We are doing things a little differently this year, we're going for a free entry and a kickstarter campaign, considering everything we've all been through the last few years. (https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/eklea/created)
Our 2022 Mad Like Us competition (open internationally) is a joint one, poets short story writers and artists unite!
It will open on March 7th 2023 and close on August 7th 2023.
This contest's theme is the Mad Like Us.
Books from previous competitions are available from our etsy shop - https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/EmmasAtticPublishing
Reading Room Cafe Publishing is the publishing and fundraising offshoot of the Reading Room Cafe Project. We aim to offer affordable publishing to talented writers. Using competitions we intend to find the best writers we can and offer them hard copies of their books.
Rachel
Emma
"Publication is to thinking as childbirth is to the first kiss."
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
"When I was nine or ten I had a big Nancy Drew problem. There was an old German bloke who had a book shop at the end of the road from me. He would put every Nancy Drew book that came into the shop under his desk for me. Every day I’d go in after school to see if there were any more books for me. To this day the smell of old books takes me back to that bookshop, with that lovely old German bloke."
Emma
What is Reading Room Publishing and the Reading Room Project?
I (Emma) am a writer myself, and the first time I held a copy of my own work in my hands, albeit some ghost written trash with someone else’s name on the cover, I got such a rush. I want others to feel that too. I’ve written all sorts of things since then, and while some of my books do have my own name on them, they never really felt like mine, there was always someone else in control.
I looked at self publishing, but it can be an expensive and risky venture, and a lot of competitions that have publication as a “prize” don’t really care about the writers involved and ask winners to buy their own books from them. This never felt like much of a prize to me, so I started looking into what I could do about it.
The Reading Room Cafe Project aims, eventually, to be a teashop and book-bar that will stock indie titles and host book signings for any writer who wishes to come along. We want to showcase all sorts of other talent too, like comedy, music and drama.
Until then, we want to give writers an opportunity to hold their books in their hands.