Entry fees. Actually, no entry fee is a warning sign. Contests cost time and money to administer, judge, and provide prizes. If there are no entry fees, who’s paying for it all? Too often the no-entry-fee means the contest sponsor will be coming after entrants for something later.

Sometimes the “later” is in the form of a book of winning entries. And everyone who buys a book is a winner. The book may be fairly expensive, and surely the winner wants multiple copies for friends and family. Too often, these are not really contests, with one’s work judged on its merits by professionals in the industry; but rather publishing entrepreneurs playing on writers’ (especially poets’) vanities. You buy books, you win.

Other times, the contest producers take it a step further and put on conferences with poetry readings. Entrants receive engraved invitations — because you are a winner, you get to attend and read your poem. Everyone is a winner. The producers make their money on the conference packages and books sold to attendees and entrants.

This is not to say that all no-fee contests are bad. But when you run across one, keep digging deeper into the fine print until you can find out who’s funding the costs. In a very few instances you will find a legitimate corporate or educational sponsor, but these are rare today. Even university-supported contests usually have minimum entry fees to 1) keep the not-serious writers out, and 2) help these entry fee ranges and with several hundred entries will have multiple cash prizes of $25 to $100 or $300. Contests with no or low entry fees offering $25,000 awards do not make financial sense. Keep digging. And hide your pocketbook, checkbook, and credit cards. 

Rights grabs. A number of websites have contests with entry fees, where each and every entry is posted to the site — either for reading or judging. When you enter these contests, be aware that 1) you are paying to provide these sites with their content (nice business model for them); and 2) you can no longer sell first rights to the material because it’s already been “published” as soon as it’s posted.

Other contests state in their rules that they retain the right to publish all entries (!) — with nothing said about any remuneration to the authors. It’s one thing to ask for one-time print anthology rights of a dozen winning entries — quite another to assume any rights to all entries.

And some of those “free” contests sponsored by corporations retain all rights to all entries, especially the advertising jingle and greeting card verse contests. Of course, they can’t do that unless entrants sign a statement transferring all rights, so be especially aware of lengthy entry forms with lots of fine print that require your signature.

Bottom line. Being among the winners in a writing contest can motivate you to keep writing, help place your book with an agent or publisher, or simply make you feel good. Just make sure you aren’t giving your work away — or worse, paying them to take it!

Dana K. Cassell is a full-time author and runs the Writers-Editors Network