Since nothing is being mentioned about the kind of story that can be sent , Can I assume story related to any aspect (human , emotion or philosophy ) will do?
1. With regard to your disdain for “internet lingo” like gr8, n00b and #epicwin ,I have a problem. What if my short story was about a professor of english who fails to understand an SMS from one of his students who was dying from a road accident and while bleeding to death, managed to txt “prof sv me car acdnt nr cnght plc”. The professor, in a display of callous indignation and a poorly timed intolerance for grammar, spelling and chatspeak, deletes the SMS while making a mental note to punish the student once he gets back to class. The student of course does get punished, by the steady drainage of blood and goes on to die. Would this submission be rejected on the grounds on your “No internet slang” rule?
2. MS Word only? The cost of an MS Office license is close to Rs. 16,000 (depending on versions, corp discounts, this amount might vary, but 16K is an indicative cost) and by no means cheap. Your insistence on only sending in an MS Word file is a breach of internet etiquette (seeing as you are conducting an online competition, I am assuming web etiquette does apply to you). Of course, you might argue that every one has a pirated copy of MS Word anyway, so why raise a trivial issue about it. Be that as it may, the common etiquette is to expect a RTF file (Rich Text Format) which is open and does not require any proprietory software to open and edit.
3. Your terms and conditions specify that a submitter must sign his rights away, giving you sole permission to publish (online) and print (dead tree) as you please. IMHO (In my humble opinion, for the Antichatspeaknazis), in an age of internet-driven creativity and an explosion of user generated content, that doesn’t sound very fair. Unlike the music industry, writers have always owned the rights to their work. It’s possible I misread your terms and perhaps you are only claiming the right to publish our submissions and nothing beyond that. But unless you specify that clearly and also reassure submitters that they own the rights to their work and any commercial terms will be discussed later, it’s just misleading.
Dear Krish,
Thanks for sparing your time and bringing forth these points. I will respond to them one by one.
1. We have no disdain for Internet Lingo, but we want to discourage its use in the body of the short story being submitted for the contest. The Internet lingo is #epicwin at times, but not in a contest that intends to judge the best short stories in English language out of the many that are received. If, however, the Internet lingo, or slang, is an integral part of a story, as you have pointed out in your example, then its use will not result in the rejection of the entry.
2. I think in our endeavour to bring about uniformity in the contest, we may have been a tad short sighted. Your point is taken and necessary changes have been made to the submission guidelines. We will accept a file in RTF format, though the preferred file format would still be MS Word.
3. As far as the rights goes, the author will continue to own his/her work, but by entering the contest, the author will be agreeing to give the first publishing rights to The MAG i.e. to say that the author will not be at a liberty to send the story for publication anywhere else till the competition is over.
I hope I have been able to address all your points.
I have a story in mind which might contain an ‘invented language’. Obviously, this language will not conform to the rules of ‘magcontest’ English. But the ‘invented langugae’ is very much integral to my story. I won’t use any Smese or ‘Internetese’ but I’d like to know if you’ll take a ‘disqualificatory’ view on words like ‘disqualificatory’ and ‘alienese’. Thanks for your time. Avi
I am sorry but we will not be able to accept an entry even if it is taken off your blog. I completely understand the point you are trying to make here, but accepting stories like that will lead to a lot of grey area, which will not be good for the contest.
Yes, you can send in artwork with your story. The artwork, however, will not be sent to the panel of jury, and will not be considered while judging the stories. But, if your story is selected for publication, the artwork will be considered for publication alongwith the story.
Didn’t understand the judging by the tweeting bit!! A short story that is not allowed grammatical errors yet needs to be retweeted in order to merit attention!! Pl clarify!
The judging of the stories will be based on quality more than anything else. We, however, also intend to let the readers have some say in the selection of the stories. It is our belief that a good story stands a chance of getting more comments, votes, RTs, and shares, etc., than an ordinary one. If a story can motivate the reader to share it with friends, shouldn’t it be chosen over others?
But, I will reiterate here that quality of the story will be the first and foremost criteria. We will not be selecting a story just because a story manages to get a lot of comments, RTs, or shares, etc.
Lastly, I would like to mention here that these criteria will be used only to select the fifty stories out of the many we receive. Once the fifty have been chosen, the final twenty will be selected only on the basis of quality, as judged by the jury. I hope I have been able to address your query.
Is anyone eligible to take part in this competition? Is there a restriction on the residing country etc? I couldn’t find this aspect in your Q & A section
Yes, anyone can take part in this competition. Since this is an online competition, there is no restriction on the basis of the country where the author resides. Some of the terms and conditions of the awarding of prizes (once they are finalized), however, may vary from country to country.
My question is about the no of words allowed.
A maximum of 2000 words for the stories is specified in the rules. It also mentions that participants need to give an introduction no less than 150 words or more than 250 words. Will these be added to the 2000 word count?
Lets say I have a story which is posted in my blog. Can i submit that story if i make some changes to it but the theme and flow remains the same. (The changes that i intend to do is adding some additional lines, mostly in the opening and middle parts (around 550 words) to the old story (which is around 1200 words presently).
“The Jury of five independent personalities will choose the final 20 stories that will eventually be published in paperback form. Their decision will be final, and cannot be challenged.” the fifth point of the terms & conditions.
My question, “will the writers of these 20 stories, be given any royalty or the profit share of the sale of that paperback form ?”
I would certainly like to know about the prizes before I decide to participate in the contest. What are the other benefits I get if I send my story and win in this contest?
@Saggi If you make some major changes to your original blog post, it might be considered for the contest. But, in that case I would request you to send in the link to your blog post along with your entry, so that we may decided whether your entry is eligible for the contest or not. If found eligible, we may request you to take off that post from your blog.
@Manpreet No, the writers of these twenty stories will not get any royalty or profit share from the sale of the book. It is important to mention here that we do not expect to make a profit from this venture. If, however, we happen to make profit – that is after the cost incurred during the various stages of the contest have been recovered – the same will be donated to some charity/NGO.
@Manu Yes, the last date for the submissions has been extended upto 30 th June, 2010. A participant can submit a maximum of three stories for the competition.
When are you going to announce the winners? Will the shortlisted ones be put up in indiblogger’s homepage? Please provide clarity regarding the same. (tentative dates if available).
Hi,
i came to know about this competetion on 29th may and hurrilea wrote a story and posted that. now i came to know that the deadline has been extended to one more month.
Now i want to modify my story and my bio . how can i do that?
Should I send the profile as a separate word dcument or along with the story?
The note stating that the story is original, do I put with the story or separately?
i just got to know about this competition and there’s not much time left. i don’t have anything written and ready to send. any chances the dates might be getting extended further?
@Sanjeev Sorry, but the word limit for the short story contest is between 1000 and 2000 words, therefore you won’t be able to submit a story of 476 words.
@Saggi The winners will be announced sometimes in August. We have no association with indiblogger, therefore there is no question of announcing the winner on the indiblogger’s homepage. We may, however, announce the winners on The MAG main page.
@MohanaShritha Sorry for the delayed reply, but you can can send in your new story and bio for the contest. We will consider that and ignore the earlier one
@Priya There are still a few days to go for the deadline. We may, if there is enough demand for it, extend the last date by 15 days, but not more than that. I hope you will be able to submit your entry for the contest in time.
is there any limitation relating to participants’ age? or how you are going to judge the entries from various age groups? it’s quite clear that ages do affect experience, which in turn institute the quality of story telling or story writing??
@arun Children can take part in the competition, but there is no age criteria. The stories will be judged on the basis of their quality, as the judges deem fit.
Since the last date has been extended, I am sending an edited version of my story. I do hope you will ignore my earlier one and consider the fresh one submitted today.
Dear Editor,
Since the last date ha been extended till 15th July, I’m sending an edited version. I do hope you will ignore the previous one and accept the new one.
Thanks
Hi ,
Since nothing is being mentioned about the kind of story that can be sent , Can I assume story related to any aspect (human , emotion or philosophy ) will do?
Thanks.
Bhawna
You have rightly assumed that the story you submit can be related to any aspect.
I have 3 observations.
1. With regard to your disdain for “internet lingo” like gr8, n00b and #epicwin ,I have a problem. What if my short story was about a professor of english who fails to understand an SMS from one of his students who was dying from a road accident and while bleeding to death, managed to txt “prof sv me car acdnt nr cnght plc”. The professor, in a display of callous indignation and a poorly timed intolerance for grammar, spelling and chatspeak, deletes the SMS while making a mental note to punish the student once he gets back to class. The student of course does get punished, by the steady drainage of blood and goes on to die. Would this submission be rejected on the grounds on your “No internet slang” rule?
2. MS Word only? The cost of an MS Office license is close to Rs. 16,000 (depending on versions, corp discounts, this amount might vary, but 16K is an indicative cost) and by no means cheap. Your insistence on only sending in an MS Word file is a breach of internet etiquette (seeing as you are conducting an online competition, I am assuming web etiquette does apply to you). Of course, you might argue that every one has a pirated copy of MS Word anyway, so why raise a trivial issue about it. Be that as it may, the common etiquette is to expect a RTF file (Rich Text Format) which is open and does not require any proprietory software to open and edit.
3. Your terms and conditions specify that a submitter must sign his rights away, giving you sole permission to publish (online) and print (dead tree) as you please. IMHO (In my humble opinion, for the Antichatspeaknazis), in an age of internet-driven creativity and an explosion of user generated content, that doesn’t sound very fair. Unlike the music industry, writers have always owned the rights to their work. It’s possible I misread your terms and perhaps you are only claiming the right to publish our submissions and nothing beyond that. But unless you specify that clearly and also reassure submitters that they own the rights to their work and any commercial terms will be discussed later, it’s just misleading.
Dear Krish,
Thanks for sparing your time and bringing forth these points. I will respond to them one by one.
1. We have no disdain for Internet Lingo, but we want to discourage its use in the body of the short story being submitted for the contest. The Internet lingo is #epicwin at times, but not in a contest that intends to judge the best short stories in English language out of the many that are received. If, however, the Internet lingo, or slang, is an integral part of a story, as you have pointed out in your example, then its use will not result in the rejection of the entry.
2. I think in our endeavour to bring about uniformity in the contest, we may have been a tad short sighted. Your point is taken and necessary changes have been made to the submission guidelines. We will accept a file in RTF format, though the preferred file format would still be MS Word.
3. As far as the rights goes, the author will continue to own his/her work, but by entering the contest, the author will be agreeing to give the first publishing rights to The MAG i.e. to say that the author will not be at a liberty to send the story for publication anywhere else till the competition is over.
I hope I have been able to address all your points.
I have a story in mind which might contain an ‘invented language’. Obviously, this language will not conform to the rules of ‘magcontest’ English. But the ‘invented langugae’ is very much integral to my story. I won’t use any Smese or ‘Internetese’ but I’d like to know if you’ll take a ‘disqualificatory’ view on words like ‘disqualificatory’ and ‘alienese’. Thanks for your time. Avi
If your ‘invented language’ is an integral part of the story, your story definitely won’t be disqualified!
Thank you, Editor.
“Stories already published on your blog/website are also not eligible for the competition.”
If we took them off for the contest would this be ok? Some of us that post our works still have few if any people accually reading our stuff.
Would you also consider a reprint of a story that might have been on a low print run magazine?
Would you be interested in any related artwork we might have to go along with our stories?
I am sorry but we will not be able to accept an entry even if it is taken off your blog. I completely understand the point you are trying to make here, but accepting stories like that will lead to a lot of grey area, which will not be good for the contest.
Yes, you can send in artwork with your story. The artwork, however, will not be sent to the panel of jury, and will not be considered while judging the stories. But, if your story is selected for publication, the artwork will be considered for publication alongwith the story.
Didn’t understand the judging by the tweeting bit!! A short story that is not allowed grammatical errors yet needs to be retweeted in order to merit attention!! Pl clarify!
The judging of the stories will be based on quality more than anything else. We, however, also intend to let the readers have some say in the selection of the stories. It is our belief that a good story stands a chance of getting more comments, votes, RTs, and shares, etc., than an ordinary one. If a story can motivate the reader to share it with friends, shouldn’t it be chosen over others?
But, I will reiterate here that quality of the story will be the first and foremost criteria. We will not be selecting a story just because a story manages to get a lot of comments, RTs, or shares, etc.
Lastly, I would like to mention here that these criteria will be used only to select the fifty stories out of the many we receive. Once the fifty have been chosen, the final twenty will be selected only on the basis of quality, as judged by the jury. I hope I have been able to address your query.
Is anyone eligible to take part in this competition? Is there a restriction on the residing country etc? I couldn’t find this aspect in your Q & A section
Yes, anyone can take part in this competition. Since this is an online competition, there is no restriction on the basis of the country where the author resides. Some of the terms and conditions of the awarding of prizes (once they are finalized), however, may vary from country to country.
Is this contest free?Or are we supposed to pay an entry/reading fee?
Entries to the contest are free, and there is no entry fees.
And prizes?
My question is about the no of words allowed.
A maximum of 2000 words for the stories is specified in the rules. It also mentions that participants need to give an introduction no less than 150 words or more than 250 words. Will these be added to the 2000 word count?
Is this competition still taking place?
@Avinash Yes, the competition is still taking place and the prizes will be announced very soon.
@Sudhamshu No, the 150-250 words that you use for your introduction will not be added to the word count of your short story.
thank you for the responses.
Hi,
Lets say I have a story which is posted in my blog. Can i submit that story if i make some changes to it but the theme and flow remains the same. (The changes that i intend to do is adding some additional lines, mostly in the opening and middle parts (around 550 words) to the old story (which is around 1200 words presently).
“The Jury of five independent personalities will choose the final 20 stories that will eventually be published in paperback form. Their decision will be final, and cannot be challenged.” the fifth point of the terms & conditions.
My question, “will the writers of these 20 stories, be given any royalty or the profit share of the sale of that paperback form ?”
I would certainly like to know about the prizes before I decide to participate in the contest. What are the other benefits I get if I send my story and win in this contest?
@Saggi If you make some major changes to your original blog post, it might be considered for the contest. But, in that case I would request you to send in the link to your blog post along with your entry, so that we may decided whether your entry is eligible for the contest or not. If found eligible, we may request you to take off that post from your blog.
@Manpreet No, the writers of these twenty stories will not get any royalty or profit share from the sale of the book. It is important to mention here that we do not expect to make a profit from this venture. If, however, we happen to make profit – that is after the cost incurred during the various stages of the contest have been recovered – the same will be donated to some charity/NGO.
@Nikita The prizes have been announced and you can check the prizes page for the same.
Thanks…
Can a gay themed short story be submitted?
Thank you
Has the date of submission been extended? How many entries are allowed in the competition?
@Manu Yes, the last date for the submissions has been extended upto 30 th June, 2010. A participant can submit a maximum of three stories for the competition.
@Sidhartha Yes, a gay themed story can be submitted.
Could I submit a short story which is of 476 words ?
Hi,
When are you going to announce the winners? Will the shortlisted ones be put up in indiblogger’s homepage? Please provide clarity regarding the same. (tentative dates if available).
Saggi.
Hi,
i came to know about this competetion on 29th may and hurrilea wrote a story and posted that. now i came to know that the deadline has been extended to one more month.
Now i want to modify my story and my bio . how can i do that?
thank you
can i write telugu stories ??
and how should i write?? in english letters or not?
Should I send the profile as a separate word dcument or along with the story?
The note stating that the story is original, do I put with the story or separately?
hi
i just got to know about this competition and there’s not much time left. i don’t have anything written and ready to send. any chances the dates might be getting extended further?
by when can i expect a reply to my earlier question?
hi
by when can i expect a reply to my earlier question?
@Sanjeev Sorry, but the word limit for the short story contest is between 1000 and 2000 words, therefore you won’t be able to submit a story of 476 words.
@Saggi The winners will be announced sometimes in August. We have no association with indiblogger, therefore there is no question of announcing the winner on the indiblogger’s homepage. We may, however, announce the winners on The MAG main page.
@MohanaShritha Sorry for the delayed reply, but you can can send in your new story and bio for the contest. We will consider that and ignore the earlier one
Sorry, the contest is open for stories in English only.
@pris It is up to you to enclose the profile and the note either with the story, or separately, as long as you send them with your story.
@Priya There are still a few days to go for the deadline. We may, if there is enough demand for it, extend the last date by 15 days, but not more than that. I hope you will be able to submit your entry for the contest in time.
is there any limitation relating to participants’ age? or how you are going to judge the entries from various age groups? it’s quite clear that ages do affect experience, which in turn institute the quality of story telling or story writing??
can children take part in this competition???/
how the entries will be judged on the basis of age??????????
Are you planning to extend the dates?
i’m guessing the deadline hasn’t been extended?
@priya The deadline has been extended till 15th July. After that no entries will be accepted.
@anu The last dates for entries has been extended till 15th July. After that no entries will be accepted.
@arun Children can take part in the competition, but there is no age criteria. The stories will be judged on the basis of their quality, as the judges deem fit.
@Sandip Sorry, but we do not have any age criteria for judging the entries.
@arun Children can definitely take part in the contest.
when are the selected stories scheduled to be published?
Dear Editor,
Since the last date has been extended, I am sending an edited version of my story. I do hope you will ignore my earlier one and consider the fresh one submitted today.
Thanks
Dear Editor,
Since the last date ha been extended till 15th July, I’m sending an edited version. I do hope you will ignore the previous one and accept the new one.
Thanks
Is this thread ended as no entries beyond 9 July
Bu the way, when are the results planned to be declared?
When are the results going to be out?
When are the results out?
Please let me know when the results will be out!
hey, when are you people planning to declare the results?
Happy new year!!!!
Hey when will our entries get published? Are we going to be notified when they do? When do we expect to be contacted individually? Just curious!!
Hey it’s been 4 months since I posted my question and I still haven’t got a response.
Is this contest still active?