Joanna:
<<
Do you mean to tell me that up to 20 years ago every competition in the UK
was free-entry?
>>
Yes, or they didn't exist.
<<
I wasn't doing such things then so wouldn't remember. But
£3 -£5 per poem to enter doesn't seem excessive to me. Often there are
quantity reductions available, as in £4 per poem, 3 poems for £10. Some of
the really big classy ones are more of course, but I don't see how these
things could be funded without some sort of entry fee.
>>
If you do the math on this, it can work-out at roughly £500 pounds clear
profit even on a small competition, and that includes administration fees
and an honorarium for the adjudicator. When you get to the level of the
National Poetry Competition, you're easily into four-figure numbers.
Having said that, there's a difference between national competitions,
regional competitions and (what I'm particularly thinking of) magazine-based
competitions.
Struck me that the chances of scoring in a competition (but then I'm
probably sour because I never did) were about on par with winning the
Lottery.
And there was a rather neat parallel to the Vanity Press Syndrome -- if you
got a straight publication in a magazine, you included it on your CV, if you
got in via a competition, you didn't tell your best friend.
The Freemartin
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