David Montgomery reports that the "winning" novel in the Aspiring Authors Contest, sponsored by the POD vanity press Lulu.com, is the perfect candidate for self-publishing…because it’s doubtful any other publisher would be interested.
The purpose behind this contest was to legitimize the self-publishing or
vanity/POD "alternative" for writers unable to break-in via the traditional
route. If the sponsors could come up with a great book, one of the alleged many
that languish unpublished due to the elitism and ignorance of New York
publishers, surely this would be a triumph for aspiring vanity authors
everywhere.Well…not so fast. Unfortunately, it turns out that the book wasn’t
very good.
All this proves is that ONE person didn’t like the book well enough to review it. Well, Maureen Corrigan apparently liked it, and so did the fiction editor of Publishers Weekly.
You can actually read the first five pages of the book on Lulu.com. I would suggest doing that before bashing this author. Note that most of the people who are summarily dismissing her work haven’t even bothered to look at it.
By all means read it…
http://www.lulu.com/content/139495
The first page or two are devoted to someone ordering a cup of hot chocolate. And that’s about as interesting as it gets. The writing is workman-like, but any agent or editor would have suggested she start with something more compelling. At the very least, they would have suggested that she sharpen her opening paragraph.
It’s not awful, but it’s not great, either. “Flat” is how I would describe it.
If this book was the winning entry, I can only imagine what the losers must have been like.
That’s the reality test.
Not only that but the preview in Word is a horrible way to go. The font was microscopic.