Sponsored by Winning Writers
There are lots of contests for indie books. You can find them listed at the Alliance of Independent Authors and BookBub among other places. Here is what makes our North Street Book Prize one of the best:
- Large cash prizes: $10,000 for the grand prize, $1,000 for each category winner.
- Bonus awards: Winners receive additional services from BookBaby, Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Book Award Pro, Laura Duffy Design, Self-Publishing Made Simple, and Winning Writers to help market their books.
- Free gifts: All contestants receive five free gifts from our co-sponsors.
- Reasonable entry fee: $79 per book. Many other contests charge $85, $95, even $100+.
- No need to enter multiple categories: Choose one category for your book. If our judges feel it will do better in another category, they will reassign it.
- Flexible criteria: Submit books published in any year, on any self-publishing or hybrid-publishing platform.
- Pro-author attitude: Submit a non-qualifying book by mistake? A duplicate entry? We'll refund your fee.
- Transparent: We have four judges. Read about them on our guidelines page.
- Lasting, in-depth publicity: With some contests, it's hard to find out much about past winners beyond the author's name and the book title. At Winning Writers, we publicize our winners through our website, in our newsletter (50,000+ subscribers), and in our social media channels (including 135,000+ Twitter followers). Our North Street contest archives feature critiques of the winning entries, excerpts from the books, and bios of the winners going back to the first contest in 2015.
- No nickel-and-diming: Some contests charge winners for things like award seals. We provide those for free.
- Recommended by industry leaders: The North Street Book Prize is recommended by Reedsy and the Alliance of Independent Authors. Winning Writers itself is one of the "101 Best Websites for Writers" (Writer's Digest, 2023).
- New this year: Everyone who enters online will receive a brief commentary from one of the judges (5-10 sentences).
Submit online via Submittable or by mail. Click to learn more about our contest.
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