Harlequin And Mills & Boon Global Writing Contest Offers Aspiring Authors A Chance To Win The "Ultimate Publishing Prize"

--The So You Think You Can Write grand prize winner will be offered  a two-book publishing contract, a series-specific editor, marketing and PR support, social media training and a summit meeting with the creative team

NEW YORK and LONDON and TORONTO and SYDNEY and AUCKLAND, New Zealand, Sept. 9, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Harlequin (Harlequin.com), one of the world's leading publishers of books for women, today unveiled the dates of its tremendously popular So You Think You Can Write online writing conference and introduced the "Ultimate Author's Publishing Prize"—the single largest and most wide-ranging grand prize it has ever offered for its global contest.

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The Ultimate Author's Publishing Prize, awarded to the winner of the contest portion of So You Think You Can Write, includes a two-book series contract with Harlequin/Mills & Boon, a series-specific editor, marketing and PR support, social media training and a summit meeting with the creative team. The initial book is anticipated to be published digitally on or close to Valentine's Day 2015 with a print edition to follow. To top it all off, the winning contestant will be presented with a gift card to be put toward a champagne dinner for two to celebrate her or his selection.

The So You Think You Can Write conference will be held September 15–19, 2014, offering hopeful romance novelists the unique opportunity to spend a week with more than 50 Harlequin and Mills & Boon editors from Toronto, New York and London through social media tools, including podcasts, webinars, blogs, live chats, writing challenges, community discussions and Twitter events. Aspiring authors will attend a virtual romance-writing "boot camp" designed to teach them how to write romance novels that will attract the attention of publishers.  So You Think You Can Write has been designed to help participants prepare completed manuscripts for submission to the So You Think You Can Write contest running from September 22 to November 10, 2014.

Entrants into the contest will experience the path a professional writer undertakes from the genesis of a story idea all the way through to finished manuscript.  Participants will initially be asked to submit a first chapter accompanied by a maximum 100-word pitch. In late September, the Harlequin and Mills & Boon editorial offices in New York, Toronto and London will select the top 25 best chapters and request full manuscripts from the respective writers.  The editors will evaluate those completed manuscripts and narrow the field to 10 manuscripts, which will then be posted online for public voting between November 3 and 10. The winner will be announced on or around November 13 and offered a publishing contract with Harlequin/Mills & Boon.

Last year, approximately 700 participants entered the So You Think You Can Write contest and more than 60,000 people voted.  In addition to the winner, Tanya Wright, Harlequin signed 17 other entrants to publishing contracts.  Harlequin and Mills & Boon editors believe that by engaging aspiring writers, showcasing the tremendous appeal of the romance genre and offering expert insights into crafting the perfect story, they can help promising novelists hone their skills and achieve their dreams of writing for one of the world's leading publishers of books for women.

For more information, please visit soyouthinkyoucanwrite.com.

About Harlequin
Harlequin (www.Harlequin.com) is one of the world's leading publishers of books for women, with titles issued worldwide in 34 languages and sold in 102 international markets. The company publishes more than 110 titles monthly and more than 1,300 authors from around the world. Harlequin is a division of HarperCollins Publishers, one of the largest English-language publishers in the world. Harlequin has offices in 18 countries, including offices in Toronto, New York and London. For more information, please visit Harlequin.com and Facebook.com/HarlequinBooks. Follow Harlequin on Twitter: @HarlequinBooks.

About HarperCollins
HarperCollins Publishers is the second largest consumer book publisher in the world, with operations in 19 countries. With nearly two hundred years of history and more than 65 unique imprints around the world, HarperCollins publishes approximately 10,000 new books every year, in over 30 languages, and has a print and digital catalog of more than 200,000 titles. Writing across dozens of genres, HarperCollins authors include winners of the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Newbery and Caldecott Medals and the Man Booker Prize. HarperCollins, headquartered in New York, is a subsidiary of News Corp and can be visited online at corporate.HC.com.

Media Contacts

North America
Penny Tantakis
Harlequin
+1-416-391-7008
penny_tantakis@harlequin.ca

United Kingdom/Ireland/South Africa
Claire Adams
Cherish PR
+44 208 735 4240
claire.adams@cherishpr.com

Australia/New Zealand
Adam Van Rooijen
Head of Digital & Marketing, Harlequin
+612 94159245
avanrooijen@eHarlequin.com.au