Every contest have rules and regulations, and sometimes they may not be clearly specified and Transparent. We have listed 5 things for you to make sure, you are ready to enroll into a competition and be on the run for an award.
1. Make sure your Creative work (Book, short story, poetry, or essay) fits the theme of the contest.
It may seem obvious, but our panel of Judges has encountered countless creative works that omit this point.
If it doesn't even meet the basic premises of the contest, it's impossible to win. Therefore, we insist on the importance of the theme and honest assessing whether your creative work fits what is requested.
If this is not the case, be aware of other announcements, of other contests of the genre in question, or more analyzes comprehensive in the formal requirements.
2. Don't forget to review all clauses in the regulation and guidelines.
Once again, evidence. Really? The emotion of competing in a literary contest can lead us to devalue some details of the competition. We remind you of the most important ones:
3. Be very aware of the Submission periods and deadlines.
We often discover that the much-desired event has a deadline just a few days away… and we do the impossible to deliver on time.
4. When submitting creative work to a contest, verify the extent of the work.
Confirm the maximum and minimum limits of pages, words, or sentences. There will be different guidelines that can vary, sometimes coming in words, sometimes in the form of pages. There would be times when a specific font or line spacing is required. Flexible numbers can be used. In our case, the minimum required for reference is 10 pages. Still, since the upload can be done in different sizes and formats, the number is strongly relativized.
5. Submission requirements.
For our annual contest, participation is required by uploading it to our publishing platform and leaving it in private mode. We occasionally receive manuscripts by email, but we consider such entry invalid for the contest. Pay attention to this point to avoid disqualifying your books due to ignorance of the rules.
6. Focus on presentation and spelling.
Those are special rules If the contest is to submit to an anthology collection.
Even when the prize is the publication of your work, as in the case of iSpirit Publishing, we recommend that you give your best to the manuscript you are presenting.
Admittedly, the judges take the content of the work into account above all else, but if it is overshadowed by spelling errors, is presented in a difficult-to-read font, or has a cluttered presentation, getting past the first page will be a less than stimulating challenge, even leading in some cases to the candidate being quickly dismissed.
The criteria is as simple as subjecting the final manuscript to a minimum text review and trying to get it into our hands in the most practical reading support possible.
If you have your work published in any other medium, pay attention to the regulation.
There are competitions where this fact alone excludes any other participation. Consult the respective regulations to confirm if this is the case.
In the case of our Ommie Awards and Ommiewood contest, we ask that you own the rights to your book.
When submitting your work to be published in one of our many annual Anthology contests, pay attention to the copyright’s issues. Suppose your work was a self-published one on any other independent publishing platform. In that case, its removal would be relatively simple, as it retains the rights.
However, suppose you published through another traditional publisher. In that case, you may have ceded your distribution rights to the work for a certain period (usually a few years), so we recommend confirming in advance.
If in doubt, ask!
There are no inconvenient questions, especially in these cases. So don't let doubt stand between you and the opportunity you've always dreamed of for your book, your creative work – don't be shy!
We hope these tips have been helpful to you. Good luck with your submission.
Comentarios