by Bright Ewuru | May 25, 2023 | Articles
Written works are an immortal form of human expression. They serve as a fantastic way to convey knowledge, entertain and inspire us as humans and evoke emotion. Reading is timeless. According to a 2021 study by the Pew Research Center, 75% of US adults say they’ve read a book in the past 12 months in some format.
Publishers have done a good job of keeping literature alive. And to continue doing so, it is important to continually collect and evaluate literary submissions across the spectrum, from a ride range of topics, journals, magazines and larger literary works.
Running a literary evaluation or submission program can involve a great deal of organisation and management. Here’s a framework for organising such a program effectively.
The journey to a great literary submission program begins with highlighting your goals and what you hope to accomplish as a publisher. Identifying your mission serves as a beacon for both organising the program in the beginning and assessing it once it’s over.
Some goals could be to:
You’ll of course have your own mission and goals with the submission program. And it’s important to note these from the very beginning to keep your program focused and relevant.
The next step is to set up the process of the evaluation program. This stage involves making decisions on how the program will run. What will be the rules of participation? Who are you trying to attract to the program? For example, you might want only student writers to join; you might want to restrict it to previously unpublished writers or professionals within a specific organisation or association. Communicate the rules clearly so you only get submissions that meet your eligibility requirements. Be sure to include the specifics of the content you want—whether it’s an essay or prose or a complete novel, as well as your stance on originality and the diction/tone entrants should use.
Think about the timeline. How long will the program run? When will registration open? When will submissions open and close?
How will you evaluate each submission? Evaluating writing and literary submissions can include criteria such as creativity, diction, grammar, word count, fresh points of view, ideas, thematic consistency and originality.
Providing some tips to your entrants will help them prepare adequately, serve as a guide to your judges and ensure transparency, fairness and consistency in judging. Rubrics are ideal for the purpose of creating assessment criteria.
Crucial as well is deciding who will have legal rights over the entries and how they can be used after the program. This will save your brand from any intellectual property squabbles. If you want your organisation to own the rights, make it known in the program’s terms and conditions.
What type of award or price will you offer? It should be attractive enough to serve as a form of incentive, encouraging greater participation.
Notable ways to reward selected writers include
Your literary submission program needs a team of judges to assess the entries of the various participants to identify which entries are worthy of publication. When selecting your judges, choose experts in both the writing space and the relevant industry being discussed.
This will ensure a diverse panel of renowned professionals who can assess the submissions for literary and subject matter content. Additionally, it will guarantee that only the cream of the crop out of the various submissions is selected for publication.
Having a team of reputable judges, such as renowned writers or members of the publishing industry, will enhance the prestige of the program and attract more submissions.
A good marketing campaign will help boost your organisation’s reach and introduce it to a larger audience – a move that leads to more participants in the program.
To effectively promote the evaluation program, you could collaborate with schools, writing clubs, and similar institutions to help spread the word and encourage their students and members to take part in the program. It’s also important to team up with program sponsors and media houses and create press releases to stir up enough buzz about the literary submission program.
Be sure to post information about the program on your website or on a website dedicated solely to the program. Give necessary details about the program such as its timeline, the rules of participation, program evaluation methods and what’s in store for writers whose submissions are chosen.
Consider posting relevant details about the program on your social media accounts. Also, encourage your team and the judges to post content about the submission program on their social media channels, and then reshare such posts. This will help introduce your program to more people and show that you’re in collaboration with recognised experts.
Email marketing is also a great way to keep your community in the loop about the program.
Whether you’re into magazine publishing, book publishing or ebook publishing, the reality is that a manual setup can become burdensome quickly. Evaluation software streamlines the entire process and leaves little room for errors.
Submission and evaluation software works to do all the heavy lifting for you. With the right evaluation software, you can enjoy seamless registration of entrants, plagiarism detection, effortless submission, excellent publishing decisions, a suite of evaluation features and a branded experience.
Harnessing technology for your evaluation and submission program helps you save resources and boost productivity while ensuring that nothing slips through the cracks.
Creating a successful evaluation and submission program as a publisher requires much work and attention. Thankfully, with goal-setting, proper planning, a team of expert judges, good marketing and trusted evaluation software you can set up an impressive program that helps you find the best literary submissions, every time.
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