Amazon on Friday announced the winners of its third Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Pen to Publish 2019 Contest, which recognises literary excellence among self-published authors from different genres in the long-form and short-form categories across English, Hindi and Tamil languages.
Authors Ramakrishnan B., Rajneesh Chaturvedi, and Bruno Guru won the long-form writing - 10,000 words or more - in English, Hindi and Tamil respectively. The winning entries in each language for the long-format category won a cash prize of Rs 5 lakh, a merchandising deal and a chance to be mentored by the panellists, according to Amazon. The first runners-up received Rs 1 lakh each, while second runners-up Rs 50,000 each.
The short-form category judges works written in 2,000-10,000 words, authors Vijay Kakwani, Mansi Dadhich Mahur and G. Lenin bagged the prize. In this format, winners get Rs 50,000 each while the first and second runners-up get Rs 25,000 and Rs 10,000 each respectively, the company said.
The contest jury included best-selling authors Durjoy Datta, Sudha Nair, Divya Prakash Dubey, P. Raghavan and C. Saravanakarthikeyan.
According to Amol Gurwara, Country Manager, Kindle Content India - Amazon, the latest edition of the Contest received over 10,000 entries across English, Hindi and Tamil languages between September and December 2019. "It was interesting to see authors coming from various walks of life like bloggers, vloggers, corporate professionals, homemakers," he said.
Ramakrishnan B., one of the winners of the contest feels that this award is a testament of how anyone who has talent and a story to tell, can take their work to readers across the world. "All it took was only a few minutes to publish after writing the novel. KDP has made publishing one's book so much easier."
As per Amazon's previous announcements, this year the finalists and winning titles of long-format category from all six Kindle literary awards around the world will be evaluated by a panel from Amazon Prime Video executives to select one book. They will assess it on creativity, originality, boldness of storytelling and relevance of cultural aspects for the local territory. The winner will be offered an exclusive, 36-month option for Amazon Studios to purchase the screenplay along with an advance payment of Rs 7 lakh.
( With inputs from IANS )