Earlier this year, Xerox and Lulu.com (a Print-On-Demand company) sponsored an "Aspiring Authors Contest" to find "the best work of unpublished fiction" from an author willing to publish their book POD. Their goal was "to demonstrate the power of digital print-on-demand as a smart alternative to traditional book publishing."
First prize was 250 copies of the book and $5000. The judges were a well-respected pair: Maureen Corrigan of National Public Radio and Emily Chenoweth of Publishers Weekly.
The winner was Tenure Track to Mommyville by Barbara Grosh, the story of an academic who is denied tenure and returns home to care for her child and try to save her marriage.
The purpose behind this contest was to legitimize the self-publishing or vanity/POD "alternative" for writers unable to break-in via the traditional route. If the sponsors could come up with a great book, one of the alleged many that languish unpublished due to the elitism and ignorance of New York publishers, surely this would be a triumph for aspiring vanity authors everywhere.
So let's see how they did.
Frank Wilson, my editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, is more open to self-published books than most review editors. (He's one of the few I know who'll even consider then.) He decided that Tenure Track to Mommyville might be an interesting book to include in the newspaper. So he gave it to Tanya Barrientos, one of the Inquirer's writers and a novelist herself, to review.
We often hear that the only thing self-published and POD books need is a chance. Given that, they'll be able to prove that they're just as good as the commercial books coming out of New York. So this one got a chance. Great news for all the self-published and vanity press authors out there, right?
Well...not so fast. Unfortunately, it turns out that the book wasn't very good. In Barrientos' judgment, it was not worth reviewing. She reports that:
In the publicity material, Corrigan is quoted as calling the novel "a picture of the trials and tribulations of 21st century motherhood."
But a well-crafted picture it's not. The story is serviceable, as is the prose. But there was nothing about Mommyville that made me think the self-publishing world is bubbling with undiscovered gold.
(Barrientos has some other things to say, too, so make sure to check out her comments.)
Wilson accepted her assessment and the book will not be reviewed in the Inquirer. So much for the POD alternative. If even their contest winner isn't up to snuff, how bad must the rest of them be?
(For more thoughts on things writers should be wary of, including vanity presses, check out J.A. Konrath's excellent piece "Writing Scams" over on his blog.)