Audible is offering a £10,000 cash prize in a new contest for British-based crime writers.
The audiobook specialist, which is owned by Amazon, has set up the Audible New Writing Grant: The Crime Edition for unpublished thrillers of at least 50,000 words.
The panel of judges includes crime novelists Mark Billingham and Sharon Bolton, audiobook narrator Clare Corbett, Daily Telegraph crime critic Jake Kerridge and Audible director of content Laurence Howell.
The contest is free to enter and if you enter during the first week you can get a free audiobook download of The Widow by Fiona Barton.
The winner will get a £10,000 advance against royalties for an exclusive worldwide English language audio publication deal, plus mentoring. A shortlist of three finalists will be announced in March 2018.
The final round will involve each finalist’s entry rated and compared against the other entries by the panel using the following criteria:
- Originality.
- Suitability for the audio format.
- Creativity.
- Quality of writing.
The winner will be announced in May 2018.
Clare Corbett, who narrated the audiobook of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl On The Train, says it’s important to consider the key elements which distinguish novels written specifically for audio from other formats, including the variety of sentence structure and rhythms of speech.
Entries should be emailed either in Word or PDF format, together with a submission letter, synopsis of the story and contact details to crimegrant@audible.co.uk. Closing date for entries is November 30, 2017.
You can check out the full terms and conditions at Audible.co.uk.