Monday, October 12, 2015

Strange New Worlds Contest - A Caution

I just ran across the "Strange New Worlds Contest" being sponsored by Star Trek Books and Archway Publishing (the self-publishing arm of Simon and Schuster).  On the surface it looks like a pretty cool contest for Star Trek fans and Simon and Schuster will publish an anthology with ten of the stories.  But there are two catches.  First, only two authors win prizes and the prize is a "Book Seller Package" to self publish a novel through Archway.  The second catch is this clause in the official rules "All entries become the sole and exclusive property of the Sponsor and entries will not be returned".  Yep, you're giving up all rights to your story by entering the contest and they can do anything they want with your work.  Plus Simon and Schuster collects all the profits from the anthology.  Watch your backs out there, my friends.

2 comments:

Jacqueline Seewald said...

I agree! We always have to read the fine print when it comes to contests and contracts.

sandra seamans said...

Yes, and they had this one buried fairly deep in a lot of fine print. It always bothers me that companies that can afford to pay rarely do and then they have to steal the rights on top of that.