Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award
The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) was a contest sponsored by Amazon.com, Penguin Group, Hewlett Packard, CreateSpace and BookSurge to publish and promote a manuscript by an unknown or unpublished author. The first award was given in 2008 and in 2015 Amazon announced that they would not be continuing the award and would instead focus on the Kindle Scout program.
After the initial submission period is over, the contest is made up of five rounds:
Amazon introduced the Breakthrough Novel Award in 2007. The first competition began in late 2007 and ended in early 2008. A maximum of 5,000 manuscripts were accepted during the contest period, which ran between October 1, 2007 and November 5, 2007. In mid-January 2008, up to 836 authors were selected as semi-finalists and received a capsule review of their manuscript from Publishers Weekly. On February 19, 2008, 100 semi-finalists had their manuscripts read by Penguin editors.
On March 3, 2008, the top ten finalists were announced. All received a prize package from HP and a self-publishing package from BookSurge.
Amazon customers voted to pick the grand-prize winner. The top three received a trip to New York City. On April 7, 2008, Fresh Kills by Bill Loehfelm was announced as the first winner of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Loehfelm won a larger prize package from HP and a $25,000 advance on a publishing contract with Penguin.
In late 2008, Amazon started taking in entries for the 2009 ABNA awards. The judges for the year were announced to be Sue Grafton, Sue Monk Kidd, Barney Karpfinger, and Eamon Dolan. Finalists were announced May 15, 2009.
On May 27, 2009, Bill Warrington's Last Chance by James King was announced as the winner of that year's contest. King received a publishing contract that included a $25,000 advance.Bill Warrington's Last Chance was published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA).
Sue Grafton, New York Times-bestselling author, said about the winning entry, "This is what reading is about and what a good book is supposed to do."
On January 25, 2010, Amazon began to accept submissions for that year's contest. Amazon announced that for the 2010 competition they awarding grand prizes in two categories, young adult and general fiction. They would also limit the top finalists to three in each category, with six finalists total for both categories. Another change from the previous competition was that the total amount of submissions allowed entry was raised to 10,000 entrants, double the amount of the 2008 competition.
...
Wikipedia