Interesting Sub Op/Contest

Specialty press publisher Cemetery Dance is holding a short story contest to promote their forums:

"The three winning stories will be featured in a Cemetery Dance chapbook alongside 3 well-known authors. Each winner will receive a $75 dollar prize, payable upon signing the contract. (Contract will be for a one-time printing of the chapbook, all other rights remain with the author.) Each winner will also receive 5 free copies of the finished chapbook and a 50% discount on additional copies."

The stories must be submitted via their forum, where the submissions will then be judged by members of the forum. Genre is not specified, but since CD is a horror/dark suspense press my guess is that's probably what they'd like to see (I'd query for details.) The length limit is "10,000 characters" (that would fall roughly into the 5 to 10 manuscript page range, I think.) The contest is open to "amateur" writers (their term, not mine) but they provide a confusing description of who they consider amateurs; I interpret it to mean writers who are as yet unpublished or with very limited publication credits. If you're not sure you qualify, you might query them first.

I think Cemetery Dance is fairly well-known around the horror community; they've published some nice reprints and limited editions for Doug Clegg, Stephen King and Peter Straub. If you're a horror or dark suspense writer, this one seems like a good opportunity for exposure as well as publication.

Also, they mention another that they'll be holding another contest to find a title for the story contest chapbook: "The winner of this contest will receive a $50 Store Gift Certificate and a free copy of the chapbook."