Every once in a while, we get communications from people who don't understand how we can announce the results of a short story contest just two or three days after it closes. They wonder if we're somehow reading 200+ stories in two or three days. No, we read and rate them as they come in. But that raises an important question:
If you send us a story ten days into a contest and we judge it to be the 12th best story of the 20 received up to that point, why don't we send you a rejection slip right then? Why wait until the contest is over?
We're open to changing that practice, if you can come up with a strong enough counter-argument. Here is our reasoning for the current practice.
1) We want each author to enter our contests only once. Since we read all stories blindly, however, we don't have a good way to prevent somebody from sending us a story on Day 1 of the contest, and then submitting something else on Day 75. Our nightmare scenario is dealing with a writer who would submit a different (rejectable) story every day if we rejected stories as soon as we realized they had no chance to get published.
2) A point from Bethany: We have rejected stories that turned out to be from authors who, in different contests, took first place (with a different story of course). By rejecting an early entry right away, we're giving that entry's author a chance to submit a different story that we might like a lot more. Rejecting stories right away gives those stories' authors a big advantage over other contestants, and we think that would be unfair.
3) I know from experience it's annoying to wait 2-3 months to find out how your story did, but a 2-3 month wait time is not that far from an industry average. So while I'm not thrilled with it, I don't feel we're treating our writers in a way that the industry would condemn.
4) What would we do with a story we receive on Day 2 of a contest, and is so good, it remains in contention all the way to the end, but on the last day we decide it can't quite crack the top ten? That author's going to wait three months for a reply no matter what.
5) Another point from Bethany: Just about every contest, at least one author withdraws his or her entry for some reason. We've had that happen just before a contest closed! In fact, twice now it's happened with stories we were strongly considering sending to the prize judges. That meant some story we were originally going to reject took the withdrawn story's place, and in at least one case, won a prize.
6) Finally, every alternative we've considered sounds worse to us than the current practice. We've even considered a "halfway" notice, in which halfway through a contest, we'd tell all non-contending authors that they didn't make it. But what would we do with the contending authors, if anything? I don't want to get their hopes up because many times, a story that is in the top ten halfway through a contest doesn't make the final round. (Two-thirds of our entries tend to come in the last half of the contest.) Plus there's still the one-entry-per-author problem.
It seems like the only way to give feedback in something closer to real time would be to pick on the authors who sent the stories that did the worst. We don't want to do that. So, we file our notes and decisions away and hold them until the end.
Having said all that, if you can make an argument for faster rejections that's stronger than the argument for our current system, please do, and we'll think about changing. Over the years, we've adjusted a number of our practices because our readers and writers had better ideas than we did. We're willing to do so again.
Showing posts with label our contests. Show all posts
Showing posts with label our contests. Show all posts
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Now More Than Ever, Use the Premise Well
I'll let you folks in on a little secret. When we launched our first contest in October 2006, we received fewer than 70 entries. Our second contest was based on a premise that was so poorly designed it turned people off, and we received fewer than 40 entries. It wasn't until contest #4, when we'd been around for a whole year, that we broke 100 entries (with 162 of them).
The secret I'm letting you in on is, the percentage of really good stories was quite small back then. I can remember sending out ten stories in the final round while knowing at least two of them had no chance of publication. One time, only nine stories made the final round.
That was a long time ago. For contest #18, we got at least 20 stories that were better than some of the stories that used to make the top 10. We got at least 15 that we'd have been proud to publish in our first year. In fact, the four stories that made the top ten this time, and did not get published, would probably have been published even three years ago.
However, our policy (which we've violated only once) is to publish no more than six contest entries: first, second, third, and up to three honorable mentions. We don't plan to change that. Our policy and the gradual rise in the quality of our contest entries have combined toproduce an unexpected effect:
How well a story uses our contest premise matters a lot more than it used to.
Long ago, a story that was great in every way except use of premise would beat a story that was merely good, but used the premise better. Now judges are comparing stories that are great in every way except use of premise against stories that are great in every way including use of premise. Guess which ones win?
Today I'm sending out the free critiques we're giving to the four runner-up stories, and in two of those cases, mediocre use of the premise is the number one reason those stories lost out. One of those stories is one of the best written pieces we've ever received. I'd bet some pretty decent literary magazines would take it in an instant. Our prize judges turned it down because its use of premise was too weak. In fact, we publishers almost disqualified it from the contest for that same reason. But it was so good in every other way, we didn't have the heart to DQ it. (That'll teach us. It got the lowest score of any of the top 10 because "time" was just barely relevant to it. Next contest, we'll know better.)
I hope you folks will, too. We're called On The Premises for a reason, and that reason matters more than ever. Keep it in mind when we launch our next contest on or around November 10. Use the premise, and use it well!
The secret I'm letting you in on is, the percentage of really good stories was quite small back then. I can remember sending out ten stories in the final round while knowing at least two of them had no chance of publication. One time, only nine stories made the final round.
That was a long time ago. For contest #18, we got at least 20 stories that were better than some of the stories that used to make the top 10. We got at least 15 that we'd have been proud to publish in our first year. In fact, the four stories that made the top ten this time, and did not get published, would probably have been published even three years ago.
However, our policy (which we've violated only once) is to publish no more than six contest entries: first, second, third, and up to three honorable mentions. We don't plan to change that. Our policy and the gradual rise in the quality of our contest entries have combined toproduce an unexpected effect:
How well a story uses our contest premise matters a lot more than it used to.
Long ago, a story that was great in every way except use of premise would beat a story that was merely good, but used the premise better. Now judges are comparing stories that are great in every way except use of premise against stories that are great in every way including use of premise. Guess which ones win?
Today I'm sending out the free critiques we're giving to the four runner-up stories, and in two of those cases, mediocre use of the premise is the number one reason those stories lost out. One of those stories is one of the best written pieces we've ever received. I'd bet some pretty decent literary magazines would take it in an instant. Our prize judges turned it down because its use of premise was too weak. In fact, we publishers almost disqualified it from the contest for that same reason. But it was so good in every other way, we didn't have the heart to DQ it. (That'll teach us. It got the lowest score of any of the top 10 because "time" was just barely relevant to it. Next contest, we'll know better.)
I hope you folks will, too. We're called On The Premises for a reason, and that reason matters more than ever. Keep it in mind when we launch our next contest on or around November 10. Use the premise, and use it well!
Friday, February 17, 2012
We Have Winners!
Something happened in this contest that's never happened before on OTP. We've always said we'd publish first, second, and third place, and then up to three honorable mentions. Well, this time, we had a unique scoring situation we'd never run into before. That prompted us to make two decisions.
1. We are going to publish four honorable mentions, for a total of seven prizewinning stories.
2. We're adjusting our scoring system so we don't find ourselves in this position again. We want to stick to the "up to three honorable mentions" rule.
We were going to list the stories by name and author, but my co-publisher reminded me sometimes authors want to use a pseudonym, and we've had people decide that at the last minute. I guess that means we need a third decision:
3. Starting with contest #17, we're going to ask authors to be sure to give us their pseudonym up front, in the cover letter, when they submit their entries. That way we can list the winners on our blog as soon as we know who they are.
1. We are going to publish four honorable mentions, for a total of seven prizewinning stories.
2. We're adjusting our scoring system so we don't find ourselves in this position again. We want to stick to the "up to three honorable mentions" rule.
We were going to list the stories by name and author, but my co-publisher reminded me sometimes authors want to use a pseudonym, and we've had people decide that at the last minute. I guess that means we need a third decision:
3. Starting with contest #17, we're going to ask authors to be sure to give us their pseudonym up front, in the cover letter, when they submit their entries. That way we can list the winners on our blog as soon as we know who they are.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
A New Kind of Runner-Up
Today, we just want to tell you two things.
First, we sent out our newsletter this morning. If you don't subscribe, you can read it here.
Second, we're going to adopt a tactic seen in some other fiction contests. As you know, we always send ten stories to the prize judges. Only five or six get published, and you folks never get to learn anything about the stories that almost made it.
Unless authors object, we're going to announce the names of those runners-up, too. I think we've reached a point where even the stories we turn down at the last moment are better than many stories I read on other on-line magazines, so I say those authors ought to get some recognition. Plus, this way authors can prove their stories made "finalist" status in our contests, and that might help them sell their stories somewhere else. (Or maybe not, but it can't hurt.)
If your story made the final round of judging but didn't get published, would you want us to congratulate you publicly for coming so close?
First, we sent out our newsletter this morning. If you don't subscribe, you can read it here.
Second, we're going to adopt a tactic seen in some other fiction contests. As you know, we always send ten stories to the prize judges. Only five or six get published, and you folks never get to learn anything about the stories that almost made it.
Unless authors object, we're going to announce the names of those runners-up, too. I think we've reached a point where even the stories we turn down at the last moment are better than many stories I read on other on-line magazines, so I say those authors ought to get some recognition. Plus, this way authors can prove their stories made "finalist" status in our contests, and that might help them sell their stories somewhere else. (Or maybe not, but it can't hurt.)
If your story made the final round of judging but didn't get published, would you want us to congratulate you publicly for coming so close?
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