Saturday 24 February 2024

Free entry writing competitions - and free reads

Here's the first tulip (in my garden) of spring! No idea why it's so early - it's not a new one and didn't flower in February last year. Maybe it knows writers often have to work in the wrong season and decided to offer moral support?

Free entry writing competition news


There's very little time left to enter the Harper's Bazaar short story competition. In the past this has always had a rights grab clause in the rules. This time they've phrased it slightly differently - making it very unclear what you'd be committing yourself to, copyright wise.  The prize is a two night stay in Hampshire.

The Alpine Fellowship are offering £3,000 for the best piece of writing on the theme of language. They have a poetry competition too.

If you're resident in the UK or Ireland, haven't yet secured a publishing deal and fancy writing an essay of at least 25,000 with the option of doing that in Italy, the Fitzcarraldo prize will be perfect for you. The prize includes publication and £3,000.




Free reads

I'm taking part in another promotion which offers free reads to those people who sign up to the author's newsletters. This one is for mystery, suspense and cosy crime books. As with all these things you can download as few or as many as you like, and unsubscribe from the mailing lists at any time.

As well as possibly making more people aware of me and my writing, I think they're a good risk free way to try work by new authors. What do you think of them?

6 comments:

Sheelagh said...

Thanks Patsy for all the info & lovely photo of that rash young tulip! Re free reads love them & would go on to buy books from author if catches my attention

Patsy said...

@ Sheelagh - Thank you. My hope in offering free reads is that they might encourage people who've not come across it before to try my writing - it's good to know there's a possibility of that working.

Sharon boothroyd said...

The TPF 10k bursary winner and runner ups will be announced soon - possibly this week.
I just hope that the 10k winner is able to churn out stories for them for the rest of this year.
I'm still puzzled why this panel of judges wasn't announced when the launched the bursary.
These judges, to me, don't really seem to be associated with TPF in any way, but hey ho.
Thanks for the comps but I'm not an essay writing expert!

Marguerite said...

Over the past few years, I have signed up for some newsletters which, in turn, have another list of authors. I always feel bad if I want to unsubscribe! Some of them are really carefully prepared but some are just lists of someone else's books. But with each one, I know there's a hopeful author at the other end. It's opened me up to testing different genres, so that must be good :) What must be difficult, Patsy, is to actually quantify how well those downloads lead to increased sales as opposed to other methods you're using —the scientist in me would talk about a "fair test" and a "control" ;) It certainly must add to the whole...?

ados123 said...

Thank you for the competitions, Patsy. Nothing that takes my fancy this week.
Regarding free books, I read on Netgalley, and as part of that I review the books I read - on Netgalley, Goodreads, Waterstones and Amazon (when they are out). Having got a 'free' book to read I always try and find something positive to say even if I disliked the book, but fortunately that is not often. If you can get your 'free' readers to write a positive review I think it must be a very good thing.
Alyson

Anonymous said...


Ally27

Thanks for the info Patsy.

Nothing to report here. In terms of the PF bursary competition, I agree with Sharon that the line up of judges is really out there. I'm only familiar with Adele Parks and Sally Lindsay but I wouldn't equate any of them with TPF. The whole thing is a bit bizarre. I do wish that the judges had been announced beforehand. That is the usually the case with writing competitions. I feel that I played it safe but had I known who was going to be judging the competition, I would have tried to come up with something edgier. In any case, I ran out of time and if they do run a similar competition in the future, I hope that they will allow longer than a month. I don't feel that I was able to give it my best shot within the time constraint. Anyway, wishing everyone who entered the best of luck. I'm very curious to see who they have chosen.