Large cash prizes: $10,000 for the grand prize, $1,000 for each category winner. $500 for the honorable mention in each category.
Bonus awards: Winners receive additional services from Atmosphere Press, Book Award Pro, BookBaby, Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Gatekeeper Press, Laura Duffy Design, Self-Publishing Made Simple, and Winning Writers to help market their books.
Free gifts: All contestants receive free gifts from our co-sponsors.
Reasonable entry fee: $85 per book. Some other contests charge $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 five 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 61,000+ Facebook 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, 2024).
Feedback: Everyone who enters online can choose to receive a brief commentary from one of the judges (5-10 sentences) at no extra charge. This feedback is a popular feature!
Submit online via Submittable or by mail. Click to learn more about our contest.
