These random thoughts were inspired by the current Self Published Fantasy Blog Off "SPBO" contest. Which, I should add, my books are not part of. I had entered Beneath the Lanterns, and Sailing to Redoubt in the previous two contests, but this contest is a "Campion of Champions" contest that pits the ten winners from the first ten years of the contest. And well, it struck me, at least, as; how unfair was that! I felt sorry for those authors. They all had been champions... but when this contest ends in a month, well, ten champions will have been reduced to just one.
But on to my random thoughts...
Entering art into any sort of contest or juried show is a crapshoot. All art is subjective and all judges are to one extent or another subjective when judging art. The "winner" will be the piece that best matches the subjective taste and/or assessment of any objective criteria that the judges are tasked with evaluating. One needs to understand that the results of these contests are essentially a matter of luck, i.e. since it boils down to the choice of judges, in order to avoid soul crushing disappointments.
There are, of course, ways in which contests attempt to camouflage the subjectivity of the results, often using popularity as a gauge of excellence on the theory that being more popular suggests greater success. For pure art popularity does not confer superiority. Pure art succeeds on an individual level. However, popularity can be a truly objective way of judging art - when art is considered as a product.
And, well, art can be, and often is, considered a product. In the case of books there is one objective way of measuring its worth, and that is the profit a book generates. Unfortunately, the publishing industry and most authors, are very closed mouth about how much money a book earns, which would be a truly objective way of determining what are the "best books," at least for the publisher and author. Contests that use popularity assume that the books that generate the most popularity reflect commercial success. So as long as everyone understands that the criteria of success is commercial appeal rather than artistic excellence, the results are authentic.
There are also in the book industry a number of contests that use some form of jury system to judge a book by its artistic worth. However, as I said above, the results will reflect the tastes of the judges, informed by the expectation of the genre and general readership. But these results represent a non-representational sample of readers, and as such, can be dismissed under the category of not ever being able to please everyone.
But even if you can come up with some sort of objective basis of judging art, what purpose does it serve? It must serve some purpose, or why bother? Officially it is "honoring" the creator for their outstanding effort. And there are no doubt artists who value that acknowledgement. But I can't help but believe that the main reason for contests is to promote sales. You can add "Winner of ___" to the cover of the book. And maybe it does. Anything is possible.
But what is not often mentioned is that there is a dark side to contests. Contests are, by their design, exceptionally efficient at producing "losers." The more people who enter their work in contest, the more losers a contest will produce. There can, by design, be only one winner. And while most contests give secondary prizes for runners up, there is still, only one winner. Every other entry has been judge inferior to the winner.
This feature of contests is obvious, but, as I said, often overlooked. Unless you're one of the losers. This effect struck me forcefully when I view the current Self Published Fantasy Blog Off contest. For the last 10 years author Mark Lawrence has run a contest to promote self published fantasy books to a wider readership by running a contests that features 300 self published books submitted submitted by their authors. The books are judged by various fantasy blogs and YouTubers. My gut feeling is that the state goal of the contest haven't been very successful. I suspect that the people who read self published books don't need the encouragement, and the readers who don't, won't for reasons that publicity will do little to change their mind, if they ever notice the contest. Videos reviewing these self published books as part of the contest are often the lowest watched videos on any booktube channel. Still, I suppose any odd mention helps the cause.
But, as I said at the top; the current SPFO contest is a "Champion of Champion" which pits the winning books from the last ten years against each other. They were indeed, all champions in the year they were entered. Now, however they are being ranked against each other to determine which book is THE CHAMPION, the best and it doesn't matter how often any judge might say that they're all champions, at the end of the day, only one of them will be judged the best. And the other nine can only be regarded as losers, former champions.
Despite my negative attitude to contests, as I mentioned above, I have entered two of my books in the above mentioned contest and two in a similar contest for science fiction books. I did so on the grounds that it's free and easy promotion and the hope that I might hear what an experienced reviewer might say about my book after being forced, in a way, to read it.
The free and easy as promotion aspect has proven to be a bust. I never saw a sales bump for my fifteen minutes of effort. And as for the feedback, the sum total has been two reviews posted on two obscure blogs and on Goodreads for the two books, which was nice, but didn't move the needle. The other two contests resulted in nothing more than a mention when all the books were introduced, i.e. nothing. A waste of 15 minutes.
One bonus result of entering these contests was to give me a sense of anticipation and jeopardy for a while, i.e. add a little spice to life, which proved to be almost all that made entering the contest worth it.
Going forward, I won't be entering any more of my books in these contests, since I am not writing books that fit the usual mold for either genre. I have no reason to believe I even advance to the second round, but I might risk a iffy review out of the process. Plus, I don't need the publicity since my free book readers seem to find my books at a pace most self publishing authors would envy. So I might as well let some other deserving author take my spot and get their shot at glory.
So to sum it all up: little effort, little gain. However, not being naive about what the results of judged shows and contests deliver, I suffered no heartbreaks. Only disappointments...
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