Contest of Will

I need a sponsor, that's the short version of today's blog post.

This is the time of year for authors to think about entering newly published books into contests, so I have been researching the possibilities.  Just finding a contest that will take a scratch made book is trying, let me say right here and for the record:  All of you who won't accept self published books are narrow minded snobs.  <-- That was the cleaned up version, my real thought included a lot of swear words and some ugly references to how they spend their personal time.

Fortunately, there are still many contests open to me and a handful that are specifically for scratch writers, so The Last Prospector will not be left totally out in the cold.  Which is the good news.

The bad news is that contest entering takes cash, a lot of cash.  First there is the entry fee, the average is $75, but most contests have more than one category you can enter and each category is an extra fee.  One contest has regions and categories, so there is a fee for each thing.

Now, I don't begrudge the organizations for charging a fee, not at all.  Nothing is free, prize money needs to come from somewhere as do the funds for advertising and administration.  Those folks are working stiffs like me with families to feed and bills to pay, so they should move the responsibility of the funding to people it will benefit.

I can't enter every contest, Clyde is vehemently opposed to taking out another mortgage on the house for that, so I have to be extremely choosy right now.  If it was just the entry fees alone, we could probably swing five over the next three months, but it's not just the entry fees, is it?

They need multiple physical copies of the book for the judges, which I have to pay for of course along with the postage to send them all to the proper places.  That could add up to more than the fee for each contest, so each entry is a serious financial commitment for us.

The potential rewards are great, the publicity alone is worth the investment -- if my book wins anything at all.
But there are cash prizes, some quite substantial, and even a few publishing contracts so I simply must try, even in a small way.

All told, I need about $1,000 to do this endeavor properly.  It doesn't look like much when I type it out, but it's a mortgage payment plus a couple of bills.  I like having a roof over my head, very much, so I'm trying to figure out where to scrounge up the extra cash.

I wonder if a bake sale would work?