Will Taylor Hicks Enter This One Too?

Is this what novel writing has come to nowadays? You have to win a contest in order to become a published author and share your literary talents with the world? What would Charles Dickens say about such a turn of events? Or Mark Twain? Or--the most delightfully acerbic of them all--Oscar Wilde? Then again, contests have, in the recent past, produced some writers we would certainly be poorer to have missed, among them Edward Wright (who picked up the 2001 Debut Dagger Award from the British Crime Writers’ Association) and Steve Hamilton (who got his start thanks to winning the St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America Best Private Eye Novel Contest back in 1997).

Now, Court TV has teamed up with ReganBooks to launch the “Next Great Crime Writer” competition. Yeah, it sounds pretty cheesy, and Lisa Scottoline’s rah-rah video introduction on the contest Web site (“Do you have what it takes to write great crime fiction?”) doesn’t exactly fill one with faith that the next Raymond Chandler or Ross Macdonald will be sifted out from the spelling- and grammar-challenged sods destined to enter this race. Furthermore, Laura James raises some important questions about it in her Clews blog (“if you read the fine print, you’ll see that each contestant must waive all rights to the work--including the right to object if Court TV later produces an ‘identical’ work. What that’s supposed to mean, I haven’t the foggiest.”). However, a publishing contract with Regan, based on your entry (a 1,500-3,000-word synopsis, plus 5,000 to 10,000 words worth of sample chapters) impressing a panel of four judges (Jonathan and Faye Kellerman, along with Judith Regan and Scottoline) is more than some contests of this sort offer.

To enter the “Next Great Crime Writer” competition, click here. The deadline is Monday, November 27, with a list of finalists to be announced on December 11.

On the one hand, it’s a cryin’ shame that prospective novelists have to compete like this for publication. (What’s next, bathing suit rivalries? Or maybe American Idol-like “reality-TV” series in which audiences get to decide the fate of authors who can’t dance or carry a tune, but can only make one’s heart strings sing?) Then again, with reading proficiency declining seriously in American colleges, anything that can be done to increase the visibility and value of authors and their works simply can’t hurt.