Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Incoming! unpublish(ed|able) ms. edition

A "technology entrepreneur" has created a $100,000 prize for the best unpublished, unagented novel manuscript, the NYT reports. The submissions web site (of course there's a website) will accept "up to 50,000 manuscripts," charging an entry fee of $85 each.

Whoa, that's 4.25 million dollars!! Now that's what I call a technology entrepreneur.

There will be a first, a second and a third prize, plus seven honorable mention prizes. I wonder what the other 49,990 losers of the putative "Sobol Prize" will be offered -- editing services, perhaps? Expensive writing workshops? Software that purports to write your novel for you?

The possibilities are endless, because you can never go broke underestimating the misplaced hope of bad writers. In any case, there's obviously at least one real winner here -- the (nota bene) for-profit corporation Mr. Sobol has created to run the whole thing.

No comments: