We are currently running three writing competitions. All are Flash Fiction/non-Fiction and free to enter:

1. 18-25 Summer Shorts 2013
This is a downloads based competition. The story with the highest number of downloads wins.
Prize: £50 for first place and top three will receive premium-level Ether Writer Membership.

2. Journeys Flash Competition
This is a judged competition. Our panel of five judges will decide the winner.
Prize: £50 for first place and top three will receive formal reviews from each of the five judges.

3. Twisted Tales
We are hosting this competition on behalf of Raging Aardvark Publishing.
Successful entries will be published in ebook and printed formats.

The top three in each contest will be promoted on our app. Details can be found on our blog: http://blog.etherbooks.com/

This is an exciting opportunity for young writers to develop their skill and to build a following.

The workshop is a pilot for what we hope will be a series of online workshops running this autumn. The beauty of an online workshop is that if you’re not available to watch for the whole day, you can dip in when you have time.

On 12th June we’ll be running Writing Popular Fiction.

Hosted by writing.ie/Inkwell’s Vanessa O’Loughlin, our live video workshop will feature three of Ireland’s top fiction authors – international bestsellers Paul Carson (his new book Inquest, pictured, is out later this year), Sinead Moriarty and Monica McInerney. You will be able to listen and watch them online, take part in writing exercises, communicate with the authors via Twitter at our test account @WritePopFiction and watch five aspiring writers in the studio audience learn from our three guests.

 

We’ll cover all of the key elements you need to write successful commercial fiction including creating characters, plotting and planning, conflict, resolution and story arc. We’ll be looking at great opening lines and how to hold your reader … plus lots more.

You can take part as well, through Twitter. Tweet a question to one of our authors @WritingPopFiction or complete one of the writing exercises we’ll be working on throughout the day. Selected submissions will be critiqued live by our authors.

Book your place by registering at www.livetestevents.com  We will send you an invitation with a password to join us for the workshop which runs from 10:00am until 4:00pm on June 12th (although it might be 5 to fit everything in!) If you’re reading this on Wednesday, join up now and see how it’s going!

As this is the first pilot workshop it’s being broadcast through a test website and there might be the occasional hiccup (!) but we’d really value your feedback to ensure that the following workshops are fully streamlined and deliver what you need, so even if you only watch for 10 minutes, we’d be really grateful if you can complete a very short email questionnaire that will be sent to you afterwards.

We have four workshops planned for the autumn and will be giving Writing.ie and Inkwell newsletter recipients advance notice of each one.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Winner of a Petra Kenney International Poetry Award, she has won and been placed in numerous creative writing and poetry competitions. From the other side of the writing fence, she runs the international flash fiction and humour verse competitions at Flash 500.

Lorraine is well qualified as she is also a writing competition judge for Writers’ Forum and is head judge for the short story competitions held by Lancashire Magazine and Yorkshire Magazine.

Flash Fiction Competition

Now in its fourth year, this quarterly open-themed competition for fiction up to 500 words has closing dates of 31st March, 30th June, 30th September and 31st December.

Entry fee: £5 for one story, £8 for two stories

Prizes: £300 plus publication in Words with JAM, £100 and £50

Humour Verse Competition

Now in its third year, any form of humour verse will be accepted, from a limerick to a poem of 32 lines.

This is also a quarterly competition with closing dates of 31st March, 30th June, 30th September and 31st December.

Entry fee: £3 for the first poem, £2.50 for each poem thereafter

Prizes: £150 plus publication in Words with JAM, £100 and £50

Novel Opening Chapter & Synopsis Competition

New! This is an annual competition, opening for entries on 1st May and closing on 31st October.  The judges for this competition will be the senior editors at Crooked Cat Publishing.

Entry fee: £10

Prizes: £500 first prize, plus a runner’s up prize of £200

10am-1pm, Sunday 16 June
Thai House, Railway Road, Dalkey
€40

What is a publisher looking for? How can you improve your pitch and improve your chances of getting published? Vanessa O’Loughlin explains what you need to do to attract a publisher. This workshop gets results – just look at the success stories on inkwellwriters.ie and writing.ie. In this workshop, Vanessa will explain the blueprint from keyboard to bookshelf.

Places are limited to 15 people.

To book click here: https://dalkeybookfestival.ticketsolve.com/shows/873494305/events

Do you have the next international bestseller hidden away in a drawer? Fancy yourself as EL James or Roddy Doyle? This is your chance to step into the limelight!

Kazoo Independent Publishing Services is teaming up with the RTÉ Guide and the John Murray Show to offer you the opportunity to publish your book and make it big on the literary scene.

With independent authors now regularly hitting the Amazon bestseller lists, self-publishing has become hugely attractive to writers who want to earn higher royalties, retain the rights to their work and take advantage of social media to promote their books.

The Kazoo team has over 50 years’ experience in trade publishing and we’ll help you join the ranks of successful indie authors by turning your manuscript into a professionally produced book and eBook. Your work will be edited, typeset and printed to the highest publishing-industry standards and you’ll work with a designer to create a unique and eye-catching cover.

So send us your entry and you could soon be seeing your name on the cover of your bestseller!

The Prize

• Professional cover design, including provision of cover image
• Professional typesetting and interior layout design
• Consultation with editor
• Copy-edit
• Proofread
• Upload to all eBook retailers, including Amazon and the iBookstore
• Listing on Nielsen Bookscan
• 200 printed copies of the book
• Marketing consultation
• Author page on www.writing.ie

Entrants must submit an original, unpublished manuscript of up to 100,000 words in length. This can be fiction or non-fiction, for children or adults, but it cannot be an illustrated book. Your submission must be a completed manuscript; we want to see the whole book!

To enter, please fill out the form HERE and upload your manuscript in MS Word format.

Do not send a printout of your manuscript as entries received by post will not be accepted and cannot be returned.

The closing date for receipt of entries is Sunday, 30 June 2013 at midnight. Manuscripts received after this date will not be accepted.

The winner will be selected by an independent panel of judges  – bestselling author and director Ferdia Mac Anna, bestselling author Sarah Webb and Bob Johnston of the Gutter Bookshop, and will be announced on the John Murray Show in August 2013.

Now in its third year, The Short Story competition is open for 2013 entries: www.theshortstory.net

This competition is looking to publish the best short stories from around the world. New or established writers welcome. Winners will be announced in December 2013 and the stories will be published on our website.

Deadline for submission is 15th September 2013. Word limit: 1,000 – 4,000. Entry fee: £5 via PayPal.

First prize: £300

Second prize: £150

Third prize: £50

For further details please go to the website: www.theshortstory.net

Their annual Women’s Poetry Competition is now open for entries. For poems of any length and on any subject, the first prize is £2,000 and it will be judged by the Costa award-winning poet Kathleen Jamie. Click here for more information.

They are also running the second annual Poetry Pamphlet Competition, for short collections of 18-20 pages of 20-24 poems by women poets who have not previously published a full-length collection. The first prize is publication by Seren Books, plus £250. The brilliant winner of the 2012 competition, Shadow Dispatches by Polly Atkin, is available to buy now. The closing date for both competitions is 17 June 2013. Click here.

For writers of other genres, all there is a broad range of regular slots open for submission:

For scriptwriters, there’s a Monologue feature (in the voice of a ‘shoplifter’ for issue 59) and they’re challenging poets to send their take on Four Lines that Rhyme.

Fans of new media are invited to submit A Week of Tweets about their writing and/or life – or to apply for a three-month ‘residency’ on the Mslexia Blog.

And as a special challenge to writers of description and character, their regular Pen Portrait feature will focus on a ‘nun’ in issue 59. The deadline for issue 59 is 15 July 2013. Click here for all the information needed to submit.

There are six additional open submission slots in the magazine – making 13 slots in total – one of their main aims is to inspire women to write, to edit their work, and to submit it for publication. The editors see Mslexia as both a jumping-off point for new authors and a showcase for some of the best new poetry and short prose by women writers at every stage in their careers.

For full submission guidelines and regular updates, visit www.mslexia.co.uk/submit.

For regular writing workshops, including those specially-commissioned for our upcoming competitions, visit www.mslexia.co.uk/workshops.

Keep an eye out for their Novel Competition, too. Open to unpublished women novelists only, first prize is £5,000 and the deadline is 23 September 2013. Visit www.mslexia.co.uk/novelcompetition for more information and full guidelines.

Submissions previously published elsewhere are accepted, and the deadline is 31 August 2013, with winners announced 1st December.

Entry is £10 +VAT and this permits the submission of two works into any one category.
You may enter as many times as you wish.

The selection of fantastic prizes includes:

• £500 prize money – Poetry winner
• £500 prize money – Short Fiction winner
• Publication in the Aesthetica Creative Writing Annual
• Complimentary copy of the Aesthetica Creative Writing Annual
• A selection of books from competition partners

What to enter:

• Fiction entries should be no more than 2,000 words each.
• Poetry entries should be no more than 40 lines each.
• Both Fiction and Poetry entries should be written in English.

For more information please visit: www.aestheticamagazine.com/creativewriting

This article explains it all, and check the comments for more companies offering a similar service. If you’re struggling to format your eBook, Inkwell’s Mick Rooney can help, just drop him an email!

http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/a-little-competition-for-smashwords/

Twitter is being used as a “commissioning channel”, Random House digital publisher Dan Franklin has revealed.

Franklin said the “vast majority” of the short-form non-fiction works he has signed for Random House for series such as Brain Shots have been commissioned as a result of the social media channel.

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/franklin-commissioning-e-books-twitter.html