Publish Fiction Through Textnovel
“Dorchester Publishing announced that it is partnering with serialized fiction service Textnovel on a writing competition for aspiring novelists. The winner of America’s Next Best Celler will land a $2,000 advance and will be published by Dorchester next year. The partnership is the latest development in Textnovel’s year-long life: founded by a literary agent as a way for unknown writers to find readers, it is also turning out to be a sort of feeder for publishers. Earlier this year, writer Saoirse Redgrave, winner of Textnovel’s 2008 Writing Contest, signed a three-book deal with St. Martin’s.
Literary agent Stan Soper quietly founded Textnovel in June 2008. Close to 2,000 authors and readers have used the site in the past year. Writers create and add to their stories via e-mail or text, and readers receive stories—in chapter-length installments—on their cell phones, with the option to get notifications as new chapters are added. Stories can be private or public, and people can rate and review stories, which the site says increases a highly-rated story’s likelihood of getting published by a traditional publisher. There’s currently no fee to post or read content, and Textnovel also offers cash prizes to winners.”
Read the entire article at Publishers Weekly.
Filed under: Literary News on June 8th, 2009
Very interesting! I had heard of these cell phone novels in Japan, but didn’t realize a system was in place in the U.S.
Personally, I’m not sure if I would go this route, but the more options that writers have the better. Certainly some will be discovered this way, and that’s great!
Thanks for sharing the news!
Probably not a route I’d go either, but it is interesting. I wasn’t aware it was available myself. And someone received a publishing deal with St. Martin’s Press, which is pretty huge.
You might be interested to know that the Top 20 Semi-Finalists in the Dorchester Next Best Celler romance contest have been selected and announced.
You can find the press release on Textnovel’s blog.
I invite you to check out the Top 20, in particular, Lancelot’s Lady, by the only Canadian author to make the semis.
http://www.textnovelblog.com
Cherish D’Angelo, aka Cheryl Kaye Tardif,
author of Lancelot’s Lady
http://www.cherishdangelo.com
Thanks, Cheryl. I’ll check it out!