|
News & Reviews
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.
<
Back to News & Reviews Home
|
|
|