Inherent BS: Luck and Entry Fees

Friday the 13th, an ominous day for most because of silly superstition and things no one really understands. The origins of the day have long been discussed and fails to have a satisfactory answer. The reasons rarely have any attachment to reality (or each other) and are usually the long form of “we picked it at random”. In fact, here’s a couple I always find amusing myself:

Friday itself is apparently an unlucky day, not for any specific reason but just because it’s Friday and has been attached to dark events. Things like stock market crashes, crucifying Jesus and (possibly) the execution of the Knights Templar all happened on Fridays. And, of course, Black Friday is a day of rabid consumerism making the holiday season synonymous with bloodthirsty mobs of shoppers.

The number 13 is considered unlucky because, I shit you not, it’s considered a combo-breaker. You see, the number 12 in numerology is supposed to be the “last” number. It’s the number that apparently completes things like numbers of months and numbers on the clock. But adding one more just louses up the whole damn thing. And, alternatively, people believe having 13 people at a table will result in the death of one of the people sitting there because, y’know, they saw it happen once.

Of course this forgets that he probably ate with all of these people at least once before that and, if 12 is the number of completeness, Jesus was actually the odd man out… so obviously he had to go.

I’ve never believed in “luck” as a force of nature. As far as I’ve always seen it, luck is just what you call it when something happens due to probability that you, personally, didn’t see coming. And since “luck” is not something you can coax for or against you and doesn’t have a pattern you can observe (without jumping from “luck” to “probability”), I’ve never exactly counted on “luck” to do anything for me.

This is why I don’t play the lottery.

And yet when I look around myself I’ll find people counting rather excessively on luck and good fortune to make themselves successful. There’s an inherent hope in people that some random chance is going to make things work out in their favor. People will take stupid risks for no gain because there’s a small chance that you’ll randomly stumble on a winning solution. This is especially true of writers… and I feel like I just saw someone taking advantage of that.

I said only a couple of posts back that one of the real burns of being an independent was that you’re not considered for most awards. Most awards, after all, are determined by being involved with one of the larger guilds or associations and those typically have a requirement that you’ve been published or paid by someone other than yourself. This results in indies being excluded quietly from a lot of the more well known awards.

Surprisingly, I got an e-mail about an award I could qualify for.

This inspired me to do some research on how many awards I was eligible for and found that there was a nice list of them out there. I wont be retracting my statement because I don’t feel like I’ve been proven wrong yet. Most of these awards are just as independent as the winners. But I will admit to feeling that it’s a good sign, even if the e-mail itself had some details that irritated me.

I wont name names and I wont identify who exactly these people are. You see, I think I’d be safe in revealing who they are, and some of you reading this may have been contacted by them in the past. But I’m opting to keep them nameless and faceless because one of my advisers suggested I should take it a little easy and just stick to the what and not the who.

But what they did was something I feel just speaks so much to what I was talking about for the last couple weeks. You see, this award organization was informing me that I could be entered for consideration for their award if I were to pay them for the honor. And that, my friends, got me thinking.

I’m not against fees for the most part. Though I am cheap, I understand the value of entry fees, what they do and what they mean. Usually when an entry fee is required it’s to cover the costs or to prove that the entrant is serious about their consideration. But who needs to prove they’re serious about winning an award? Who honestly enters their work for consideration for an award they don’t want to win? On the other hand, maybe there is a chance for people to submit a manuscript of entirely one word printed over and over across 400 pages.

This is really one of the reasons why it’s so hard to get indies included into some other awards – fear of trolls. So, perhaps a flat fee or a reasonably priced category based fee could be argued for. But then we come to the “reasonably priced” phrase and choke on our tongues.

The people who sent out that e-mail apparently think the honor of even being considered for their award sits somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred dollars per category. There are some lesser categories for lower fees that you can also enter. But after looking at the list of categories I found that there was a clear overlap for multiple categories in these fields. Essentially, you could increase your chances of winning something by increasing the number of categories you’re considered for. This, essentially, would be why they would charge you per category and not have you enter with a flat fee: they intend for people to try to increase their odds.

I’m not saying that these people aren’t a legitimate award, I looked them up and I know that they have been around for a while and some deserving people have won their award in the past. What I am saying is that this is sounding an awful lot like how you would approach an award if you were looking to capitalize on people’s hope and belief in good fortunes and luck. I think we can do better, people, I really do.

Now, they make an argument in the e-mail that there are benefits to entering the competition because it included a party, stickers (no joke), and marketing potential. According to them, there’s a lot of opportunity to market based on winning their award. And that was a fairly convincing argument until I saw that they had a category for “best marketing”.

And, last but not least, they point out that the most important reason to enter is that you could win a medal and that the medal would count itself as great marketing too. After all, medals are something that will immediately get you noticed. Only, you know: how many people actually wear their medals outside the house? Well, other than me, I happen to have ten medals and a handful of plaques that say I’m the best ever and I wear those things outside constantly. You can hear me down the block, ringing and chiming like the illegitimate child of Mr. T and Michael Phelps.

But, you know what? I think I might be an exception to that.

So I’m not saying there’s no benefit. I’m not telling anyone what to do (sort of). I’m not even telling you not to consider entering. What I am saying is that I think we can do better. To me, it just feels like a lottery or a contest rather than an honor. It feels like someone preying on people’s belief in luck. And in the end, it’s not magic…

It’s just chance.