The e-tailer’s Breakthrough Novel Award competition will return for a second year, open to new manuscript submissions as of Groundhog’s Day, 2009, and once again they will partner with the Penguin Group. Amazon calls the first contest “enormously successful,” despite the tepid response from the marketplace to the August release of winner Bill Loehfelm’s FRESH KILLS. (Loehfelm’s book has sold approximately 4,000 copies through outlets tracked by Nielsen Bookscan.) But Penguin has acquired rights to four of the other ten finalists: Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan (Amy Einhorn
Books, July 2009); The Wet Nurse’s Tale by Erica Eisdorfer
(Putnam, August 2009); The Butterflies of Grand Canyon, by
Margaret Erhard (Plume, January 2010); and Casting Off, by Nicole
Dickson (NAL).
This year’s contest will accept up to 10,000 submissions (double the number from last year) during a seven-day window. The professional judges reading and selecting from among the final three contestants include authors Sue Grafton and Sue Monk Kidd, agent
Barney Karpfinger and Penguin Press editor-in-chief Eamon Dolan. Last year the judges had to review the final top ten manuscripts. And though there will be twice as many submissions, half as many books as last year will get “reviewed” by Publishers Weekly (500 “quarter-finalists”). Hewlett Packard has not returned as a sponsor this year.
Release
Contest site page