Wow.

We just can’t get over how many truly remarkable stories we received for the first ever Lulu Short Story Contest.

Our panel of 25 judges carefully read through the 2000+ submissions, picked their favorite, then read it out loud to the rest of the judges. From there, judges voted on which stories they liked the best from the readings and tallied the results until there were three clear winners with the most votes.  Your stories made us laugh, made us tear up, and some of the judges even got into literary debates over their favorites that lasted for days on end (no, really).

It was amazing to see everyone take such a passionate interest in our authors’ work. I can’t express enough how hard it was to pick just three finalists. But, we had to…SO! Without further ado (and because the suspense is killing me)…here are the winners of the Lulu Short Story Contest:

1^ST PLACE WINNER:

The Red Boots by Poornima Ram Kiram

$1,000 Cash
Barnes and Noble NOOK
A review in Shelf-Unbound Magazine
Free Lulu Publicity

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2^ND PLACE WINNER:

Grass by Charles D. Shell
$250 and a Barnes and Noble NOOK™:

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3^RD PLACE WINNER:

Revenge by Gail Kavanagh
$100 Gift Card to Barnes and Noble

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Honorable Mention:

Persona Quietus by Jesse Lee
Lovely Stranger by Jennifer Porter-Kennard

If you didn’t win, don’t let it get you down.  So many of the stories were so excellent and hey, now you have an eBook version of your story and your name out in the world for millions of readers to see. All just because you believed in yourself. Neat huh?!?

You can take that shiny new eBook of yours and promote it this holiday too for what we’re calling Download Day.  We did some research and figured out that December 26th is the highest traffic shopping day for eBook sales – much like “Black Friday” in November. So, we’re throwing a good old-fashioned author sales contest for Download Day and the author who sells the most copies of their eBook on December 26th, 2011 – even if you sell your eBook for free – will win a Barnes and Noble NOOK and $100 off coupon good for anything on Lulu.

Learn more about Download Day, the highest traffic buying day for digital content on the Lulu blog here. And thank you again so very much for helping make the Lulu Short Story Contest such a success.  Due to popular demand, we’ll soon be posting a full list of all 2,000+ submissions to the contest for everyone to read and we plan to publish an anthology featuring all the semi-finalists and three winners for all to enjoy.  More details on that to come soon.

All the best this holiday from Lulu.

What a month it has been.

As NaNoWriMo and the Lulu Short Story Contest come to a close – we’ve been thrilled by the hundreds and hundreds of responses we’ve gotten from authors of all ages and genres who couldn’t resist the chance to share their creativity and who found out just how easy it can be to publish an eBook.

We’re not done yet though.  The official cutoff date for the contest is Dec. 1st, so there is still time to submit a story of your own and enter to win $1000, a NOOK™, free publicity, and a professional review of your story in Shelf Unbound Magazine.

We’ve been getting a lot of questions too.  Mainly from authors who just want to be sure they have entered their story correctly.  Remember, once you’ve published your short story as an eBook with our EPUB Converter, to copy and paste your story’s web address on our Survey Monkey form.  Once you click submit on Survey Monkey, you’ll be taken to a “thank you” page with a 20% off coupon on it – good for your next purchase on Lulu.  We may need to tweak your submission too in order to get it to pass the validation requirements set by retailers like the iBookstore^SM. You still keep the copyright though and we will only change the formatting – not the content itself.

Once Dec. 1st hits, we’ll gather all contest submissions and our panel of judges will fire up the coffee pots, pull out the reading glasses, and get to work reading all your remarkable entries.  We’ll announce the first, second, and third place winners mid-December.

So keep that creativity coming – you still have till Thursday.  You can do 600 words in no time!

In the 10 days since we launched the Lulu Short Story Contest, we’ve received hundreds upon hundreds of submissions, authors are helping each other out more than ever on our social networks, and authors are finding just how easy it is to publish an eBook of their very own.

Based on the whopping 150+ comments on the original contest announcement blog – we’ve noticed that a lot of you have some of the same questions about the contest, so here are some helpful tips to consider as you get closer to submitting your own story.

600 Word Max: We know it might be a challenge, but it is definitely possible to submit a short story that is 600 words or less.  Facebook fan Jason Johnson puts it best:  “I agree that 600 words is short, but I also think that’s the point.  What can you tell in 600 words that still makes it interesting to your readers.” Oh, and the 600 word count does not include the title and copyright material.

Use the Template: I love that people are looking for ways to spice up their entry – be it with pictures, a table of contents, etc.  But avoid straying from the template we’ve provided.  We’ve done most of the work for you formatting-wise and designed the template to pass through eBook validation as smoothly as possible so you can be sure your story can be distributed to places like the iBookstore.

Multiple Submissions: Yes please! You are certainly allowed to submit more than one short story, so keep em coming.  600 words not enough to contain all that remarkable creativity? Then write and submit as many new short stories as you want.  Several people have submitted more than one already.  We’ve even had one guy ask if he could send in 400 separate stories.  No matter how many you give us, submitting more than one will increase your chances at winning.

Submitting Your Story: Submitting your story is just a matter of visiting this link to Survey Monkey and filling in the 5 questions.  The most important part is providing us with a link to your work.  Once you finish publishing, you can click the “My Lulu” tab.  Here you’ll see a list of your projects, including your new eBook short story.  Click the “view/buy” button next to your work’s title.  Copy the web address of your story’s product page and paste it into question 4 on Survey Monkey.  This will help us track submissions and is how you get your 20% off coupon for participating.

Pricing: Once you get to the pricing step in the publishing wizard.  You will be able to set your price to anything you want – even free.  The default price is set at $1.24, which is the minimum for making revenue off your story.  If you’d like to give your eBook Short Story away, simply enter $0.00 as your price.

We’re excited to see so much activity going on with this contest and definitely plan to do more in the future.  There is still plenty of time left in the month though, so send us your short story today.  Good luck and thanks for playing.

Want even more short story writing tips?  Check out this handy article from Fiction Factor.

The Lulu Short Story Contest is here and starts right now!

As many of you know, November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) – a great time to put your nose to the grindstone and try to complete a 50,000 word novel in under 30 days.

But we got to thinking: over 200,000 authors participated in NaNoWriMo last year and only 30,000 actually made the deadline.  That leaves 170,000 dedicated and talented folks high and dry.  That’s a whole lot of creativity to waste.  So why not make things easier?  After all, creativity is about quality, not quantity.

Thus, the Lulu Short Story Contest was born…

Throughout the month of November – all the way to December 1st – anyone can participate in our Short Story Contest and take the pressure off the creative process.  Better yet, we want to help folks see their creativity available to the public as quickly as possible too, so we’re gonna help you create an eBook out of your short story that’ll go live in the iBookstore and on Barnes & Noble’s NOOK.

How to play:

• Write a 600 word short story using our handy eBook template.  Download the template here.
• Follow the list of things you don’t need to worry about available here.
• Upload your work to Lulu.com and send it through the Lulu ePub Converter
• Make sure to set your work to public availability and set to “sell on Lulu, the iBookstore, Barnes and Noble, and more.”
• Once published, submit a link to your eBook’s product page, along with your name and registered Lulu email address to SurveyMonkey to help us track submissions and claim your 20% off coupon.  Once submitted, you’ll receive a notice within Survey Monkey confirming your entry.
• Feel free to promote your contest submission on our Facebook and Twitter (#nanowrimo) pages too

What about prizes?!?!

This is the best part.

First place:

• $500 cash
• Barnes & Noble NOOK
• Feature in Lulu Staff Picks and Lulu Blog
• Free mentions in upcoming Lulu publicity
• Professional review of your work

Second place:

• Barnes & Noble NOOK

Third place:

• $100 gift card to Barnes and Noble

All participants:

• 20% off coupon for next purchase on Lulu.com

Winners will be selected by a panel of Lulu judges and announced mid-December after review of all submissions.  Bring on your remarkable stories for a chance to win some amazing prizes!

No purchase necessary.  U.S. only.  Prize packages for the Lulu Short Story Contest include:  First place prize of $500, a Barnes and Noble NOOK™, publicity in upcoming Lulu materials.  Second place prize of a Barnes and Noble NOOK.  Third place prize of a $100 gift card to a Barnes and Noble retail store location.  All participants will receive a 20% coupon good for their next purchase at Lulu.com.  The maximum savings for this offer is $100. Sorry, but this offer cannot be applied to previous orders. You can only use this code once, and unfortunately you can’t use this coupon in combination with other coupon codes. This great offer expires on December 31, 2011 at 11:59 PM, so don’t miss out! We can only accept English-language content.  While very unlikely, we do reserve the right to change or revoke this offer at anytime, and of course we cannot offer this coupon where it is against the law to do so.  Lulu also reserves the right to make any short story submitted publicly available and to make small edits to content to aid in distribution to third-party retail stores.

We’re obviously big fans of books here at Lulu and that makes November one of our favorite months. Why? Because it’s National Novel Writing Month, better known as NaNoWriMo.

For eleven years NaNoWriMo has brought together thousands of aspiring authors who share a passion for writing and creativity. Each November, more and more authors join in and take a no holds barred approach to pumping out a 50,000 word book in just 30 days. With such a limited time-frame for making a remarkable work, writers often surprise themselves with what they can accomplish and what creative ideas they can come up with – music to the folks at Lulu’s ears.

Some of us Lulus are even getting involved in the action. I am using this year’s NaNoWriMo to overcome a three-year case of writer’s block. Well, at least I’m trying to overcome a three-year case of writer’s block. So far I’ve spent several days staring at a blank screen hoping to channel Neruda, Hemmingway, Frost or Fitzgerald and then distracting myself with exciting things like laundry and grocery shopping.

Writing is much harder than anyone gives us literary types credit for, and I admire all of you Lulu creators for being able to have the self-discipline to write something and the confidence to put it out in the world.

NaNoWriMo is all about getting motivated. Any book written in 30 days probably won’t be a work of genius, but writing 50,000 words in one month is going to force you to write and take risks. You can edit, take out weak characters, and add sub-plots later. For now, just get writing!

My favorite high school English teacher told me once that writing is easy. You just write about yourself with the life you’ve always wanted. Change your name, give yourself an apartment in Paris and a love interest who got away. Find inspiration in everything and use the mannerisms of interesting strangers to write new characters. Combine it with the search for home, and you’ve got yourself a bestseller.

So, let’s do this together! We’ve got three weeks to write a book. It may not be your most remarkable work, but then again, maybe it will be. You don’t know till you try. And when you’re all done, I encourage you to publish your books on Lulu. What have you got to lose?

Feel free to add your NaNoWriMo experiences in the comments section below. We’d love to hear what you’re working on or any tips for NaNoWriMo survival and getting motivated?  Come on NaNoWriMo veterans, I know you’re out there.

In an attempt to defeat the monster, I poked around on the internet and discovered a few tips that I thought to be very helpful.

New media maven, Mur Lafferty, has encountered the dreaded block and overcome the beast. In her podcast, I Should Be Writing, she shares, “I remembered that one of the cures for writer’s block is very Tao: do not bang your head up against the rock to move it. Just go around it. If I can’t work on the story that is going nowhere, I’ll work on something else.”

Apryl Duncan of  www.FictionAddiction.net shared some tips on Absolute Write, saying that perfectionism “will win you an all-expense paid trip to Writer’s Block Island.” The cure, she says, is to give it a few days until your mind is “fresh and clear, giving you a whole new perspective on your own writing.” More tips from Duncan include re-reading some of your previous works, a change of scenery, and rewriting another’s work.

A few years back when I was studying film, my professor, Brad Boll taught me that the best cure for writer’s block was to jot down fleeting thoughts you have throughout the day and keep them in an “Idea Envelope.” This way, when the block hits you, pull out a little nugget of inspiration and continue on your way. Today I pulled out a little nugget that said “Victory over the unknown.”

It appears that I have won the battle this time and conquered writer’s block by exposing the beast for what it is. I would love to hear your cures for defeating writer’s block too. Please feel free to post your ideas in the comments section below.

I certainly can’t speak for everyone in the company, but I can answer for myself with a resounding “yes!” In fact, I was a Lulu customer long before I was an employee.

I first heard about Lulu in 2003 through a promotion with the National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) competition. Lulu was offering a promotion for a free copy of your book to anyone who finished the competition, so when I finished my novel I decided to publish it on Lulu. Once that very rough draft was sitting on my book shelf with my name on the spine I was hooked, both to writing and to Lulu.

I followed that up with a children’s fantasy book in 2004, and printed copies through Lulu to give my nieces and nephews for Christmas. Don’t worry, I also gave them real presents, so they didn’t ask to exchange the books.

I next used Lulu to publish a book of my mother’s paintings for a Mother’s Day present in 2005. Seeing how much joy it brought her to share the book with her friends showed me just how much personal creations can mean to a family, and inspired me to get even more involved with Lulu.

I used Lulu’s extensive forums for guidance in these endeavors, and soon began to assist others with their publishing questions. As my participation increased, I became a Power Poster, with all the glory and honor of a cool icon next to my posts. That was good enough for another year, before I decided to answer a job posting on the site to further my involvement with Lulu and stay off of welfare.

I started taking Live Help chats soon after being hired in August of 2006. Over the next year and a half, I had the opportunity to participate in literally thousands of chats, and came to know just how varied the Lulu creators and their needs are.

I’m out of the Live Help loop now, but you can still find me in the forums quite a bit. I do a lot of testing on the site and hope to continue to be involved with the creative community. I do my best to be an advocate for our creators, and try to make sure the company understands how changes may impact the Lulu community.

While Lulu is my primary source of income, writing is still my passion. On my off days I have managed to polish up that first novel and published the new version through Lulu, along with three other novels. I’ve written two screen plays and have had a couple short stories published in paying markets.

Despite these experiences, I still face the same struggles as many self-published authors in trying to get my books noticed. I’ve had successful and not-so-successful book signings at libraries and bookstores, favorable (gushing, lots of stars) and not-so-favorable (harsh, low end of the scale) reviews, and am going to my first book festival later this year (Tri-State Book Fest in Evansville, Indiana on September 27, 2008). I’m not threatening The New York Times Best Seller list or Lulu’s own rankings, but almost every month there are more of my books out there, and I am grateful for the opportunity to share my stories.

It’s been an enjoyable and symbiotic relationship with Lulu, and I hope you feel the same way.