Contest Controversy Abated

There are numerous “controversies” that surround writing contests, and many responses to these from contest sponsors. Here’s a creative approach from PANK Magazine for their 1001 Awesome Words Contest, which offers prizes of $750/500/250:

“For the sake of transparency… We realize entry fees are controversial—acknowledged. Whether you believe us or not, this isn’t a reading fee — we consider it a privilege and pleasure to read your work. While we are hoping this will make us some money, we mostly want to hold a contest and we want to pay the winners, and we want the winners to truly benefit from participation. That said, the announced prize money is predicated on getting enough entrants (we don’t anticipate a problem). However, if PANK draws a prize pool less than $1500, we will announce how many entries we received, and we will pay the three winners on a graduated scale of 50%/33%/17% of the total prize pool. Good news last — if the prize pool exceeds $2000, PANK will lock its profit at 25% and increase the prize pool accordingly.”