About six weeks ago I proudly finished the edit and rewrite of my first novel draft and submitted it to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. They have quite a convoluted procedure for getting from (up to) 10,000 entries down to the final winner, but the exciting news is that I’ve passed through the first two stages.
I heard today that my novel Kanako’s Foreigner is officially a quarter finalist for the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award – that means that from the initial 10,000 entries (well, nobody knows if they got that many – but that is the maximum number) I was successful in reaching the best 2,000 cut, simply on the strength of my short pitch; and now I’ve made it into the top 500 on the basis of the first 5,000 words of my novel.
In the next round, Publishers Weekly people will read the entire manuscripts (quickly, I presume, since there are 500 of them) and on April 15 they’ll announce 100 semi-finalists. Keep your fingers crossed for me!
In the meantime, it looks like (some of) you can read the excerpt of my novel that made it this far as a free, downloadable “Amazon Short”. I say “some of you” because I can’t, and it sounds like other people outside the United States have the same problem – if I try to download my excerpt I get a message saying I’m in the wrong country to do this. American readers, do have a go – go to Kanako’s Foreigner at Amazon and click on “Download for free” on the right – and do please let me know if it works! Presumably they’ll fix it for non-US people soon and I’ll let you know when that happens.
Anyway, I’m pretty excited to have made it this far. I even feel a bit like the man on the right in this picture. That picture’s there for two reasons – one, it’s an accurate image of how I feel, and two, because a scene very similar to this is actually in the novel. As the man was saying at the moment I took that photo – it’s on top of Mount Fuji – “Banzai!” (Hooray!)
Tags: Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, Kanako's Foreigner, writing competitions
Congatulations Amanda and all the very best for the remaining stages of the competion.
Sadly I had no luck downloading the story either, look forward to reading your work when Amazon is back on track. Though I’m sure I’ll be able to purchase the full work in print very soon.
Fingers crossed for the semi’s and beyond,
Bill
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Wowee, I am thrilled for you!
Congratulations for getting so far. Well done!!!
I am of course insanely jealous! Since I m in Aust. I can not read the excerpt but would love an advance copy of the beginning if possible.
Banzai indeed!
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Omg! That is so exciting! Congratulations! Just making it this far is such a big feat!
I just downloaded the first 18 pages and yes, I’m in the US. It looks great! It’s all formatted pretty with the Amazon logo all over it. Haha! Anyway, if you email me (you should have my address listed in the comment) I’d be happy to attach it and email it to you so you can check it out. Then you can even upload it to your blog for your other readers to download.
Good luck on making it even further in the contest!
CONGRATS! I am too!!
Mine is The Good Daughters: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001UG3AIM/
I doubt if I’ll get any farther, but I didn’t expect to get this far, so it’s pretty cool.
Good luck!
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Oh hey, I just read and reviewed your excerpt. I loved it!
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Thanks Kristan, I’m really glad to hear you liked it
Hopefully I’ll get to read yours one day when Amazon fixes the anti-US bug that leaves us unable to download any excerpts from outside the US …
Oy yeah, that’s such a crazy bug. Like, didn’t they realize that, at the very least, their non-US entrants would want their non-US friends to be able to read too?! (Not to mention that in this global world, everyone’s got friends everywhere.)
I’m hoping they’ll fix it soon. At least there’s a good month before the next round of decisions come out. Surely they can work up a solution by then?
In the meantime, I know a lot of authors (self included) are happy to email PDFs to people, so if you see excerpts that intrigue you, maybe drop the author an email? It’s probably easiest to go through the forums for that. (Suddenly I’m an ABNA forum junkie…
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[...] earlier this week when I was notified that my first novel has made the quarter finals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. What I hadn’t expected was that the parts of the day I save for fiction writing business [...]
Amanda
Congratulations!!!
You are the best. I am looking forward to read your first novel, can I get a free copy by e-mail? jaja
Claudia