Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award - Advancing to the Second Round

I received great news this week. In January, I submitted THE CARD in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition. This yearly award is given to an independently published or unpublished novel after going through several rounds of judging. THE CARD has been selected to move on to the second round in judging, now down to the top 20% of entrants.

The first round consisted of 5,000 entrants in the young adult category. The Amazon editors selected the top 1,000 entries to advance to the second round by rating the PITCH, or the blurb that you might see on the back of a book. The Pitch was rated on the following criteria, originality of idea, overall strength of the Pitch and the quality of writing.

Now the waiting begins, again. The second round will conclude on March 11, 2012 and will include Amazon's expert reviewers, including Amazon editors and at least one Amazon Top Reviewer. This round will judge on the EXERPT (up to the first 5,000 words of the novel) and will be rated on the following criteria: 
a) Overall Strength of Excerpt
b)Prose/Style
c)Plot/Hook
d)Originality of Idea

The top 250 entries will advance to the Quarter-Finals.

The Grand Prize winner will receive a publishing contract with Penguin Group. The finalist will be announced in mid May and will include a "customer" voting component.

As you might have guessed, if I make it that far, I'll be asking everyone to help out. For now, I will enjoy advancing to the second round.

Thanks all who have helped me along the way, and please keep your fingers crossed for this next challenge.