Please Don't Fall for This Racket

Hat tip to Eli James for finding this first.

Apparently, Writer's Digest has an annual "Self-published Competition". The first prize is pretty amazing.

ONE GRAND PRIZE WINNER will be awarded $3,000 cash and promotion in Writer's Digest and Publishers Weekly. The editors of Writer'sDigest will endorse and submit 10 copies of theGrand Prize-Winning book to major review housessuch as The New York Times and The Washington Post. In addition, Book Marketing Works, LLC will provide a one-year membership in Publishers Marketing Association, guarenteed acceptance in a special-sales catalog providing national representation through 1800 salespeople selling to non-bookstore markets, guaranteed acceptance by Atlas Books (a top distributor to wholeslaers, chains, independents and online retailers), six hours of book shepherding from Poynter Book Shepherd Ellen Reid and guaranteed review in Midwest Book Review.

Even if you don't win the grand prize, there are 10 first place prizes.

10 FIRST-PLACE WINNERS will receive $1000 cash and promotion in Writer'sDigest. In addition, Book Marketing Works, LLC will provide a guaranteed review in Midwest Book Review, a one-year membership to Book Central Station, the eBook Beyong the Bookstore, a Publishers Weekly book by Brian Jud and a copy of Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers by Shel Horowitz.

Wow! 13,000 dollars in cash prizes and the chance to get your book distributed by a real publishing company. Reader'sWriter's digest is such a supporter of struggling authors... That is, they're supportive of struggling authors who have a 100$ dollars or more to give to them.

Check, money order or credit card payment for the required judging fee of $100 for the first entry, $75 for each additional entry must accompany submissions.

Doing the math in my head, they only need 130 people to enter this competition to cover the cash prizes, and only 170(they claim $17,000 in prizes) to cover the cost of all the prizes. That is quite the business model. It makes me think that their goal isn't to make money by finding and promoting a great book, but rather to prey on desperate authors. There is another publishing business that makes money from desperate authors and not on book sales:

Vanity presses earn their money, not from sales of books to readers as other publishers do, but from sales of books to the books' authors. The author receives the shipment of his or her books and may attempt to resell them through whatever channels are available.

I really do believe that a competition like this is just a well disguised vanity publisher scheme. Please don't fall for this racket. If you truly believe that your book is good enough to win this competition -which will likely have thousands upon thousands of entrants- then your book should also believe that your book is good enough to be picked up by a real publishing house that won't charge you anything up front.

One more thing. If you think that a 100$ entrance fee is reasonable considering that they have to pay someone to read all those books. Think about this. Reader'sWriter's digest is a huge magazine publisher. What do you think are the chances that the majority of the entries will be read by a full time staff instead of an unpaid intern that decides whether or not to pass the book onto the "real" (paid) judges who will likely only read a small subset of entries?