One Way to Get Your Book Out

Today begins the inaugural Inkshares Mystery & Thriller Contest, sponsored by the Oakland, California-based “publishing and literary rights-management platform” Inkshares. The goal, I’m told, is to find “at least three novelists for publishing and rights representation.” People like Christopher Huang, the Singapore-born Montreal architect-author whose debut novel with Inkshares, A Gentleman’s Murder—released this last July—was reviewed favorably by Publishers Weekly and has already been acquired for TV series development.

As the company makes clear on its Web site, Inkshares is hunting for both mysteries and thrillers. “The mystery may take place in 1920s London, modern-day Missouri, or on a future Martian colony,” it explains. “What matters is that we need—desperately—to know what happened. The thriller could follow attorneys, spies, physicians, politicians, or absolute nobodies. It could take place entirely in a small town, or across metropolises on five continents and reaching the highest corridors of power.”

The rules for entering this competition, and the distinctive criteria by which books will be judged, are available here. Entries will be accepted between now and 11:59 p.m. PST on November 21, 2018.