Amazon announces the third edition of KDP Pen to Publish Contest

Amazon India has announced the third edition of Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Pen to Publish Contest. The contest is open to all genres in English, Hindi and Tamil. Interested participants can submit their original written entries either in short-format (2,000 to 10,000 words) or long-format (more than 10,000 words) through Kindle Direct Publishing on Amazon.in from 15th September 2019 to 14th December 2019. Entries will be judged on originality, creativity and the quality of writing, and customer feedback. The judging panel will include popular authors like Durjoy Datta and Sudha Nair for English entries, Divya Prakash Dubey for Hindi entries, and Pa. Raghavan and C. Saravanakarthikeyan for Tamil entries.

For each language-format combination, up to five finalists will be short-listed and top three winners will be selected from each segment. Winning entries in each language for the long-format category will win a cash prize of Rs 5 lakh, a merchandising deal and a chance to be mentored by the panellists. The first runners-up will receive a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh each, while second runners-up will be awarded Rs 50,000 each. For the short-format category, winners will be awarded Rs 50,000 each while the first and second runners-up will get Rs 25,000 and Rs 10,000 each respectively.

Additionally, this year, the finalists and winning titles of long-format category from all six Kindle literary awards around the world will be evaluated by a panel from Amazon Prime Video executives to select one book. They will assess it on creativity, originality, boldness of storytelling and relevance of cultural aspects for the local territory. The winner will be offered an exclusive, 36-month option for Amazon Studios to purchase the screenplay along with an advance payment of ~Rs 7 lakh.