Paid Reviews Not Welcome in Valhalla

In today's Business Day section of the New York Times, an article told Todd Rutherford's story. Rutherford built a business, GettingBookReviews.com, by providing positive book reviews for a price. At its height, the business pulled in approximately $28,000 per month. Regardless of the book's quality, Rutherford and his minions always provided a positive and often stellar review. Perhaps it is simply a by-product of the information age. Consumers have massive amounts of information to digest and little time to do it. Rutherford and his ilk offer the equivalent of a digestiv to keep the consumer from getting informational indigestion. It is in fact a sugar-covered placebo luring the reader into a false sense of well-being. Over the last several years, we have seen investment banks, ratings agencies and government regulators offer dishonest assessments of economic instruments with catastrophic consequences. It is often tempting to cut corners, but we at Valhalla Press feel that markets depend on integrity, that what the seller tells the buyer is true, that the buyer knows that a review is coming from a disinterested third-party, not the writer's shady shill. Our policy is to immediately terminate our contract with any writer who pays for reviews. We owe the readers who purchase our books nothing less.

Contest News

Important Contest Update

As we are nearing the finish line for our first contest, we have a few important updates:

1. Every entry will receive individualized feedback on each submission by our judges. It’s the least we can do and is, frankly, our pleasure.  

2. Every entry that does not win one of the big prizes but which will be included in the first issue of Ragnarok will receive payment.  This is very different from the industry custom.  Frequently, writing contests offer publication to writers who don’t win the big prize, but don’t offer payment. We think this is wrong. If your work is selected for inclusion, you will receive payment of $25.

3. We will not be extending the deadline. We think that’s unfair to writers, who are expecting a decision. While deadline extensions are also an industry custom, it’s wrong and even a little insulting to those who have entered.  We give our prizes away on schedule.

If you have hesitated to enter, now there is even more reason to get your work in by the deadline, August 31, 2012.  If you enter, you receive:

Detailed feedback

Prompt prize payment if you win

Payment for your work if you don’t win but are selected for inclusion in Ragnarok

What to look for in a writing contest

Not every writing contest is the same and some are even unreputable. It's writer beware. Here are some indications that a contest is legitimate:

1. It offers a substantial prize for the winner, often including cash plus publication.

2. The entry fee, if there is one, is reasonable and in proportion to the potential prize.

3. The prize is real - that is, cold hard cash and not a coupon or anything else that can't be used in the real world.

4. It does not take a writer's rights to the work beyond what's reasonable (and in our view, ethical). For example, some contests claim all rights to any work that is submitted, even if it doesn't win the contest. This is wrong. If you don't win, the work should remain yours to sell or publish elsewhere.

5. The contest provides contact information and someone available to answer questions. Your questions are answered by a real person before you submit your work.

The Valhalla Press contest meets all these guidelines.

Our submission fee is modest and is paid through Paypal, a safe and convenient way that doesn't expose the writer to the risk of providing credit card or banking information to an unknown party.

Our prize is paid in cold, hard cash, right into the winner's Paypal account for use as he or she sees fit. There's nothing to buy and no preconditions. We also send the winner his choice of ereaders, at our expense even if the winner is outside the United States. The only exception is if the reader can't be imported into the winner's country. In that case, we will substitute an additional amount of cold, hard cash.

 We do not take any rights from those who don't win. We only take first electronic publication right from the winners who will appear in our e-lit journal, Ragnarok.

We answer all questions promptly, via email. If you wish to talk to one of us via telephone, email us and we will send you our phone number. We primarily use email because we know many of our contestants are overseas and don't want to incur the cost of an international call. But the option is open.

Of course, you don't have to take our word for all this. Many writer's magazines publish guidelines on contests too (and run contests themselves.) For an unbiased view on why writers should enter contests like ours, check out this recent article in The Writer:

Use contests as a stepping stone by Hope Clark.

Contest Update

Thanks to everyone who has already submitted work. The quality and variety is excellent. If you are on the fence about entering because you aren't sure where your work fits, give it a try. We define literary fiction and creative nonfiction very broadly and are looking for a wide variety of styles, themes and points of view. If in doubt, fire off an email to Frank at frank@valhallapress.com

New Title Coming: The Ecstasy of Michaela

Michaela is no saint. Living alone in a decaying rust-belt city at the end of the twentieth century, her life completely adrift, she grudgingly attends her estranged mother’s funeral. There she learns about the grisly murder of a local boy named Tony Zabelsky. She becomes obsessed with his story and begins haunting the places he frequented until she meets his former lover, Eliza May Bradford. Eliza has repudiated her wealthy family and now lives in a squatter’s commune with her and Tony’s child. Michaela embarks on an almost hallucinatory journey through the ruined city and through the memories of Eliza and others who knew Tony Zabelsky. Along the way, she learns who holds power in her city and how they treat those who do not. Such unforgettable knowledge compels her to action. A dark literary fiction in the tradition of J. M. Coetzee and Don DeLillo, The Ecstasy of Michaela is at once a philosophical dialogue on the meaning of evil, an image-rich portrait of a country in decay, a political protest against the ravages that avarice and cruelty have unleashed on America’s cities, and a poetic character study of a woman who must find the resources to resist, in any way she can, the world’s crushing forces. This stunning debut novella by John Pistelli will be available July 15 at www.valhallapress.com and through Amazon.

Announcing Ragnarok, the e-lit journal, Writing Contest

On Monday, June 11, 2012 Valhalla Press will launch its first writing contest in conjunction with the coming publication of our e-lit journal, Ragnarok. Valhalla Press Literary Fiction and Creative Nonfiction Contest First prize: $500, Ereader of your choice and inclusion in Ragnarok, the Valhalla Press 2013 Anthology Second prize: Ereader of your choice and inclusion in Ragnarok, the Valhalla Press 2013 Anthology Honorable Mention: Inclusion in Ragnarok, the Valhalla Press e-lit journal Check back Monday for all the details and instructions. Meanwhile, begin polishing up your literary fiction and nonfiction work.

Ray Bradbury Passes Away

The literary world has lost another giant with the passing of Ray Bradbury today at age 91. Bradbury evoked the terror of totalitarianism in Fahrenheit 451. With a title taken from the temperature at which paper burns, the novel tells the story of a fireman, Montag. But in this world firemen don't put out fires, they start them. Written in 1953, the images of Nazi book burning and Stalinist repression were fresh in his mind.

Cold War angst played a large part in Bradbury's work. In The Martian Chronicles human colonists on Mars witness Earth's nuclear apocalypse in the Martian sky. His other classics include Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Illustrated Man, The Halloween Tree and many others.

In some ways, Bradbury became a repository for American angst. He was descended from a witch tried at Salem, Massachusetts. His father lost his job during the depression, prompting a move to California. As a child, he had vivid nightmares that often became fodder for his stories. A child of the depression, he developed a relentless work ethic writing 1,000 words a day from the age of 14 until his health would no longer permit it. He wrote “Fahrenheit 451” at the UCLA library, on typewriters that rented for 10 cents a half hour. He said he carried a sack full of dimes to the library and completed the book in nine days, at a cost of $9.80.