The hard part should be picking the winner. Not managing the process.

Creative Byline’s submission management can serve writing contests, competitions, and festivals as well as publishers; the common ground is the need to manage an incoming flow of manuscripts.

• The entire process is online, avoiding the costs and logistics of receiving documents from writers and redistributing them to reviewers.
• You can set acceptance criteria so you only get manuscripts that fit your needs—and only from writers who have the qualifications you set.
• Creative Byline can manage the financial transaction for any contest submission fees; contest administrators don’t need to receive and cash checks or deal with collections issues on checks that don’t clear.

If you don’t charge a submission or reading fee for your contest or competition, the Creative Byline service is completely free to you—and to the writers who submit. If you charge a submission or reading fee, Creative Byline will collect those fees, deduct $10 per manuscript, and remit the balance to you.

This service is available to reputable, nonprofit contests, competitions, and festival manuscript reviews. Sponsoring organizations must be affiliated with an industry association for writers (e.g., AWP, SCBWI, MWA), a writing program at a college, university, or institute, or be listed with Poets & Writers Grants & Awards database.

Contests sponsored by traditional publishing houses (those that compensate writers for their creative work) are also eligible, at a reasonable cost—much less than developing proprietary management systems. Sponsoring competitions is a great way to connect with writers, and the Creative Byline submission management system is a great way to minimize the impact on editorial staff.

Setting up a contest is easy:

• We work with you to understand your review process, including how many reviewers, whether manuscripts are scored, whether each reviewer keeps notes, and so on.
• You provide information about your event: its name, rules, guidelines, applicable fees, logo artwork, genre or other attributes for accepted submissions, and the names and e-mail addresses for your reviewers.
• Creative Byline sets up a customized page for your contest process, which you can link to from your contest web page or publicize via e-mail.

Writers will register for a free Creative Byline membership and upload their manuscripts. If their project meets your contest criteria and guidelines, they’ll have the option to submit it. Writers are always in complete control of their work on CreativeByline.com; only they and contests and publishers they choose to submit to can see their work.

Ready to have Creative Byline’s manuscript submission process simplify your contest or festival manuscript review? Have questions we haven’t answered here? Drop us a note telling us about your contest and we’ll get back to you quickly regarding next steps.


Current Contest Partners

The Festival of Faith and Writing is a biennial gathering of readers and writers hosted by Calvin College. The goal of the Festival is to provide a vibrant community where people come together to discuss, celebrate, and explore the ways in which faith is represented in literature and how it plays out in our world today. In 2010, the Festival will be held from April 15-17; registration is now open.