Textnovelblog

2012 Contest Live Tomorrow!

The new 2012 Textnovel Contest will be live soon! Please be patient while we work through a
few bugs – stories should show up on the homepage by tonight or early tomorrow
morning. Also, we are still working out some functionality for stories created
prior to April 1, 2012 (only prior Contest winners are ineligible).

Here are the details:

Winner is picked by Textnovel.com Editorial Advisory Board.

$1,500 in Cash Prizes ($1,000 for Gran Prize Winner(s), $500 for Reader’s Choice
Winner(s)) plus possible publishing or literary agency contract.

Contest begins on April1, 2012 – must have 50,000 words up by End of Contest (described
in Official Rules) – but more words are fine!

Must be 13 years or older to enter.

Can enter one free Basic Story that started on or after April 1, 2012 per author
(and as many Premium Stories as you want).

Stories that were previous Finalists or Semi-Finalists in any contest on Textnovel are
not eligible.

See Contest Rules for more details! Contact us if you have any questions.

Bonus: Our 2008 winner Shannon Delany ultimately picked up a 5-book publishing deal with St.
Martin’s Press and the first book in her three book series 13 to Life, was released in June 2010 by St. Martin’s Press! Some of our other winners have gotten publishing deals too – we will post details soon.

Updates on Textnovel.com

We have had inquiries from members asking for updates on Textnovel.com.  As you know, we haven't launched any recent contests and our Editor's Picks haven't been updated for a while.  This isn't because we are shutting down!  Here's an update:

Contests

We are looking for input from our members on whether to do more contests and how to structure them.  We are considering eliminating any requirement that winners sign any kind of publishing or representation arrangement with Textnovel.com, LLC.  However, if we do that, we need a way to fund the contest.  This may mean a small participation fee or alternatively, a flexible prize amount and/or contest end date based on the total dollars contributed during the contest for upgrades and in donations.  If you have thoughts or comments about this, please either post them here or email them to us at support (at) textnovel.com.

Editor's Picks

Textnovel is a community of writers and it can only function with the involvement of its members.  We are looking for volunteers to help us select weekly Editor's Picks and to provide feedback and encouragement to authors.  The types of volunteer opportunities we have are:

• Textnovel Genre Mentor -- be a leader and encourage and coach members within your favorite genre(s) both on the website and in the forum

• Textnovel Editorial Team --help select weekly Editor's Picks and give feedback to authors

We will develop a special badge for volunteers that will highlight their profile and stories.  Volunteers will also receive perks like free Featured Story or Featured Author grants.  If you are interested, let us know at support (at) textnovel.com.

New Features

Just to let you know we have no intention of shutting down, here's a small tidbit: we are working with a partner on an exciting new feature that we hope to announce soon.  Yes we realize that sentence says practically nothing -- sorry about that!  We'll make an announcement as soon as we can.

Keep writing!

Textnovel Team

 

Textnovel Announces 2011 Contest Grand Prize and Reader's Choice Winners Announced

PARK CITY, Utah, November 17, 2011—Textnovel.com today announced the Winners of the 2011 Textnovel Writing Contest, which combines a live, serial publication model with a unique ranking system to help identify top new novelists and fiction writers.  The Winners are as follows: 

1. Co-Winner Grand Prize: The Walk-In by Lisa Teller
2. Co-Winner Grand Prize: The Woods by Natalieg26
3. Co-Winner Reader’s Choice Award: Innocence and Arrogance by Kimberly Reeves
4. Co-Winner Reader’s Choice Award: Vegas Follows You Home by Saewod

These Winners were chosen based on popularity, writing quality, adherence to the Contest rules, originality and publishing potential.  The Grand Prize winners will share a $1,000 cash prize and have the option to receive editorial input and assistance, literary agency representation with submission to major publishers and/or publication by Textnovel.  The Reader’s Choice winners are sharing a $500 cash prize.  The 2008 Textnovel Contest Winner signed a 3-book deal with St. Martin’s Press, later modified to a 5-book deal.  Some of the other past Contest Winners have accepted publishing contracts with various other publishers.

ABOUT TEXTNOVEL

Textnovel is a social network for authors and readers of serial fiction and the first English language cell phone novel website, allowing members to write and read fiction with their cellphones or computers, using text messaging, email and online tools. Textnovel runs contests for fiction writers, allowing them to demonstrate the market potential of their work through its unique serial publication and voting and ranking format.  Textnovel offers writing development and support, agency services and publication opportunities to writers.

 © 2011 Textnovel.  All rights reserved.

 

2011 Textnovel Contest Finalists Announced

The 2011 Finalists have been announced!  Congratulations to all participants.  Visit the Comments section at Textnovel to find out which stories were named Finalists. The 2011 Contest Winner(s) should be announced within the next week.

Finalists to Be Announced October 30th

One of our semi-finalists pointed out that we accidentally posted September 30th as the date on which Finalists would be announced -- we are very sorry about that, it  was a typo.  In fact, September 30th had  passed before we made the posting and that date would not give the Semi-Finalists any time to finish cleaning up their stories!  So we just wanted to clarify the Finalists will be announced on October 30th.  We have changed the date in all the postings.

One thing to keep in mind is that although typically all the Finalists are chosen from among the Semi-Finalists, we reserve the right to include a "wild card" Finalist who was not one of the Semi-Finalists if we happen to notice a particularly compelling story in the interim (see Contest Rule No. 4).  

Thanks and sorry for the confusion!

Textnovel.com Team 

Textnovel 2011 Contest Semi-Finalists

We have posted the Semi-finalists for the 2011 Contest!  Congrats to all the recipients and good luck making it through the next stage.  You can find the Semi-finalists in the Recent Comments box in the lower left-hand corner of the website.  Tomorrow we will be naming Honorable Mention recipients  and will post a complete list of Semi-finalists here as well.

A warm thanks and congratulations not just to the award recipients, but to ALL participants.  Keep writing and never give up!  

Still Reviewing Stories

Wanted to give everyone an update...we are still reviewing stories. We won't be ready to post the semi-finalists for a couple more days. There are a lot of good choices. Sorry and thanks for your patience!

2011 Textnovel Contest Update

As you know, the deadline for entering the 2011 Textnovel contest has passed.  We are currently reviewing the stories in the contest and will post the list of semi-finalists by the end of September.  There will be 20 semi-finalists and they will have two weeks to continue to clean up their stories, after which we will pick 10 finalists.  They will have another two weeks to polish their work and then we will announce the winner.  We will post an announcement on this blog and on Twitter when the semi-finalists are announced.  Entrants can continue to polish their stories and get votes and views while this process goes on.  You also still have time to upgrade to Premium if you want to make sure the editors take a closer look at your story.  

New Video Contest!

Create a video NO MORE THAN ONE MINUTE talking about:

1) What you like about Textnovel, what you learned, what your experience is like, etc.

2) A brief excerpt reading from one of your Textnovel stories!

3) A demonstration of how to post a story or edit a chapter online or using a phone.

Anything goes but keep it appropriate. You don't have to include yourself in the video but hopefully we will see some of our members' lovely faces too! :)

Winners get their video, profile and a story featured for free for 6 weeks!

 

How to submit:

Upload the video on Youtube or similar site. Send the link to info@textnovel.com along with your pen name. Please specify whether you would like your video posted up on our blog.

DEADLINE: March 1st, 2011

Textnovel Co-Grand Prize Winner Samantha Boyette on Sci Fi Saturday Night This Saturday

Tune in this Saturday to Sci-Fi Saturday Night for an interview with our own Co-Grand Prize winner, Samantha Boyette.  She will be discussing her experience with the Textnovel contest as well as her winning novel Prime, and her short story Life of a Child.  This short story can be found in the recently released Last Man Anthology.

The show starts live at 8pm, with her interview around 8:30pm.  You can listen on uStream at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/sci-fi-saturday-night, or follow the link from their website at www.scifisaturdaynight.com.  If you can't catch the show live, you will find it free to stream or download on their website after it airs.

 Sci-Fi Saturday Night enjoys speaking with guests from all facets of science fiction.  Past guests have included authors Harlan Ellison, Ben Bova, Spider Robinson, Tracy Hickman and Christopher Golden.  Other guests include actors Amber Benson, Adam West, Mark Metcalf and Doug Jones; Wizard Entertainment founder Gareb Shamus; physicist Stanton Friedman; artists Tim Sale, David Mack, Steve Bissette and Phil Foglio; filmmakers Chris Lackey & Chad Fifer ("The Call of Cthulhu") and Mike Dougherty ("Browncoats: Redemption"); and many, many more.  Sci-Fi Saturday Night is the Official Podcast of the Boston Comic Con and of ComicArtHouse.com

Tune in and show your support!