Crowvus Publisher – On Writing Competitions

Have you ever taken part in a writing competition? Today I have partnered up with a publisher in the UK, Crowvus, and they are sharing about the ins-and-outs of writing competitions. If you are a publisher yourself, take a look for some tips. If you are a writer who wants to take part in writing competitions, get some insights into the process. Crowvus currently has an competition accepting stories so do check them out!

A Starting Point for Running a Writing Competition

Crowvus has run a ghost story competition every year since we were established. We are currently accepting stories for our 4th competition.

Running a writing competition is intensely rewarding, but it can be hellish knowing where to start. When we set up our competition in 2017, we had to peruse so many websites to get the advice we needed. So, here is everything you need to get started.

Before launching, here are some questions to ask.

1) Why are you doing this?

Competitions:

• encourage writers to believe in themselves enough to put their stories forward.
• raise our profile within the industry. We’ve developed some great contacts through our competitions.

2) Who’s the judge?

Big-name-judges only tend to read the finalists – once others have picked the longlist.

Reading is subjective, so have a team of judges. We have four (going up to five this year) and work it like this:

2 judges: read all submissions. Pull each other’s hair and scratch and scrap until they’ve established the longlist (twenty).

1 judge reads the longlist and creates the shortlist (ten stories which form most of our anthology).

1 judge reads the shortlisted stories and selects a first, second and third.

3) What’s the targeted age group?

It would be unfair to judge a 12-year-old’s manuscript alongside a 30-year-old’s. I’ve seen some spectacular stories from primary aged children, but their life experience, style, and command of language are still developing.

We run two competitions – one for kids and one for adults.

4) Is there a theme?

Your theme could be a word or phrase (“love”, “brotherhood” etc…) or a genre (“ghost stories”).

Providing a theme helps authors get their ideas flowing and demonstrates the sort of story you’re looking for.

This also provides a good marketing plan. It’s difficult to advertise a “Book of Short Stories I Thought Were Really Great”. Advertising “Ghost Stories for Christmas” is far simpler!

5) What’s the prize?

The biggie! Most people look at the prize when they’re deciding whether to enter a competition. It must be appealing. Usually money, but it can be a valuable item such as a kindle, or a subscription to Scrivener.

Make sure you’re not going to be out of pocket at the end of the competition. When we first started, we worked the prize on a percentage system. 1st prize would be 40% of entry fees, 2nd would be 20%, and 3rd would be 10%. The remaining 30% went towards producing the book. Although I’d recommend you start out with this system, this year we have changed the prizes to:

We now also provide medals to children, and the 1st prizes in the kids’ categories are £50 vouchers.

6) What’s the entry fee?

I wouldn’t consider any competition costing more than £10 and it would have to be really amazing for me to spend over £7.

Our submission rate is £3 for one story, and £5 for two. The kids’ category is free, making it possible for schools to enter loads of stories.

We’ve found these work well, but a larger prize may call for a higher entry fee.

7) How do you spread the word?

Social media! Use hashtags like #amwriting or #writingcomp, and share loads of different posts about it, keeping it in writers’ minds.

Most people who enter writing competitions use a website they know and trust. Judith likes PrizeMagic, I prefer Christopher Fielden, but there loads out there. Get in touch with them all – yes, I mean all of them. You want to make sure you get noticed. I wouldn’t recommend paying to post competition details, but most of these websites will list it for free.

Tips for Writing Competitions

One really important thing: DON’T make authors pay for a book they appear in. It’s bad form. We give one free copy to all shortlisted authors even if we end up paying high international postage rates. Any author wanting extra copies can buy them, but the first one is always free.

• A picture tells a thousand words, so a video must tell a million! Create a promotional video. Post it up on Youtube for free, and share it far and wide on whatever social media platforms you use.

Explore free websites like Pexels, Free-Stock-Music.com, freesound.org, or subscription sites like Storyblocks.

Just be sure to check the licence agreement. For free videos and music, it’s usually just a case of putting their information in the description.

• Give writers plenty of time. Our submission window is May-September. We still get most submissions in the final month (many on the final day!) but it gives writers more time to formulate spectacular tales.

• Think like a writer. Ask yourself “if I wanted to enter a competition, what would make this one appealing?” then use your answers to inform how you organise and advertise.

• Think about sharing shortlisted stories in a way which works for you. As publishers, we release a physical book, but you could post stories on your website or, better still, publish an ebook. It’s free to do and gives the authors valuable exposure.

• Amazon lets authors claim books they appear in, creating links with their Amazon author page. Encourage your writers to do this as it is a win-win situation: advertising for you and exposure for them!

• When your competition is over, and you’re settling back with a glass of something lovely, write down everything you liked and anything you would change. If you’re running the competition again, you’ll learn best from mistakes!

There is so much to do and consider when running a competition. But it is one of the most rewarding things you can do as a business.

The Crowvus Ghost Story competition is still open (deadline 30th September) and the details are available here (have the sound up on the video!).

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As a writer, what would you look for when entering a competition?

Connect with Crowvus on their website and Twitter. They are fun bunch. Crowvus is interested in only two things: the publication of writing that was created to be shared, and matching that to the readers for whom it was written. Well, actually, no, they are also very interested in cake.

Banner image from Unsplash.