Lulu.com Throws Short Story Contest Throughout Month of November

Raleigh, NC, (November 22, 2011) – Lulu.com, the leader in self-publishing, in support of popular annual writing event National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), is providing authors with a chance to upload a 600-word short story, have it distributed to popular retailers and devices like the iBookstore℠ and the Barnes and Noble NOOK, and can win some incredible prizes including a NOOK and $500 cash.

“NaNoWriMo is a great way to inspire authors to write a novel,” says Sarah Gilbert, a director at Lulu.com. “According to the NaNoWriMo website, they drew an amazing 200,000 participants last year and received 30,000 submissions. For many authors, completing a 50,000 word work in just 30 days can be daunting though, and in the spirit of creativity, we didn’t want to leave those creators without an option. So we came up with the Lulu Short Story Contest to help.”

The Lulu Short Story Contest is designed to not only inspire authors to write, but also educate them on how easy it is to publish an eBook. To play, authors just need to plug their story into a template provided by Lulu, then upload it to the Lulu Word to EPUB Converter to create an eBook version of their story. Once published, authors just need to provide a link to their new eBook and Lulu will distribute their work to eBook retailers - absolutely free.

Winners will be selected and announced by an expert panel of judges in mid-December, with first place winning a NOOK, $500 cash, a feature on Lulu’s homepage, a professional review, and mentions in upcoming Lulu publicity. Second place will win a NOOK, and third place will win a $100 gift card to Barnes and Noble. All participants will receive a 20% off coupon for their next purchase on Lulu.    

“NaNoWriMo is a highly recognized event for authors,” adds Gilbert. “But we saw a great opportunity to inspire even more writers to create a remarkable work with our Short Story Contest because after all, creativity is about quality, not quantity.”

 To learn more or to submit a short story of your own visit: www.lulu.com/blog.

About Lulu:Lulu.com, founded in 2002, is a company that specializes in self-publishing. The company has 1.1million creators and has 20,000 titles added to their collection each month. It is free to publish and creators keep up to 90 percent of the profit they set when their works sell. Lulu provides anyone with the ability to publish books, eBooks, mini-books, photo books, calendars, cookbooks, and travel books. To learn more, visit the website at www.lulu.com.