Got an unpublished manuscript lying around? Win the Sobel Award, and you receive an impressive $100,000 – as well as bagging an advance of up to $100k from Simon and Schuster.
A division of Simon & Schuster has agreed to publish the top three winners of the Sobol Award, offering advances of up to $100,000 for a controversial new literary contest for agentless writers that also includes a $100,000 first prize.
Announced in September, the Sobol Award offers $100,000 for the best unreleased, agentless novel, with prizes of $25,000 and $10,000 for the runners-up and $1,000 each to seven others.
The award was created by Sobol Literary Enterprises, a for-profit venture started by technology entrepreneur Gur Shomron, as “a venue to discover talented, unknown fiction writers and help them get the recognition they deserve.”
But it might have its disadvantages:
Numerous questions have been raised about the prize, especially its $85 entry fee and stipulation that Sobol officials would serve as literary representatives of the winners; industry policy prohibits agents from charging money to read manuscripts. Sobol has said the fees are necessary to cover administrative costs.
The contest deadline was originally Dec. 31, but Sobol’s executive vice president of contest management, Sue Pollock, acknowledged that response has been slower than expected and that the date had been pushed back to March 31, 2007.
Link to the Yahoo News article