I realise I’ve stumbled across this a bit late, and that the idea may be being developed somewhere else, but I wanted to express my support because I’d also been thinking about how such a competition might be run at Eastercon for the same reasons you’ve laid out, Stephen.

I hadn’t finalised a model in my head, but a few ideas I’d had were:

* Throwing the competition open to all comers at the con, but with a limit to the numbers, and on a first come first served basis.
* Running two sessions – one judged by the audience and the final by the judges.
* Alternatively, expanding the competition base and running judging panels at different cons, or maybe audience voted ones on online sites or forums. The final is held at Eastercon, where at least the work of the finalists is read out if they can’t make it to the con, so that the burden of judging isn’t left to the same people.
* Offering a prize of a serious, in depth conversation with a publisher or agent wherever / whenever’s convenient to both (preferably at the Con), about the winner’s writing, presentation and possible career (unless there is some company out there who’d be prepared to take the chance on offering a contract). I was thinking of a more business like discussion than an informal conversation over a pint in the bar (not that there’s anything wrong with those, but it’s a bit more tangible as a prize). Alternatively, perhaps asking Interzone or another magazine if they’d offer to publish the work as a prize – obviously an extract if it’s not a short story.
* Asking the authors to read an extract of their work as the only test – thinking being that they will have to be able to present their work reasonably if they get any kind of deal.
* Limiting the reading to a number of words, or a reasonable time limit.

Obviously, some of these are quite close to ones which have already been mentioned, but perhaps there are variations which might suggest ways ahead.

If there’s interest in this going ahead in some form, I’d be interested in helping out if help is required.

Cheers,

Alastair

I didn’t go to the dragons den thing in 2009 either. I think if such a thing were done again, I probably would.

Now I think I have a half-made thing sitting on my drawing-board and no time to make it work. Bah!

I think your proposal is a nice idea, the main area that worries me about it is people feeling short changed if the audience is considered to be mostly friends of a particular author, or mostly fans of a particular sub-genre, etc. There are ways to manage that of course, just saying that’d be the bit that worried me most. Also anonymity is difficult, as is a dedicated reader. Really you’d want someone familiar with the text to read it out to convey the right meanings.

One idea I’d wondered about but not sure how it works with copyrights and such is having some sort of ‘1st chapters fanzine’. It was inspired by conventions that have rather more fanfiction than Eastercon who take submissions in advance and publish a ‘zine alongside the normal programme book. But as I said, I don’t know the legalities around that if you’re trying to get your book published, you probably don’t want the first chapter being put out there like that.

I guess the best prize would be the chance to have the whole MS read by key people, having said that, with the changes going on these days, who knows?

Anne: I’d thought to use a dedicated reader, rather than have the author read his/her own work. That was meant to even out any bias caused by good/bad delivery, but it could easily allow an author to remain entirely anonymous. I’ve seen some people do this sort of thing extremely well and others (me) are far less comfortable with it. So yes, authors could be spared having to face their audience. In fact, it seems to me that the authors could be anonymous to the judges & audience too quite easily (if it was set up that way).

Ro: Publishing contract as a prize? Ha hahahahahaha…. Fat chance. As noted above, anonymity could (should?) be made possible. Possibly mandatory?