Friday, February 26, 2010

The First Cut Is The Deepest

 
Both Brad's general fiction novel (Alice's Misadventures Underground, self-published) and his young adult novel(The Little House in the Dark Woods, unpublished) have made the first cut in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest! For more information, see the contest site.

Probability that at least one novel would make it in: 36%. 

Probability that both novels would make it in: 4%.

So that kind of rocks.

Now he merely needs to crush the remaining 999 competitors in either category. Probability of at least one novel winning: 0.2%.

(So y'all could, you know, pray or whatever it is that you do.)

6 comments:

nerkymarg said...

Hey! Exciting!

Bittersweet Sage said...

@nerkymarg: Exciting, yes, but finger crossing is still appreciated.

Incidentally, the next step is not to crush everyone else, but just to move on to the next round. That means being in the top 250 out of 1000 in either category.

Probability that at least one book makes it to round two: 44%. Probability that both books make it: 6%.

(The funny thing about these gated competitions is that the odds of winning each subsequent round are higher than in the previous round... at least if you treat them as a random lottery.)

Anonymous said...

Tell Brad he needs to look at you and mutter "Never tell me the odds" in his best Han Solo voice.

Bittersweet Sage said...

@ Dan: I don't tell Brad the odds, and he almost never reads this blog, so ignorance and bliss continue to maintain at equilibrium.

Mark said...

Go Brad!

Anonymous said...

Yay, Brad!

I'll do the whatever thing. (Sing, I guess.)