Page Turner Awards - Legitimate?

[GhostImposter]

I've been looking at novel competitions and the Page Turner Awards comes up on a lot of lists of competitions alongside well known legitimate ones. Yet something about it seems a bit off to me. It has all these offers of paid extras to your entry along with being quite expensive. The website is very messy and as far as I can work out an entry is £40 which is very expensive.

They list winners of the unpublished novels getting publishing contracts/mentorship for works in progress, but I know that sometimes these can be predatory of new writers and I can't work out if this one seems on the level or not.

https://pageturnerawards.com/

[notjustthe]

i read loads and always scour for reviews

and never ever ever come across this one

[GhostImposter]

It's down on this list from the Novelry and lots of lists like this that are full of legitimate competitions. It's the only reason I'm not immediately discounting them.

https://www.thenovelry.com/blog/writing-competitions-2023

[PaulaSheridan]

Hello, my name is Paula Sheridan, and I’m the co-founder of Page Turner Awards. One of our writers notified me of this conversation, so I popped along to say hello. Apologies for the long post, but I wanted to be thorough in answering your uncertainties about the Page Turner Awards.

My husband and I started this writing contest after I was entering my books into contests and found that most of them took my money and there was nothing more from them. Most contests don’t offer transparency about who is judging the writing, and there is no communication throughout the contest season to explain what is going on.

We have ensured this is the very opposite of our writing contest. We have previous year’s contests listed on our menu, so any writer new to our awards can see previous finalists and winners plus previous judges and prizes, as well as the current writing contest season. You can check our judges for 2024 here (https://pageturnerawards.com/2024-judges) and you can see that these are all professional experts who would not be involved with any scam. We are now in our 5th year of running the awards with lots of writers having their writing career kick-started after entering our awards, and you can see those writers here: https://pageturnerawards.com/writing-careers-kick-started

Regarding our optional extras, we work with many experts to help our writers to with editing or critiques. The optional extras are entirely optional, and you can enter the award without taking any of these.

Optional extras that a writer can decide to take if they need help in any area of their writing. We work with literary agents, film producers, editors and script editors who do the editing or critiques and the money goes to them, not us. This has helped thousands of writers in the past five years of our awards. Here you can see what some writers say about them using one of the optional extras and about their experience in our awards and about us (Ken and me) and about our communication with our writers: https://pageturnerawards.com/awards-testimonials

If you’d like to know more about us (a husband and wife team) you can read about us here: https://pageturnerawards.com/about-us

We are proud to listen to our writers, and most of our award sub-categories come from suggestions from writers. This year we introduce two new equality awards to ensure diversity and equality for all writers from different cultures are represented and writers rising above life challenges are also included.

We offer an Early Bird discount code to anyone on our mailing list but we also work with lots of writing partners so we’d be happy to offer anyone on this thread a half-price discount to try our awards. Go to our ‘Enter’ button on our main menu and follow the steps to enter. Use this code on your order: 24MNF50

Best to write the code into the discount code box because if you copy and paste it there may be a space before or after the actual letters which may make the code not work. I have set the code to expire at the end of February, but if you find this message after that time, please get in touch with me via our contact us and I will extend the code for you.

Just before I go, I wanted to say that as a writer and author myself, what we do on Page Turner Awards is very important to me. Ken and I are dedicated to our writing community, and we work tirelessly to ensure everything we do is above board because our reputation is vitally important to us. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please get in touch with Ken or me via our Contact Us page.

Once again, apologies for the long post, but I thought you'd want to know most of the things I have mentioned. Feel free to contact me via our contact us on our menu. Take care and best wishes for your writing!
Regards
Paula

[blackrabbitwhiterabbit]

I was a finalist in these awards last year and also a title winner. Not dodgy!

[GhostImposter]

Ok, I'll give it a go this year and see what happens. I'm most interested in the work in progress/mentorship part of the competition as I have a completed first draft with some chapters that are about as complete as I can (currently) get them. But it's slow going to really refine what I've done, so don't think I'll have a full novel completed until at least the end of 2024 if not a bit longer.

[ZombiesAreClammyDodgers]

@PaulaSheridan

Hello, my name is Paula Sheridan, and I’m the co-founder of Page Turner Awards. One of our writers notified me of this conversation, so I popped along to say hello. Apologies for the long post, but I wanted to be thorough in answering your uncertainties about the Page Turner Awards.

My husband and I started this writing contest after I was entering my books into contests and found that most of them took my money and there was nothing more from them. Most contests don’t offer transparency about who is judging the writing, and there is no communication throughout the contest season to explain what is going on.

We have ensured this is the very opposite of our writing contest. We have previous year’s contests listed on our menu, so any writer new to our awards can see previous finalists and winners plus previous judges and prizes, as well as the current writing contest season. You can check our judges for 2024 here (https://pageturnerawards.com/2024-judges) and you can see that these are all professional experts who would not be involved with any scam. We are now in our 5th year of running the awards with lots of writers having their writing career kick-started after entering our awards, and you can see those writers here: https://pageturnerawards.com/writing-careers-kick-started

Regarding our optional extras, we work with many experts to help our writers to with editing or critiques. The optional extras are entirely optional, and you can enter the award without taking any of these.

Optional extras that a writer can decide to take if they need help in any area of their writing. We work with literary agents, film producers, editors and script editors who do the editing or critiques and the money goes to them, not us. This has helped thousands of writers in the past five years of our awards. Here you can see what some writers say about them using one of the optional extras and about their experience in our awards and about us (Ken and me) and about our communication with our writers: https://pageturnerawards.com/awards-testimonials

If you’d like to know more about us (a husband and wife team) you can read about us here: https://pageturnerawards.com/about-us

We are proud to listen to our writers, and most of our award sub-categories come from suggestions from writers. This year we introduce two new equality awards to ensure diversity and equality for all writers from different cultures are represented and writers rising above life challenges are also included.

We offer an Early Bird discount code to anyone on our mailing list but we also work with lots of writing partners so we’d be happy to offer anyone on this thread a half-price discount to try our awards. Go to our ‘Enter’ button on our main menu and follow the steps to enter. Use this code on your order: 24MNF50

Best to write the code into the discount code box because if you copy and paste it there may be a space before or after the actual letters which may make the code not work. I have set the code to expire at the end of February, but if you find this message after that time, please get in touch with me via our contact us and I will extend the code for you.

Just before I go, I wanted to say that as a writer and author myself, what we do on Page Turner Awards is very important to me. Ken and I are dedicated to our writing community, and we work tirelessly to ensure everything we do is above board because our reputation is vitally important to us. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please get in touch with Ken or me via our Contact Us page.

Once again, apologies for the long post, but I thought you'd want to know most of the things I have mentioned. Feel free to contact me via our contact us on our menu. Take care and best wishes for your writing!
Regards
Paula

Hello Paula, when is the last date for 2024 submissions please? I don't see anything on the website about that... Thanks.

[MargaretThursday]

@ZombiesAreClammyDodgers
I think I've found it-31st May, but there's an early bird discount if you submit before 28th February (or maybe 29th, can't remember). It's under FAQ
Maybe @PaulaSheridan can confirm this. (Thanks)

[PaulaSheridan]

Hi Margaret, the early bird discount code closes end of February at the end of this week, but you have until the end of June to edit your submission before the judging starts. The submissions close at the end of June. Any other questions, just give me a shout through our website.
Regards
Paula