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WORD: Professor wins ‘Search for the Next Great Crime Writer Contest,’ HarperCollins deal
By BPM Smith

A recent trend in which major publishers find new talent through an online voting platform has its first winner, WORD‘N’BASS.com has learned. Court TV, which launched its ‘Search for the Next Great Crime Writer Contest’ to help promote the television series ‘Murder by the Book,’ has begun informing finalists of the results.

English professor Hal McDonald won a $1,000 prize and the opportunity to sign a book deal with HarperCollins Publishers for his submission 'A Simple Case of Revenge,' contacts told WORD‘N’BASS.com. McDonald is an English associate professor at Mars Hill College in North Carolina whose winning novel is a murder mystery set in 1825 London.

McDonald was one of over 900 authors who sent in a sample chapter of their work. He beat out four other finalists including Wendy Dager, Peg Herring, Gordon Hopkins and Shirley Mathews.

WORD’N’BASS.com learned that a sweepstakes clearinghouse representative began calling finalists late last week to inform them about the results. Court TV plans to announce a winner at the contest website on January 22.

Interestingly, when organizers launched the contest last fall it invited authors to enter for a chance at landing a book deal with ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins. After its plans to publish a book ‘If I Did It’ by OJ Simpson drew public condemnation, the company terminated the title and shortly afterwards iced longtime publisher Judith Regan, who had green-lighted the project.

The ‘Search for the Next Great Crime Writer Contest’ now simply offers a deal with HarperCollins.

Separately, Simon & Schuster imprint Touchstone Books recently began its own contest to find a debut novelist through Internet voting. That winner will be announced on May 31, 2007.

 

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