As I was reading through some writer warning blogs, premierefiction.com came up. I checked out the site and am convinced that a brainless scam artists is behind all of this. Before I get any further, premierefiction.com is a site that is offering a writing contest. You, as writer, are suppose to submit three chapters of your young adult, young reader, general fiction, or romantic fiction book. The site also has an encouraging phrase of, “You could be our next best seller” in bold print.
The truth is, you cannot be their next bestseller. There are several reasons why this is a scam of a site. The first reason being the steep entry fee. To enter this contest, you must pay $125! You should never ever have to pay a contest fee. Even if you do have to pay a contest fee, it is usually under $5, not $125.
Hopefully the ridiculous price will keep you away from this contest. If not, please know that if you do enter the contest and there is not 14 other people that enter under your same genre, then you will not be qualified to win anything. They did not state whether you would get your money back or not, but I am guessing that you will not. Their terms and conditions were worded in a way that looked fishy and were hard to understand. That is also always a bad sign.
The grand prize is a three year publishing contract. That sounds amazing, until you read their contradictory statement, “This is not an offer for a publishing contract or any form of formal publication. This is a agreement to enter into competition/judging process for the sole purpose of procuring a publisher for a work of fiction.” That quote was taken straight from the disclaimer. That statement should leave every writer confused whether or not they will even get published or just get a nice publishing contract. The other prizes are twelve months of coaching on how to publish and distribute your book. Woo-hoo, a fraudulent, unsuccessful publishing company giving me tips on how to become the next Stephen King!
The sad thing is that their publishing site, actually did not look too mischievous. True, they looked unprofessional with their attempt at sexual suggestion advertising, but nothing on their site looks to scam-like. This contest will definitely put both sites on every writer’s beware list. They also say on their site, “Premiere Fiction is our way of finding you.” They should really change finding to the nice word of “scamming”, I think it adds more appeal that way.