Collecting, prizes & grants
Competitions and prizes
A long shot with a deadline, an entry fee, and — rarely — a cheque and a headline.
Prizes can change a career (a major award) or buy a laptop (a respectable short-story prize) or do nothing except transfer your entry fee to someone else's administration. They are not a business model. They are a lottery with better prose. Used sanely — a few reputable competitions a year, never as the plan — they have a place. Used as a substitute for sending the book into the world, they are a stalling tactic with a PDF.
- Typical pay
- From a bottle of wine and a certificate, through a few hundred or a few thousand for established prizes, to life-altering sums for a handful of names. Most entries win nothing.
- Ceiling
- Solid ceiling
- Speed
- First money in months
- Effort
- A real extra job
- Needs
- No book required
How it works
- 01
You enter according to the rules: length, theme, unpublished status, fee, format.
- 02
Judges (or a longlist committee) read a pile. A shortlist is published. A winner is published more loudly.
- 03
A prize may include publication, a residency, or an agent meeting. Read what you are actually being offered.
How to start
- 01
Make a short list of prizes with a reputation, a named judge, and a fee that is not a business model for the organiser.
- 02
The Society of Authors and similar bodies flag reputable and disreputable contests. Use that.
- 03
Enter work that is finished. A prize is not feedback. It is a verdict, or silence.
Watch out
- 01
Contests that take copyright, or that exist mainly to sell an anthology to the entrants, are not prizes. They are a shop.
- 02
High entry fees with vague judging are a tax on hope.
- 03
A shortlisting is a good day. It is not a pension.
I have won a university writing prize, and I have judged enough work to know that competitions are a weather system, not a career. Enter the good ones. Then go back to the desk. The desk is the only contest that pays you for turning up.