So What Is A Profiteering Award?

110). The Book Excellence Awards is run by Literary Excellence Incorporated, and up to now are the only honors program provided by that company–but I’m sure that will change. Profiteering awards often come in clusters. Just what exactly is a profiteering award? What makes such awards a “beware”? Continue reading. Here are some is a post I originally put online in 2015, today but is still very relevant. I’ve updated it to reflect changes in prices and details and to then add newer profiteers that have sprung up in the past few years. If you have been reading this blog for any amount of time, you may have guessed that I’m not a huge enthusiast of writing contests and awards.

Partly it is because so most are a waste of time, with minimal awards, negligible prestige, and little if any true name acknowledgement. Why not spend your energy on something that can get you closer to building a readership–submitting for publication, or publishing by yourself? There’s also the chance of bad things in the entry guidelines–for example, the Best Story Competition, where the grant of publishing rights is prolonged to any “third party” obtaining a copy of the admittance. Writers who don’t read the fine print carefully enough may find themselves caught by such procedures.

And then there are the contests/honours with a concealed agenda: making money for the sponsor. Such awards aren’t really about honoring authors at all. There’s a complex of warning flag that recognizes profiteering contest and awards programs. Solicitation. To maximize entries, profiteering awards and contests often solicit entries. An out-of-the-blue email, or an ad on Facebook, urging you enter a contest or honors program should be treated with caution always.

100, or even more. There could be “early bird specials” and multiple-entry discounts to tempt authors with the illusion of the bargain. And that is not counting the books you’ll have to send for prize consideration–a considerable expense, if the profiteer only accepts print. Ratings or many entrance categories. To maximize income, profiteers create as many entry categories as possible and encourage multiple entries.

Anonymous judging. Profiteers promise expert judging by people with position in the writing and publishing field but don’t reveal the identities of the purported experts. Actually, the judging may be done by the profiteer’s staff, who may simply choose winners out of a head wear. Non-prize prizes. To avoid cutting to their revenue, profiteers offer prizes that cost them little or nothing at all: press releases, media announcements, database, and website listings, features on satellite websites or in self-owned publications. Some offer more than the intended honor of earning the award little.

Opportunities to spend more money. Profiteers’ income doesn’t just come from entry fees. They also hawk stickers, certificates, critiques, and more. Profiteers may deviate out of this template to some degree: some do provide money awards, for instance, rather than most of them solicit. 50–you should think very carefully about entering.

• Position your business as the expert
• Never Agree to “Final Payment Upon Completion”
• Cash Payout Ratio = (Dividends + Buybacks)/ Net Income
• Easy on the eye with adequate white space
• Status: Open
• 3/8/05 UPDATE TO ABOVE QUERY — FREELANCER RESPONDS
• Owlboy – 9 years
• Be a resident of, and open to work from Canada

100 entry fees for that? Profiteer awards and contests overwhelmingly target and ensnare small press and self-published writers. It’s not uncommon to see books that sport a number of these awards, in some cases representing an outlay of hundreds of dollars–and that’s not counting the awards the authors may have entered and lost.

But such awards are nothing more than a cynical play on writers’ hunger for recognition and exposure in an increasingly crowded industry. They should never be a worthwhile use of authors’ money. The Alliance of Independent Authors provides rankings for a large number of awards and contests, with Caution notices for those that are suspect.

It’s a good list to check on before submitting. JM Northern Media operates more than 20 literary “celebrations” and conventions. JM Northern is a ferocious spammer; if you’re a writer, you might have been asking for one or another of its festivals. Unlike a great many other profiteers, JM Northern offers real money prizes. But it is able to.

50 get a lower amount of entries–say also, 1,500 (I’m lowballing to show how insanely profitable this structure is). 1.5 million just in admittance fees. My 2013 post offers a more detailed take a look at JM Northern: Awards Profiteering: The Book Festival Empire Of JM Northern Media. The Jenkins Group, a costly self-publishing services supplier, runs at least six honors programs: Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards, Axiom Book Awards, eLit Awards, Living Now Book Awards, Illumination Book Awards, and the IPPY Awards. 95, and there’s the most common raft of entry categories and non-prize prizes. Even among profiteers, Jenkins is uncommon in the quantity of extra merchandise it hawks to winners.