The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) was a contest sponsored by Amazon.com, Penguin Group, Hewlett Packard, CreateSpace and BookSurge to publish and promote a manuscript by an unknown or unpublished author.
[2] After the initial submission period is over, the contest is made up of five rounds: Amazon introduced the Breakthrough Novel Award in 2007.
In mid-January 2008, up to 836 authors were selected as semi-finalists and received a capsule review of their manuscript from Publishers Weekly.
Sue Grafton, New York Times-bestselling author, said about the winning entry, "This is what reading is about and what a good book is supposed to do.
Amazon announced that for the 2010 competition they awarding grand prizes in two categories, young adult and general fiction.
[12] Patricia McArdle (Farishta) and Amy Ackley (Sign Language) were announced the winners of their respective categories, each winning a publishing contract with Penguin as well as a $15,000 advance on their first book.
The winners were announced as Jill Baguchinsky for Spookygirl (young adult) and Gregory Hill for East of Denver (general fiction).
There were 10,000 starting entries, and the elimination process was similar to last year, until the end where they ran a Final 5 round and announced the winner through an online vote.
The semi-finalists are shown here:[15][16] On June 15, 2013 at a convention in Seattle, Washington, it was announced that Timebound by Rysa Walker won the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for 2013.
The contest opened to submissions on Sunday, February 16, 2014 and the entry period closed at the end of the day on March 2, 2014.