CLMP to Establish Guidelines for Contests

Though no one is making a ton of money off contest entry fees, for writers, who can easily spend hundreds of dollars each year on contest applications, it's important that contests are administered fairly. Toward this end, the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), a service organization with over 347 member publishers, plans to establish a list of guidelines for literary contests, along with a code of ethics, to be published on its site this fall. To begin collecting information, the CLMP held a roundtable discussion to help determine what sorts of guidelines would be feasible for contest administrators. As writers, we can encourage contests to act fairly by doing our research and being selective.

For help evaluating a contest's legitimacy, read Top 10 Ways to Spot Scams. For more information on the CLMP's proposed guidelines, see Kevin Larimer's article in Poets and Writers Magazine. (Larimer, a senior editor of Poets and Writers, was a member of the CLMP roundtable.)