Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Quarterfinals 2012—The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady!

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award

The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady beat out 95% of the competition to make it through to the Quarterfinals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2012!

While Round One (5000 entries) was based solely on the 300-word pitch,  Round Two was judged by Amazon top customer reviewers from ratings of a 5,000 word excerpt, about 16 pages.   

For the Quarterfinals, Publishers Weekly reviewers will read the full manuscript of each quarter finalist (250), and based on their review scores, the top 50 in each category (General Fiction and Young Adults Fiction) will move on to the semifinals, to be announced on 24 April.   

That’s when Penguin USA editors will read the full manuscript and review all accompanying data for each semifinalist and will then select three finalists in each category.  The Amazon customers will then vote on the three finalists resulting in the grand prize winner (one for each category) being offered a $15,000 publishing contract with Penguin USA and distribution of your novel on Amazon.com.

In 2010, an earlier version of The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady made it to Round Two (another novel made it in 2011). Then last year, after a major overhaul of the novel, and changing the title from The Lonely Affair of Jonathan Brady to The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady, it was shortlisted for 2011 Faulkner-Wisdom Award.  I knew I was on the right track, so I revised the novel last July/August 2011 and again January/February 2012 for this year’s competition.

So with 95% of the competition down, there’s 5% more to go (the best of the best)!  To reach the semi-finals, the odds are one out of five.  I like those odds.  At this point, all the hard work has been done, and for
the rest of us left in the competition, all we can do is keep our fingers crossed and wait.   

For me, I’ll be spending that time advancing another novel, The Girl in the Bathtub, which was a shortlisted for the 2011 Faulkner-Wisdom Award for Novel-in-Progress, a follow up to my Penang novel, A Perfect Day for an Expat Exit, a semi-finalist in the 2011 Faulkner-Wisdom.

I’m getting closer to breaking out, and with Lovers and Strangers Revisited already translated into French, who knows what’s in store for this 2012 Leap Year.  All the best!
         —Borneo Expat Writer

*Here are six lessons I learned from joining Amazon competition.


Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I 

2 comments:

Wilson James said...

Congrats on your success with this year's Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady. I only managed to get through the first round of ABNA in 2011, and I have great respect for the work of an author such as yourself. Being at or near the top is certainly worth celebrating.

Borneo Expat Writer said...

Wilson, thanks! I made the first round in 2010 and 2011 and was pretty disappointed that I didn't go further, but that also pushed me to rewrite the novel several more times and rethink the title, rethink the pitch.

There's a lot of good competition out there and I need to grab their attention from the first line of the pitch and the first line of the story and pull them in fast. This applies to agents, too. They're swamped with email queries! Only got a few seconds to grab them before they hit delete.

You still got time to revise your novel for the upcoming Faulkner-Wisdom Novel contest, deadline 1 May. That's what I'll be doing. Made the shortlist finals last year. Those contests, those deadlines--perfect for focused rewrites.

All the best and make the most of the 2012 Leap Year! http://borneoexpatwriter.blogspot.com/2011/12/leap-for-success-this-leap-year2012.html (I forgot to add this link, which I just did!)