Fiction Contest

Welcome to the 2015 Leapfrog Fiction Contest page!

Deadline: May 1, 2015

Adult, YA, and middle grade novels, novellas and story collections; minimum length 22,000 words. 

Finalist: $150 plus manuscript critique by this year’s finalist judge, author Mark Brazaitis.

First prize: Finalist awards plus publication contract with $1,000 royalty advance.

Past Winners: 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009

the entry fee is $30.

What to Enter

Adult, young adult (YA) and middle grade (MG) novels, novellas, and short story collections are accepted. Minimum word count: 22,000. Individual stories in a collection may have been published in journals. Books that have been self-published will be considered “:unpublished” if fewer than about 200 copies were printed.

We look for literary fiction and mainstream fiction, including science fiction. Generally we are less interested in strict genre fiction, but if a manuscript is good and grabs our attention, we don’t care what the genre is.

How to Enter

All entries must be submitted by email to fictioncontest@leapfrogpress.com . Subject line: “Contest entry Book Title–adult novel.” Use your actual manuscript title or part of it, and indicate whether it is a novel, story collection, novella, YA novel, or MG novel. If you are unsure whether it is for adults or young adults, or should be called a novel or a novella, just take a guess. We are not picky about category.

In the body of your email message, please include your name, complete manuscript title, mailing address, and email address. Please do not include any biographical information. Indicate whether your entry fee will be coming by check or via PayPal/credit card. This helps us match PayPal payments to manuscripts.

Attach your complete manuscript to your message as a Word or PDF file. Please REMOVE any identifying information from the file before sending: no author name or address should be included. This includes information in page headers/footers, title pages, and so forth. If you forget, don’t worry: we’ll remove the information before the manuscript reaches the judges.

We ask that you do not attach a file greater than bout 1.5 MB. If this is a problem, please contact us. You may send larger files by Hightail or some other file-sharing system, but we need to know in advance if you are doing so. However, there is no reason for any manuscript file to exceed a couple of MB at the most. If yours does, it has illustrations that need to be removed or made smaller (lower resolution).

Finally, use the PayPal link below for your entry fee of $30, or send a check to Leapfrog Press 2015 Fiction Contest, PO Box 505, Fredonia, NY 14063.

Visit the website for complete guidelines:  http://leapfrogpress.com/contest.htm