Hugh Howey

Bestselling author of Wool and other books. Currently sailing around the world.

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SPSFC Submissions

The first annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition is about to begin!

On July 1st, at noon EST (9am PST), author applications will open.

Have your files ready (an .epub or .mobi file and your cover art). You’ll need to answer a questionnaire so we know a little bit about you and your work, and you’ll have to make sure your book qualifies (word count, content guidelines, correct genre).

Over the course of the next eleven months, the first 300 novels entered will be whittled down to ten finalists and one winner. To read more about the competition, click here.

Best of luck, everyone!

**UPDATE**

Wowsers. It took a single day to get 300 submissions. We are going to leave the application window open until we get 400 entrants, and then we will close the process and start sorting and assigning these books to reviewers.

Thank you and best of luck to all who entered! More soon.

15 replies to “SPSFC Submissions”

Arghhh… You’re going to make me get up at 2am in Australia? Oh well. At least I’m on holiday so I won’t also have to get up for work.

Argh… You’re going to make me get up at 2am in Australia? Oh well, at least I’m on holiday, so I don’t have to also get up for work.

SPSFC, here I come!

I’m more than a little disappointed.
I just submitted for the competition, but it wasn’t mentioned that .mobi format was a requirement. You specifically state;
“Ebooks will need to be sent in .mobi or .epub format.”
It took days to generate the .EPUB document. I had to learn new tools, etc. to do so. I focus on the printed book, and worked with Amazon tools for my ebook. When I tried to export from Calibre (A new tool) to .MOBI, I got chapter salad.

If you were going to make .MOBI a requirement and .EPUB only an option, you should have said so.

Just entered, thank you so much for this competition! Will there be a way to verify that our entry was properly submitted and received, so we can make any changes if necessary before the deadline? Thanks again.

Hi! My mobi file was too big and while I uploaded something I compressed quickly, I’d rather replace it with a file that was made specifically to be smaller. I tried editing the form response, but it won’t let you replace files. Should I submit a new form response? I don’t want to lose my place in line or seem like I’m maliciously trying to double-enter.

Can you tell me why there is a 10Mb limit on the .mobi file? My novel is 600 pages and my .mobi file is 17Mb. So am I excluded?

Entered!
I had an issue with my .mobi file being huge (17mb) with no internal images, but realized that I was using the one KDP gives you for reviewing your file. So I found a free site to convert my original docx to mobi format and received a tiny file that appears perfect.

It looks like I’m out already because I used the wrong filename for the cover. Good luck to everyone else. Maybe next time. And new applicants: read all the form instructions carefully! Filenames must be “Title – Author”

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