Amazon announced the winners of the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Pen to Publish 2019 Contest. In its third year now, this contest has been conceptualised to celebrate the exceptional work among self-published authors. The contest recognises literary excellence among authors from different genres in long-form and short-form categories across English, Hindi and Tamil languages.

Winning entries in each language for the long-format category won a cash prize of ₹5 lakh, a merchandising deal and a chance to be mentored by the panellists. The first runners-up received a cash prize of ₹1 lakh each, while second runners-up were awarded ₹50,000 each. For the short-format category, winners were awarded ₹50,000 each while the first and second runners-up got ₹25,000 and ₹10,000 each respectively.

Amol Gurwara, Country Manager, Kindle Content India – Amazon said, “Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing has been consistently seeing great interest from Indian writers and we witnessed the same in the latest edition of the Pen to Publish Contest where we received over 10,000 entries across English, Hindi and Tamil languages. It was interesting to see authors coming from various walks of life like bloggers, vloggers, corporate professionals, homemakers. We congratulate all winners and look forward to more great stories from them”.

• Winners across English, Hindi and Tamil languages received cash prizes ranging from ₹10,000 to ₹5 lakh each
• Winners selected from over 10,000 entries
• Judging panel included best-selling authors – Durjoy Datta, Sudha Nair, Divya Prakash Dubey, Pa. Raghavan and C. Saravanakarthikeyan

Following are the six winners from the contest –

Winners in long-format writing (10,000 words and above)

Winners in short-format writing (between 2,000 and 10,000 words)

The entries were judged on the basis of several criteria including originality, creativity, quality of writing, and customer feedback, by the judging panel. The panel comprised of best-selling authors Durjoy Datta, Sudha Nair, Divya Prakash Dubey, Pa. Raghavan and C. Saravanakarthikeyan.

Ramakrishnan B, one of the winners of the contest said, “The KDP Pen to Publish Contest is an incredible opportunity for aspiring writers to realise their potential and receive recognition at a global level and I am quite thankful to the entire Amazon team for it. 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.”

Durjoy Datta a best-selling author and member of the jury said, “We came across some really high quality writing while judging and it was difficult to pick a winner. But I feel every participant is a winner as they are all published authors. Self-publishing through KDP is a game-changer enabling writers to take their thoughts and stories to their readers. And this contest has been just the right motivation to drive enthusiasm amongst budding writers across India and the world.”

Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is a fast, easy and free way for authors to publish their books across the world on Kindle. Authors who use KDP can earn royalties of up to 70%, retain rights such as, can get to market fast, keep control of how their work is published, distribute globally and in multiple languages, and do it all for free. For more information on the contest, visit www.amazon.in/pentopublish

Amazon announces winners of KDP Pen to Publish 2019 Contest