So after some expression of significant interest from both the Nerdfighters ning, and the Your Pants forums, I thought that I should set up a Tumblr dedicated to chronicling how we are getting on with the organisation of the first Nerdfighter short story contest. Thus far we’ve got several things discussed and agreed upon, though some of these may possibly change: -
- This project is definitely for charity.
- The revenue will be generated in two ways. Firstly by an entrance fee for the contest, and secondly by sales of the anthology containing the winning entrants. All of the money from both of these will be going to the charity that we choose.
- There will be a first, second and third prize, and then a larger number of stories that reach the accolade of being published in the anthology.
- The anthology at the end will most likely be an E-book for Kindle and other platforms. Although we would like there to be a physical book published, there is a good chance that doing so would cut far too deeply into the charity revenue.
- The story length would be somewhere between 1000 and 3500 words.
There are however lots of things still to be decided, namely…
- Which charities are we giving to?
- What will the entrance fee be? (off hand, my guess would be between $4-$8 US)
- Who/How will we be publishing said anthology? Shall we self publish it, or shall we go through Amazon or other means?
- How will the contest work? Will there be rounds with different prompts, or will there be one prompt and everyone works around that.
- Will there be any feedback from the judges? Or will we arrange it so that participants can go to a special forum and receive/give constructive criticism and general feedback
There are advantages and disadvantages to various different ways of organising this, and I’ll post about them over the next few days. However, the one thing we definitely need at this stage can be summed up in one word
JUDGES!
Until we have people who would be willing to act as judges in this contest, we can’t really start planning anything else. We certainly have plenty of willing participants, but as for people actually who want to read lots and lots of our stories and pass judgement on them as to who is best etc, that’s going to be much much harder. As I myself actually want to take part and write a story myself, it’s really not going to be me, so we need to find some people who would be willing to do that for us. Preferably, people with significant reading/writing credentials. Of course there are John and Hank Green to approach, but they are rather busy with lots of other things right now. So if you know anyone who you think would be apt, or if you are someone who is apt, please get in touch with us! Send me a message here, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible to arrange more! In the meantime, wait for more news here.
