Kindle Storyteller is a New Literary Contest for German Indie Authors

Kindle Storyteller is a New Literary Contest for German Indie Authors Amazon Publishing Amazon may devote most of its publishing efforts on English-language titles in the US but that is not the whole of their operations.

Amazon also publishes books in Europe, and over the past 6 months they've expanded their efforts there. Amazon has hired Clement Monjou as an editor in France, and they have job openings for editor positions for Spain.

And now Amazon has announced a literary "prize" for German authors. Lesen.net has the scoop that Amazon has launched a contest called Kindle Storyteller where indie authors can compete for a publishing contract.

Indie authors can enter the contest any time between 1 July and 15 September by uploading a new work to the German branch of KDP and making it available in the German Kindle Store.

The submissions  must be 45,000 words long, newly published, and during the competition the books must be available exclusively at Amazon.de. The submissions will be judged by an independent panel, and the winner will be announced in October at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The winner will get a 10,000 euro prize, the promise of 20,000 euros in marketing (?),  and a publishing contract - just not one with Amazon. Instead the winner will be offered a contract with Bastei Lübbe, a prominent German genre publisher.

For more details, check Amazon.de.

This is an odd contest, isn't it? At first glance it looks like Amazon has rigged the contest's terms in its favor, but the prize and the judging panel does more closely resemble that of a true literary award than the faux Hunger Games style contest one might have expected.

In contrast, over here in the US Amazon is using the Kindle Scout program to crowd-source titles to be published by a new hybrid publishing program which splits the difference between KDP and Amazon Publishing.  Kindle Press pays a small advance and asks for only the digital rights to a book. The first titles were published in February of this year.

Any title submitted to Kindle Scout is committed to a contract with Amazon should it win, but that is not the case with Kindle Storyteller. Instead Amazon is taking a far softer tone in Germany.

I wonder why that is.

lesen.net

image by Dave_B_

 

 

Nate Hoffelder

View posts by Nate Hoffelder
Nate Hoffelder is the founder and editor of The Digital Reader: He's here to chew bubble gum and fix broken websites, and he is all out of bubble gum. He has been blogging about indie authors since 2010 while learning new tech skills at the drop of a hat. He fixes author sites, and shares what he learns on The Digital Reader's blog. In his spare time, he fosters dogs for A Forever Home, a local rescue group.

1 Comment

  1. […] is very short notice, especially when compared to the other writing contest Amazon is sponsoring in Germany, but the timing is key. Japan announced its surrender on 14 August, […]

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