Got a novel? Then here are two contests to consider.

Search for the Next Great Crime Writer Contest

Borders has teamed up with Court TV for their mystery/ crime novel contest. The contest prize is 1,000 US dollars and if the author agrees to a contract they’ll receive an advance of 5,000 US dollars and “Borders will have the exclusive right to and commits to publication and exclusive distribution of the winning Submission, providing the potential Grand Prize Winner executes a written publishing and exclusive distribution agreement with Borders.”

Gather.com members will comment and rate submissions.

So if you don’t mind your book becoming a mass market paperback only distributed in Borders (and possibly not all Borders) then this is the contest for you.

The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award

Amazon wants to promote their self-publishing services by holding a contest. Don’t believe me? Read this:

“…the nine remaining finalists will receive a free Total Design Freedom self-publishing package from BookSurge and a media suite from Hewlett Packard. Upon conclusion of the contest all entrants will be eligible to make their books available for sale to Amazon.com customers via the CreateSpace self-publishing service at no charge. In addition, all entrants will receive discounted self-publishing services from BookSurge for custom cover design, formatting, and editing.”

Nothing wrong with that. The grand prize winner will receive a full publishing contract from Penguin Group. In truth, understanding the reason for the contest explained the sheer size of allowed entrants (5,000). How would they be able to get through this mountain of manuscripts? That became clear when they explained the judging process: “Submissions will be read by Amazon editors and top Amazon customer reviewers, who will pick up to 1,000 semi-finalists.”

The selected work (an excerpt of 5000 words) of the semi-finalists will then be posted for Amazon customers to review.

Hmm…

Okay, so I have some misgivings about the two contests opening the judging to anyone with an opinion, but all contests are subjective. So if you have a novel, why not?