Publishing contests are one of the oldest marketing tactics in the book, and Ark Press reinvented it by offering a $10,000 advance for a book last year, trying to get aspiring authors to sign up for the Ark Press mailing list, as they would then flood the company with submissions.
Short deadline, existing writers already have material, publicized but how do you actually reach The Scene and get people to submit - Out of the Shadows was never going in, as an example. Now add the experience level advantage of a published writer.
I'd be surprised if the outcome had differed from what happened here.
This makes me feel better and cheated at the same time. I busted my butt to write a novel to submit. It was the fastest I've ever written and a freaking awesome and based science fiction story to boot. Guess now I have a book nearly ready to publish indie like I have before.
That does not set a good impression upon me. I get wanting an experience author for the novel but was there really no one else who could have been selected to bring new blood in?
I was awarded an Honorable Mention for the Ark Prize and I have zero publishing credits, though I do have my first manuscript under contract now with a small but very active indie. When Ark first opened for submissions in early 2025, I shopped my first manuscript (the one now under contract) with them and got very positive feedback—but they said it was too close to what they had Correia doing. It's a supernatural thriller involving an ex-Texas Ranger battling a cosmic horror in the desert. Then they dropped the prize after they passed, and since they'd actually given me positive feedback, I wrote a manuscript from scratch: a 65k space western on the moon. Received a nice email from them and was awarded Honorable Mention, and that's that. Now I'm trying to find a home for it—I'm going to expand to a more traditional word count, closer to 80k, and do some things I didn't have time to do for the contest. Anyway, that's my story. It was fun. I hope it gets published somewhere as I continue to learn the craft and the business. I never felt like the fix was in, and at this point in my writing career, my name isn't moving any needles. I like to think of it as an investment in the future, but who knows?
Short deadline, existing writers already have material, publicized but how do you actually reach The Scene and get people to submit - Out of the Shadows was never going in, as an example. Now add the experience level advantage of a published writer.
I'd be surprised if the outcome had differed from what happened here.
This makes me feel better and cheated at the same time. I busted my butt to write a novel to submit. It was the fastest I've ever written and a freaking awesome and based science fiction story to boot. Guess now I have a book nearly ready to publish indie like I have before.
That does not set a good impression upon me. I get wanting an experience author for the novel but was there really no one else who could have been selected to bring new blood in?
I was awarded an Honorable Mention for the Ark Prize and I have zero publishing credits, though I do have my first manuscript under contract now with a small but very active indie. When Ark first opened for submissions in early 2025, I shopped my first manuscript (the one now under contract) with them and got very positive feedback—but they said it was too close to what they had Correia doing. It's a supernatural thriller involving an ex-Texas Ranger battling a cosmic horror in the desert. Then they dropped the prize after they passed, and since they'd actually given me positive feedback, I wrote a manuscript from scratch: a 65k space western on the moon. Received a nice email from them and was awarded Honorable Mention, and that's that. Now I'm trying to find a home for it—I'm going to expand to a more traditional word count, closer to 80k, and do some things I didn't have time to do for the contest. Anyway, that's my story. It was fun. I hope it gets published somewhere as I continue to learn the craft and the business. I never felt like the fix was in, and at this point in my writing career, my name isn't moving any needles. I like to think of it as an investment in the future, but who knows?