Skeevy.

This is a longshot, but did any of you enter the "Be the Next Downtown Girl!" short story contest sponsored by Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books?

I'm a bit weirded out by this because winners were supposed to be announced by October 20, and the sponsors haven't made any further mention of the contest. The contest link on the website has been hidden, but the original page stating the rules is still up.

I see there are a few other rumblings on the net about the same thing. I'm not particuarly concerned about losing, but I did want to be able to resubmit it for other things. Then I saw this which basically states that I can't:

"All submissions become sole property of Sponsor and will not be acknowledged or returned. By submitting an entry, all entrants grant Sponsor the absolute and unconditional right and authority to copy, edit, publish, promote, broadcast or otherwise use, in whole or in part, their entries, in perpetuity, in any manner without further permission, notice or compensation."

So...basically they can hold on to my story indefinately without stating officially if there was a contest winner. They can use my writing any way they want and not pay me.

Hmm. At risk of never having anything published by Pocket Books, I've got to say that this contest was poorly managed. That'll teach me to read the rules more carefully next time.

EDITED ON 4/23/06 TO ADD: I see that I'm hitting the top of the Google search results for this one, so I'll just say here that six months after the winner was announced, there's been no news on this contest. They haven't updated their website or mailed out any information stating the contest was cancelled.

I'm going to send a SASE in for a winner's list per the contest rules and see what happens.

Posted by Tiffany at November 26, 2005 12:41 PM | TrackBack