be prepared to have a manuscript ready for submission by 2/2/09, go for it. I see nothing to lose here. If you do, I sincerely wish you the absolute best in your pursuit of publication.