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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kaiscomet" data-source="post: 1826264" data-attributes="member: 7975">I just wanted to make a few quick observations.  One, if someone already has a polished novel that they have been shopping around, it may be pretty good (after all, it's tough to break in sometimes), but chances are it has some problems. And remember, a polished story that stinks still stinks. Two, there are bound to be many proposals, and I personally believe that most of them are going to come from people who have already completed their story, or who have a good chunk of it already done. If you are committed, there is no reason why you could not complete what WOTC wants you to do in the alloted time. I personally believe that they are asking for a shorter turn around time to weed out the pretenders. Robert Heinlein felt that if 100 people said they would write a book, only six would actually submit the story. I'm sure that the increased requirements that WOTC is asking for with the shorter turn around time reflect this. Last, remember the odds. For Maiden of Pain, 3 out of 500 were selected to write a book for WOTC. I've heard that there were less than 400 entries for Eberron, and there is only one guaranteed slot. With the amount of work that is required for this open call, I would expect that there will be fewer than 250 people that complete all that is required from scratch, if that. There are a lot of people out there with completed novels that they will submit, but even if they received 2000 proposals (I personally don't think they will receive 1000, but that's just me,) they will still select ten for consideration. Unless of course, they choose eleven like they did with the setting open call. With those odds, you still have better odds of getting selected to show your stuff for this open call than you did for either Maiden of Pain or Eberron. But you don't win the race watching the other runners. Just write. If it's a good story that they like, you'll win. If not, you'll still have a novel to shop around. All things considered, you'll win either way. kai</blockquote>

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