CHALLENGE! Writing competition

[LongTimeUnderdog]

http://www.roguebladesentertainment.com/products/rb-presents/challenge-anthologies/challenge-2010-writing-contest-discovery/

First prize is $75 bucks and a free copy of the anthology.
$10 entry fee, must be in by September 1st.

Not an "anything goes," competition.  Just close enough.

Anyway, looking into the legitness of this.  If anyone can help me confirm it, that would be awesome.  Not that it's a big deal, but it might be fun if it checks out.

[Silk]

Preditors and Editors and Writer Beware are always my first stop for finding out whether something is legitimate or not, if you haven't checked those yet.

I do recognize John Klima's name, if that helps. He blogs occasionally for Tor.com and I believe he edits a magazine of some repute.

Thanks for posting this! I'll look into it more in a bit. For now... I've got manuscripts to read.

[LongTimeUnderdog]

I checked with that website and cross referenced what they had on RBE website.  According to the listed judges, one of them is Alex Bledsoe, who according to Wikipedia (which is of course Gospel Truth) writes for Tor and has cover quotes and such from Orson Scott Card and other people.  So what I've read it looks legit.  In fact the article on the RBE website seems to go out of its way to generate comfort to writers (they had a link to the Preditors and Editors and Writer Beware website, they say that if not enough people submit everyone gets their money and stuff back, they claim to have at least somewhat prestigious judges and so on).

Two things stood out to me, however.  They said they would publish  it under the First Time World English Volume and Electronic Rights, neither of which googled very well.  I'm sure we all know what Electronic Rights are, but the FTWEV didn't come up at all, so I really can't tell anyone what that is besides, nothing at all.

The second thing that stood out to me was that while it did not say that rights to the piece (worlds, characters and such) would be exclusive to RBE, it also did not say they wouldn't.  So you can interpret that one way or the other I suppose.

The Anthology, as it is after all, is said to be published until RBE stops existing.  As far as I can tell that means no one gets any additional cash for writing it, other then the potential $75.00.  But I assume that's how all short story collections work anyway.  That's what I've got so far.

[Silk]

Those two things would probably be spelled out in greater detail (if not greater clarity--woo legalese!) if they offered you a contract.

The second thing that stood out to me was that while it did not say that rights to the piece (worlds, characters and such) would be exclusive to RBE, it also did not say they wouldn't.  So you can interpret that one way or the other I suppose.

You mean, would you retain your rights to write in that world, or retain the copyright for the story? That they don't specify that right off the bat might be more benign than it seems, since it's probably screamingly obvious to anyone legit. But yeah, contract stuff.

Anyway, it doesn't seem like anyone'd have much to lose by sending something in. If they offer you a bad contract, you can always say no.