Hmm.

Naomi posted this and, although a 20K advance sounded tempting, I was initially put off by the rights clauses.

Except, I started thinking about the whole concept and, the more I thought about it, the more I was turned off the entire concept.

Am I just being hopelessly cynical, or am I wrong that to enter a competition with a publishing contract as its prize is:

- Negotiation-limiting: If you win a prize, rather than wowing an editor, you have to accept the contract they offer so can only get the deal they offer... which may or may not be a good one.

- Income-limiting: If your book is good enough to win, it is also good enough for the additional rights to be worth something. Again, you have no option to negotiate even on rights the publisher has no interest in.

- Self-limiting: Once the book is in the competition, it is effectively taken out of any possibility for getting you an agent, getting you a publishing contract or... anything else... from the moment you enter until the moment the results are announced.

- Desperate and self-defeating: You have no better chance of being published, and a conceivably much worse chance, as your book, if it is good enough to win would also be good enough to get a publishing contract on its own merit without the competition.

And, therefore, almost monumentally ill-advised under almost any circumstances?

Don't get me wrong, 20K is a nice sounding lump sum that I would definitely have to think about before turning down... but not good enough to tempt me to deliberately sabotage my writing career for as long as it takes me to write the next novel.

Thoughts?

G

Well, the contract they're offering isn't one to be sneezed at, by any means. £20k for a single book is seriously good going, with the book trade how it is these days. You'd be doing well - though not spectacularly - to get that by any other route. Average first-novel contracts are down to £3-5000 from major houses.

Clearly, in principle, if it's good enough to win, it was good enough to get published anyway. But, having said that - and I'm someone who does believe that the cream rises to the top eventually - as one more way of getting noticed I'd be tempted to try it.

And there's nothing in the T&Cs that I can see, to stop you trying to get an agent alongside or after the comp, so I'm not sure what you mean about it being self-limiting. I'd enter the competition as one of many routes to getting it published.

Okay, an agent won't be able to negotiate over that contract, but if I were an agent, and an author rocked up and said, 'I'm in the shortlist for the Terry Pratchett, and I'm halfway through my new novel (synopsis and sample chapters attached) howsabout representing me?' and I really liked the book, I'd bite their hand off.

And winning the comp would be fan-dabby-dosily good from the publicity point of view, compared to being one more debut that year.

What's not to like, I'd say, if you're writing the right kind of thing.

Or have I missed something?

Emma

Yes, I agree with Emma. It's got to be a good thing. £20K is not to be sneezed at!

Well... I guess that's why I started the thread...

And there's nothing in the T&Cs that I can see, to stop you trying to get an agent alongside or after the comp, so I'm not sure what you mean about it being self-limiting.

Ya see...

So, you have this fantastic MSS and you enter it into a fictional competition and then go to an agent.

The agent loves it and says, "I know two or three possible homes for it, please let me represent it and I'll throw in a couple of degrading sexual favours just to tempt you to give me the opportunity to represent a writer with your potential." So, you sign up with the agent and your book starts doing the rounds and you quickly get into very positive negotiations leading to an offer and...

Either:

a) You win the prize and decide to take it, irritating the hell out of the publishers you were in negotiation with and causing your agent to lose one hell of a lot of face so that s/he dumps you

Or:

b) You win the prize but the book is no longer available, irritating the hell out of the prize organisers who announced you as the winner because, they foolishly assumed, after entering their competition, you might have actually wanted to win it

Alright, so it's a fairly unlikely situation, but I cannot see any way that would be a good thing for any of the parties other than (in the very short-term) you.

If I were an agent, and I knew that the book I was representing might not be available to sell, I would be very, very wary of doing very much to find a buyer.

G

<Added>

EG: I am talking about a good way to sell the current MSS because it will take a while to have the next one ready to go...

PS:

an agent won't be able to negotiate over that contract

And, in fact, neither can you.
Moreover, you have no indication of what is _in_ that contract. They have only said they will give you a 20K advance and publish it... they have not said, for example, whether the royalties will be 0.001% on any sale that doesn't occur in the Bootle branch of Hughes & Hughes.

entering into a publishing contract with the Publisher (Prize) and will be required to agree to license exclusive world publishing rights in all print, electronic, audio and any other media formats in the Novel to the Publisher on acceptance of the Prize

Thing is you'd get a £20K advance, plus oyur book published in these other formats, plus foreign rights, so with any luck the royalties will flood in and you'll get over and above oyur advance, plus it's SF which is a bit of a niche genre so, as Emma says, it's good money. If it was me I'd bite their hand off, accepting it.

Unfortunately childrens books have been excluded, which is strange given that the some of the most successful fantasy titles of recent years have been for this market.

Ben Yezir

All interesting points, and I do think it's all too easy to be exploited as a writer, in so many many ways.
BUT
If a book says

Terry Pratchett

on the cover it is going to sell a gazzillion copies, approximately. You (you know, when you win) can then negotiate agent/publisher contracts for your next novel as you'll pretty much have your pick.

Personally, just the thought of TP rejecting my novel is enough to make me want to enter. Well, one of his minions rejecting it.

Good luck!

Gaius, as far as I know Transworld are signatories to the Minimum Terms Agreement, which is extremely basic - less good than I suspect this contract would be - but a hard-won, low-level fair contract. I would assume that the contract would be on the usual royalty rates, which are fairly standard across trade publishing, but there's nothing to stop you ringing Transworld and asking: I'd put money on them saying it's their standard contract. The negotiating power an agent has over royalty rates is nil, unless you're unbelievably starry. The negotiating power an agent has are the advance itself, and the various rights, as discussed.

As Jenzarina said, and I said earlier, many an agent would be extremely interested in a client who'd won this, because it sets the next book off on an excellent footing.

This has cropped up before, a propos competitions. When Fabulous Agent asks to see your full novel, you tell them, by the way, that it's also in for the Terry Pratchett, but that you're looking for representation long-term. They then read it knowing what just might happen, and, assuming they love it, make a decision about whether they're in for a quick buck in which case they might want to hold on until the TP result is out, or whether they want to invest in you for the long haul, in which case they'll take you on.

If they can take it on and sell it before the comp announces it, well and good, and you withdraw it from the comp. If they haven't sold it yet and Transworld ring to say you're the winner, then you and FA decide on the best strategy - whether to decline the prize, or put other submissions on hold until you know the result. Even 'shortlisted for the Terry Pratchett' would play well at the Sales Conference, and ultimatly in Peoria, I should imagine.

Again, maybe I'm being dim, but I can't see that a small, possible stumble IF an agent's in mid-negotiation just at the TP is being announced, outweighs the huge benefits of winning.

Emma

Am I just being hopelessly cynical

Apparently, the short answer is yes.

If I wrote the sort of book this comp represented, I'd be in it to win it. Even the runners up may be offered a contract and I am certain agents will be hovering about too. Seems like rather a tasty deal for an unpublished author to me. Besides, you get to meet PTerry I expect and who wouldn't love that!

Gaius, a healthy dose of cynicism never did any author any harm, whether they're aspiring or multi-published. And certainly if anyone who'd posted about how a comp like this is the keys to the kingdom, would have had me on the thread sharpish being the wet blanket. (Sometimes I think my job on WW is to rain on everyone's parade, whether it's a parade of heartbreaking starry-eyedness, or a parade of congential cynicism...)

And no doubt an agent could hop on this thread and explain just what I've got wrong. But I do think this one should provide what it says on the tin, without seriously hampering anything else you might be doing.

Emma

If you can walk away with 20K off your first book, good luck to you. This is like agonising about becoming the next James Bond.

I know, I know, but the latest Bond movie just got axed.
What is the world coming to when you can't even make money out of a brand like Bond?
G

What is the world coming to when you can't even make money out of a brand like Bond?

They probably could if making the things didn't involve contracting half the Russian army and the whole oil producation of Kuwait, in doing so...

Emma