curious...curious...contest

Well, curious, curious indeed. I got an invitation in my mailbox to join the First Philippine Graphic contest sponsored by Neil Gaiman. According to fullybookedonline.com, Neil Gaiman (creator of the Sandman ) has taken note of how Filipinos write mostly realism and how with this contest he would like to encourage Filipinos to write about unrealism. Hence, the contest is asking for genre fiction. Not literary...it has to be genre. Wow! Is this for real? Checking out the list I discovered that about eleven people have signed up so far. It seems pretty quiet.

I decided to check out the site where the contest rules are on display and I bumped into rule number 6 which made some warning bells go...rrrrriiing. Here, it states that while the authors retain all rights to their work, Fully Booked retains or maintains the right to publish submissions without permission/compensation or advance warning. Yikes! There goes my big warning siren, folks. This is like waving a red flag at a bull, because while I have no argument with them maintaining rights to winning entries...it's up to the contestant if he/she wants to sign away all rights to a particular story...gaining rights to all submissions would make joining this contest a big, big, big question.

Professional publications: scifi/fantasy/speculative genres will mostly only ask for first North American/electronic/worldwide rights. Some will ask for anthology rights, but to say they have the right to publish anything submitted at will, that seems like a no-no to me. I think Mr. Gaiman would be perfectly aware of this too. So, I've sent in a question regarding rule number six, asking for clarification. Sometimes, it could just be miscommunication, you know. I still object to the wording on rule number six.