The Book Contest/Book Festival Hustle

As the editor for Rama y Raíces, The Best of CALMA,  I'm always looking for opportunities to promote our work. With that in mind, I entered our book in the 2026 San Francisco Book Festival. We took first place in Compilations/Anthologies, however since there was only one other finalist in that category, I thought the competition was rather thin. As I'd never heard of this festival, before entering, I did my due diligence, noting that this wasn't the first year for this festival. I spot-checked some of the previous finalists, finding that all I looked into were self-published. Well, so was Ramas y Raíces. In fact, in many such contests and festivals, the majority of entrants have been, in my experience, self-published. What we all seek with these competitions is the validation of our efforts and a recognition of our place in the literary world.

 Source: San Francisco Festival of Books

My Spider-sense did tingle. After signing on for this festival, I started getting emails for festivals with similar names: Hollywood Book Festival. New York Book Festival. New England Book Festival. Horror Book Festival. And even during the writing of this blog post, I received an invitation to the Southern California Book Festival. All the webpages had almost identical layouts. Turns out the awards ceremony for all these festivals would be at the Los Angeles Book Festival (not to be confused with the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books). Some CALMA members expressed concern this endeavor might be a scam, selling tickets to a nonexistent event, and this prompted me to do more sleuthing. The ceremony venue was listed as the Roosevelt Hollywood Hotel. I couldn't find any mention of the Los Angeles Book Festival on the hotel website and my voice mail to the hotel went unanswered. 

But more digging around led me to the The Los Angeles Book Festival's Facebook group and their webpage.  

Turns out that these festivals are hosted by JM Northern Media, LLC, and click here to read what the National Writers Union says about them. And there's more vitriol here. Not to defend JM Northern Media, but these posts were written years ago so perhaps much has changed since then.

From last year's Award Ceremony we have this group photo of JM Northern Media's finalists.

 

Source:  Facebook-Los Angeles Books Awards 

The main accusation against such contests and festivals is that they can be an awards mill hustle. An organization announces a contest with a fee of $50 per entry--100 entries means $5,000. To some, that is a nice haul. Keep in mind that $50 is on the low end of entry fees. The International Impact Book Awards asks $79 for one category entry with a sliding scale going to a five-category deal of $259. Shelf Unbound's 2026 Best Indie Book is asking $130 for early bird pricing. Some of the more prestigious awards, like the Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, charge no entry fee but MWA is a large organization funded with membership dues in addition to gifts and grants.

Also, some contests and festivals sell packages offering more media exposure, tables to sell your books, etc., but that's all par for the course.

Then there's griping about paying to attend the award's ceremony. The Colorado Books Awards charges to attend their awards ceremony, in addition to their $60 contest entry fee. Hosting award ceremonies ain't cheap, especially if you add a wet bar and banquet services, even if it's simply hors d'ouerves. And hotels are notorious for pulling fast ones. (You didn't know there's a separate charge for AV setup?) 

Finally, people complain about getting their hopes up, thinking that whatever award they win will provide a life-changing leap forward, only to get a certificate to hang on the wall and another line to add to their author bio. Whether you think any award is worth your time, that's up to you. Buyer beware.

Colorado Book Awards

 By Charlotte Hinger

The Colorado Book Awards event was held Saturday, July 26. I was thrilled that Mary's Place was a finalist for the Historical Novel award. First place went to All Our Yesterdays, by Joel H. Morris. It's about Lady MacBeth and I'm eager to read it.

I was delighted to learn that an anthology, Ramas Y Raices, written by Type M's very own Mario Acevedo was also a finalist. It features the best of CALMA--the Colorado Alliance of Latina Mentors and Authors. There were twenty-four contributors. 

The Colorado Book Awards are very suspenseful for the finalist. All the finalists are revealed early, but the winner is not announced until that very special Saturday night. 

Winners from each category read a selection from their book and then gave thanks to people they wanted to acknowledge. The winner of the Creative Non-Fiction Award was Brandon Shimoda with The Afterlife is Letting Go. This book was also chosen as Booklist's one of the top ten history books of the year. No small feat! In fact, Shimoda has won quite a number of prestigious awards. 

Afterlife is about the Japanese American concentration camps during World War 11. All the reviews praise his research plus his ability to integrate his own family's history. 

Honestly, if he writes as well as he speaks this book must be outstanding. He literally broke my heart. Although Afterlife is based on the Japanese experience, he then referred to the terrors of the Israel Hamas War. Of course I was aware of the staggering toll on people, but he also pointed out the obliteration of libraries. 

Why had that not occurred to me? In a very short time, precious rare books have been destroyed and libraries reduced to rubble. Historical and family records no longer exist. 

I'm not sure I could breathe without access to a library.  

The Final Stretch and Freebies

 I've posted before about my role as the jefe editor for Ramas y Raices: The Best of CALMA, an anthology from the Colorado Alliance of Latino Mentors and Authors. The project started in early 2022, and now, at last, we're in the final stretch to the finish line. However, it's not a time to coast as plenty remains so that the book launch goes off without any problems. Approaching this completion, I fidgeted for many nights, tormenting myself with disaster scenarios.

Final manuscript. Check. And rechecked. Checked again.

Cover: Ready for Amazon and IngramSpark. Check.

Advanced Reading Copies ordered and reviewed. Check.

Press releases sent out. Check.

And on and on.

Fortunately, I wasn't alone as my editorial staff and the CALMA Executive Board all helped with the heavy lifting. This is the third anthology I've honchoed and the last, I promise.

The Freebies.

HarperCollins, the first publisher of my Felix Gomez detective-vampire series, is offering books 1-3 for free as eBooks on Kindle Unlimited (through June 30, 2024). Get yours here:

 

Book 1

 

 

 

 

Book 2

 

 

 

 

 

Book 3

Emotional Filters

 While we humans like to think of ourselves as highly evolved, coolly rational beings, we are in fact, emotional creatures. Every decision we make must leach through our emotional filters. Ultimately, we behave based on how we feel. 

We old-hands in this writer business teach about the importance of the emotional motivations and reactions in our characters, especially when writing fiction, but how often do we think about our emotional filters affecting our daily lives?

What caused me to be mindful of this came about from my role as the jefe editor for an anthology from CALMA - the Colorado Alliance of Latino Mentors and Authors. I had put together a postcard to publicize our Go Fund Me, which I needed for a Meet & Greet this weekend. After checking out various online print companies, I settled on the best deal and sent the order. The company acknowledged with a delivery date of May 17. Perfect. 

Then May 17 came and went. No cards. The next day I sent an email asking for an order status. I received an auto reply telling me to expect an answer within 72 to 96 hours. What! The following day I did get a reply from a human informing that because of production difficulties, they couldn't promise a delivery date.

I felt like I'd gotten scammed. They had taken my money and jammed me into a corner regarding this opportunity to distribute the cards. My mind spun through all kind of scenarios. The cards arriving too late and of poor quality. The hassles of getting the credit card company to reimburse me. I imagined penning all kinds of vicious reviews everywhere that I could on the Internet, of contacting the BBB, putting the word out that this outfit was nothing but a bunch of crooked, incompetent weasels. 

With these venomous thoughts festering in my head, it was time to take my dog Scout for his walk. We took a different route than usual and passed by a house with signs asking dog owners to not let their dogs crap on the grass. Scout sniffed but didn't do any business. As we were leaving, the home owner came onto the front porch and asked, "Could you please keep your dog off my lawn?"

I snapped at him, "I'll take care of it," thinking that Scout hadn't done anything and the sign didn't say Keep Off The Grass. 

As the minutes passed I regretted how petty I had reacted. It wasn't the man's comments that had set me off, it was that I was still stewing about the postcards. Because of that, my emotional filter had been preset to bitter and so that was how I behaved, which I like to believe is not the real me. I wanted to go back and apologize but then I figured the incident was all about me so I let it go. 

After all that self-inflicted internal drama, the cards arrived yesterday, in plenty of time for the event. And they look quite nice.