Greetings and Salutations -

Important news for any of you with fiction novels! The Amazon breakthrough novel award goes live TONIGHT at midnight EST and it fills up within hours, so it’s important to get it in immediately! They have it in five categories:

* General fiction
* Mystery / thriller
* Sci fi / fantasy / horror
* Romance
* Young adult fiction

You submit a short blurb, then the first chapter, then the whole thing. For the first round of judging, judges ONLY read the short blurb and nothing else. So that short blurb has to be perfectly stunning. It has to be better than all other blurbs in shining with writing style and plot hook. Books that get past the blurb stage then go to the excerpt stage. Again this excerpt (first chapter) has to be PERFECT. It has to entice and enthrall the reader and prove to them they want to keep reading. Only the very few books that get past this stage have their entire manuscript read. So if your manuscript is perfect, but that blurb is not great, nobody will ever see the manuscript. It’s absolutely critical to get all three stages right.

You can submit anything that hasn’t been “professionally published” – so self-publishing is OK. The novel can’t have adult content. Full rules are online in the CreateSpace area so log in (or sign up) with CreateSpace to see.

While my murder mystery Aspen Allegations won the IPPY gold medal in mystery / thriller, I also know it’s a slow-gentle story and it’ll be up against a lot of high energy thrillers. So I’m not sure that will shine best in that combined category. I’m thinking of going with Finding Peace which was my medieval romance which won a IPPY silver in young adult. That does have a fairly exciting first chapter and a powerful blurb. So I have hope it could get through the first rounds.

Who else will be submitting? It’s completely free to submit, but the window is really short once the contest opens, so everything needs to be ready to go live at exactly 12:01am. If you’re thinking of entering, let me know, and we can proof each other’s blurbs :).

Lisa Shea, owner
BellaOnline.com

--------------------

Archive of Past Emails -
http://www.bellaonline.com/newsletter/editorassistance

Editor Assistance Site - full of helpful articles and tips!
http://editorassistance.bellaonline.com/

Editor Forum - for community help 24 hours a day
http://forums.bellaonline.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=10

All correspondence between BellaOnline editors is confidential and should not be forwarded or distributed.