And here’s some information on a short story challenge, memoir publishing, how to submit, and more.

New York Midnight’s Annual Short Story Challenge is a creative writing competition open to writers around the world. There are four rounds of competition. In the 1st Round, beginning on January 24, writers are placed randomly in groups and are assigned a genre, subject, and character assignment. Writers have eight days to write an original story no longer than 2,500 words. The structure is similar to the 250-word challenge, but with more time to begin with.  Feedback from the judges is provided for every submission, there are thousands in cash and prizes for the winners, and the writers retain all the rights to the stories they create. Register here $57

Our friends at Authors Publish just published a list of memoir publishers that don’t require an agent to submit. This kind of publisher is hard to find, and agents generally aren’t interested in memoir, since it’s often a hard sell. However, there are still options out there. Some are old and respected, others are new and still figuring things out. Most of the ones on the list are open for submissions, but not all, and AP provides links to all of them so you can check them out.

The Authors Guild offers a free service for members with books coming out. If you have a book coming out in October, November, or December, you may add your listing to New Books by Members list so they can contact you about filling out a spotlight. Membership costs $149 per year and offers a number of other benefits including contract reviews, legal advice and forms, marketing and social media advice, website building and hosting, and access to members-only workshops, seminars, and events.

Member Susan Isaacs suggested a couple of new places to facilitate submissions. Submittable.com is one of the oldest and most reliable ways to do so, but they’ve recently merged with another company to offer more general features, so to help you wade through the options, here’s the Submittable for authors website. There’s also Chill Subs, with a database of 30,000 publications. Chill Subs is free or you can name a fair monthly price to use it and get more features. She also found an account on X/Twitter called Sobmittable – you got it right, it’s sob not sub.

New authors are seeking help from “street teams” to help them launch their book. A member asked me about these, and here’s a brief explanation. Members of a street team are recruited from among one’s friends, ideally those with a good-sized social media following. The author sends them each a paper copy of their book (or in a pinch, the ebook and a copy of the cover), and street team members post photos of the book and their reviews on social media. They also post graphics supplied by the author, to increase beek awareness. Teams can be in place for a month or two, depending on the author’s needs or the member’s patience! If you’re thinking of recruiting one, start early and include the back cover blurb for your book when you ask people to join, so you get people who like your kind of book.

Jane Friedman recently published an article by Robin Henry about what Jane Austen has to teach us about story structure. Whether or not you’re an Austen fan, this relatively short article, which uses Sense and Sensibility as its example, makes some excellent points that will help any author

You probably don’t need to be reminded that you need to get more readers to review your book, and Sandra Beckwith, book marketing expert, offers some suggestions for where to look for them. She explains that you need readers to share their opinions for many reasons, including that they provide others with evidence that they won’t be wasting their time or money on your book. Marketers call this “social proof.” Your advertising dollars will be wasted without them and you can often use reader feedbackto tweak your description or correct mistakes. Check out the article for suggestions on where to find those readers.

Sandra also has an online course, “Book Marketing 101 for Fiction: How to Build Book Buzz.” This written course (rather than video-based) covers nearly everything you need to know to promote fiction. Read the lessons, do the homework, and make things happen for your book. Learn more here.

Happy writing until next time!