Young Writers Society

By now you've noticed the ads for the Bookhabit Unpublished Contest. TNcowgirl asked if I could look into whether it's a scam or not, and I'm pretty sure it's not (although if you have different info., do share). Whether it's a good idea depends on how good your book is, but it does not look like a scam.

Bookhabit is a different kind of self-publishing service. From what I got, you can upload your book and then Bookhabit will sell it on their site as an e-book at a starting price of $2.95. As the book gets more popular, the price goes up, and you always get 40% of the price.

The contest asks you to upload your book. Bookhabit will take the top 10 books from that week and place them in a semi-finalist category. After six weeks, it goes into the finalist stage where only the top 10 overall get selected. Then a panel decides which one is the best and awards that author $5,000. At no time do you pay a dime, an excellent indicator of it not being a scam.

From what I saw, it's probably worth entering into. If you think your book is really, really good, then save it for submitting to a publishing agency. But if it's in that twilight zone of being good but probably wouldn't be published, then try submitting it. Plus, keep in mind that getting published is extremely difficult. There are a lot of authors as of late who started out by having their books downloadable as e-books.

Sweet,. Thanks a ton!!!!

This sounds good, but there's one problem...

... I need a book to submit.

o.O But I have no book! >.< This isn't, by any chance, an annual conest, is it?

Hi

I'm Clare from Bookhabit, and yes it's genuine - we're definitely not a scam. We've only just started our website and we thought the best way to kick it off is a competition! That is why you wouldn't have heard of us before. There's already lots of information about us online, we have podcasts, press releases, registered tax numbers, all of that good honest stuff. We've been interviewed on our National Radio here in New Zealand, and yes, New Zealand is big enough that we have more than one radio station - but this is our very serious national broadcaster. You can listen here:

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/progr ... s/20080225

I just wanted to clear up a few things - 5 books go through each week from the 10 weeks of the competition. We are up to Week 2 now. You have until 11 May to submit your book, but bear in mind that it will get busier as the weeks go on. Your book can only be uploaded once in one week, and it only stays up until the end of the week. This has confused a few people so be sure to check out our competition info. http://www.bookhabit.com/competition

The price of books starts at $2.50 and you get at least $1, or 40% of any sales, including any sales made during the competition.

You can email me directly clare at bookhabit.com

And we'd like to have more competitions in the future. We won't wait a whole year until the next one, but we're planning all sorts of different events, so keep visiting.

Good luck!
Clare

Also, and please correct me if I'm wrong, you need to be 18 or older, yes? I was reading through the terms and agreements today.

Hi - good point, it does say you need to be over 18. Would it be possible for a parent or guardian to create the account? Thanks Clare