The Sobol Award, a controversial new literary contest that offered agentless writers a $100,000 first prize and a contract with Simon & Schuster for the top three winners, has been canceled.
Officials acknowledged that the prize’s entry fee and other contractual requirements had deterred would-be participants.
“No further manuscript submissions will be accepted,” award organizers announced Monday on the Sobol Web site (http://www.sobolaward.com). “All writers who have submitted manuscripts will receive a full refund of their entry fee ($85) and our copies of the manuscripts will be destroyed and deleted from our system.”
Weeks told The Associated Press on Monday that only about 1,000 manuscripts were received, far below the 50,000 that prize organizers were prepared to accept and well below the minimum of 2,000 that Simon & Schuster had required to ensure its participation.
“I think the criticism was probably quite damaging,” she acknowledged. “We should have responded more quickly, but startups don’t always do the right thing.”
Link to the Yahoo! News article
Previous posts on the Sobel Prize:
New prize for unpublished manuscripts
Sobol contest winners to get book deals