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North Street Book Prize

4th year. Your self-published book can win up to $3,000 plus expert marketing services.

It looks like you're viewing this page with a mobile device. If you need help entering our contest, please email adam@winningwriters.com.

Co-Sponsors

Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Author of How to Get Great Book Reviews and The Frugal Book Promoter

BookBaby
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Judges

Jendi Reiter

Jendi Reiter is vice president of Winning Writers, editor of The Best Free Literary Contests, and oversees the Winning Writers literary contests. She is the author of the novel Two Natures (Saddle Road Press, 2016), the poetry collections Bullies in Love (Little Red Tree Publishing, 2015) and A Talent for Sadness (Turning Point Books, 2003), and the award-winning poetry chapbooks Swallow (Amsterdam Press, 2009) and Barbie at 50 (Cervena Barva Press, 2010). In 2010 she received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists' Grant for Poetry. Awards include the 2016 New Letters Prize for Fiction, the 2016 Rainbow Award for Best Gay Contemporary Fiction, the 2015 Wag's Revue Poetry Prize, the 2013 Little Red Tree International Poetry Prize, the 2012 Betsy Colquitt Award for Poetry from Descant magazine, the 2011 James Knudsen Editor's Prize in Fiction from Bayou Magazine, the 2011 OSA Enizagam Award for Fiction, the 2010 Anderbo Poetry Prize, and second prize in the 2010 Iowa Review Awards for Fiction. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The New Criterion, Mudfish, Passages North, Cutthroat, Best American Poetry 1990, and many other publications.

Full Bio

Ellen LaFleche

Ellen LaFleche is a judge of our North Street Book Prize. She has worked as a journalist and women's health educator in Western Massachusetts. Her manuscript, Workers' Rites, won the Philbrick Poetry Award from the Providence Athenaeum and was published as a chapbook in 2011. Another chapbook, Ovarian, was published in 2011 by the Dallas Poets Community Press, and a third chapbook, Beatrice, about a semi-cloistered nun, was published in 2012 by Tiger's Eye Press. Her poems have been published in Spoon River Poetry Review, Hunger Mountain, New Millennium Writings, The Ledge, Alligator Juniper, Many Mountains Moving, Harpur Palate, Southeast Review, and Naugatuck River Review, among many others. Prose credits include her 2014 Daily Hampshire Gazette article "Taken too soon, at 65: My husband John Clobridge's final days with ALS" and the essay "Happily Ever After" about dealing with diabetes through fairy tale poetry, which appeared in Wordgathering, the online journal of disability poetics. She also reviews books for Wordgathering. She has won the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize, the New Millennium Poetry Prize (shared with Jim Glenn Thatcher), the DASH Poetry Journal Prize, the Poets on Parnassus Prize for poetry about the medical experience, second prize in The Ledge Poetry Awards, and the Editor's Choice Award for Poetry from Writecorner Press.

Full Bio

Lauren Singer Ledoux

Lauren Singer Ledoux is an assistant judge of the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest, the Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest, and the North Street Book Prize. She is a native New Yorker living in Western Massachusetts. Her poetry has been published in Nerve House, Bareback, Feel the Word, Read This, Kosmosis, One Night Stanzas, and other literary magazines across the country. In 2015 she received her MSW at the University of Chicago, is a graduate of Bard College at Simon's Rock and an attendee of the New York State Summer Writer's Institute. She has self-published three chapbooks, and received an honorable mention in the 2011 Wergle Flomp contest. In addition to her creative interests, Lauren works as a mental health clinician and therapist in Holyoke, MA. Lauren prides herself on her wealth of useless knowledge, namely of nineties R&B lyrics, and she can pretty much quote "The X-Files".

Full Bio

Annie Keithline

Annie Keithline assists with the judging of the North Street Book Prize. She specializes in odd jobs, having been an elevator operator, ghost tour guide, video store clerk, and pawnbroker. Starting in 2012 she spent twenty months walking 4,500 miles across the United States. Her writing has been published in Joseph Conrad Today, the official publication of the Joseph Conrad Society of America. Current projects include The Anchor and the Hourglass, a historical horror romance graphic novel set in her home state of Rhode Island.

Full Bio

Jendi Reiter and Ellen LaFleche offer advice to contestants here.

Recent Winners

Alesa Lightbourne
The Kurdish Bike

Paul Thornton
White Man’s Disease

Nicole Evelina
Daughter of Destiny

See more past winners and remarks from our judges in our contest archives.

Please submit during February 15-June 30, 2018. Submit one or more self-published books in these categories:

Mainstream/Literary Fiction
Genre Fiction
Creative Nonfiction & Memoir (definition)
Poetry (new!)
Chidren's Picture Book (new!)

PRIZES

One grand prize winner will receive $3,000, a marketing analysis and one-hour phone consultation with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, a $300 credit at BookBaby, and 3 free ads in the Winning Writers newsletter (a $450 value)
The top winner in each category will receive $1,000, a marketing analysis and one-hour phone consultation with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, a $300 credit at BookBaby, and one free ad in the Winning Writers newsletter (a $150 value)
One honorable mention in each category will receive $250
We will publish online excerpts (1,000-6,000 words) from all entries that win a prize, along with critiques from the judges

Length limit: 150,000 words. You may submit a collection of short stories or essays as a single entry. No restrictions on age or country. No restriction on year of publication. All contestants receive a free PDF download of The Frugal Book Promoter by Carolyn Howard-Johnson and free guides from BookBaby. Read about the winners of our third contest. The results of our fourth contest will be announced on February 15, 2019. Entry fee: $60 per book. Click the Submittable button below for full details.

Prefer to enter by mail?

Supplemental contest information (copyright, privacy, special assistance, etc.)

Media
This contest accepts both print books and ebooks.

Categories
The judges reserve the right to reassign an entry from one category to another as they deem appropriate.

No Scholarly Works
This contest is not appropriate for scholarly works (i.e. academic, peer-reviewed, or refereed work). These would impose a substantial fact-checking burden on our staff. We rely on authors to affirm the accuracy of their works.

No Country Restriction; English Language
Writers of all nations may enter. However, the works you submit should be in English.

Not Anonymous
This contest is not judged anonymously. Friends, relatives, and close students of the judges and Winning Writers staff should not enter.

No Age Restriction
Writers of all ages may enter.

Privacy
We may share your contact information with the contest co-sponsors. We will not rent your information to third parties.

Copyright
If your entry wins any cash prize, you agree to give Winning Writers a nonexclusive license to publish an excerpt from your work online (1,000-6,000 words). We will work with you to select an appropriate excerpt. You retain all other rights. You are free, for example, to publish your work in print or online elsewhere, and to enter it into other contests, whether or not you win a prize in this contest.

Refunds
Generally entry fees are not refundable. However, if you believe you have an exceptional circumstance, please contact us within one year of your entry.

Assistance
If you have questions, please email the contest administrator at adam@winningwriters.com.

Submitting to the North Street Book Prize by mail

Please make your US$60 entry fee payable to Winning Writers and mail with your entry to:

Winning Writers
Attn: North Street Book Prize
351 Pleasant Street, PMB 222
Northampton, MA 01060-3961
USA

We regret that we cannot accept checks drawn on non-US banks. US currency and US dollar money orders are acceptable. You may also send your fee via PayPal to adam@winningwriters.com.

Paying via PayPal

Please go to PayPal and send your US dollar payment to adam@winningwriters.com. In the comments box, note which contest you are paying for.

After completing your transaction, please email your contest entry to adam@winningwriters.com. Include your postal mailing address and phone number in the body of your email message.

Need help? Please contact us for advice.

Thanks!

What is a self-published book?

We follow a definition provided by Chuck Sambuchino, Writer's Digest author and host of the Guide to Literary Agents Blog:

A self-published book is one where the decision to publish the book was the author's alone, the transaction involved the author paying any upfront costs for services, and the book is currently available for viewing and/or purchase. This includes books created through e-publishers (e.g. BookBaby, Smashwords, CreateSpace), book printers, and vanity presses.

Still not sure how this applies to you? Contact us.

Entering by mail

To submit to the North Street Book Prize by mail, please make your check or money order payable to Winning Writers and mail with your entry to:

Winning Writers
Attn: North Street Book Prize
351 Pleasant Street, PMB 222
Northampton, MA 01060-3961
USA

Please include your address, phone number, and email address with your entry. Note that entries will not be returned.

Last Call!

North Street Book Prize

Submitting to the North Street Book Prize by mail

Paying via PayPal

What is a self-published book?

Entering by mail

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