World’s Longest Literary Remix Contest Launches

By Jason Boog 

joesluck.jpgWe are proud to launch the World’s Longest Literary Remix contest today, as nearly 150 pre-registered GalleyCat readers will rewrite a Horatio Alger novel for fun and prizes. The contest concludes on Monday, June 7th.

These GalleyCat readers signed up to rewrite one page of Joe’s Luck: Always Wide Awake (cover pictured, via). When the contest concludes, we will publish the remixed text as a free digital book–complete with illustrations. Each remix contributor will be eligible for a random drawing of special giveaway prizes. Three excellent sponsors have donated prizes:

1-Scribd.com and Blurb.com are donating 10 printed copies of the completely remixed novel, using the company’s new print-on-demand service.

2- The remixing experts at Quirk Books will give one lucky winner an assortment of Quirk Classics prizes, including: a signed copy of the deluxe Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (PPZ), the Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters audio book, the audio and print version of PPZ: Dawn of The Dreadfuls, an Android Karenina poster, an assortment of PPZ postcards and a PPZ journal. It’s a prize package worth over $100.

3-The multimedia literary journal Electric Literature will donate “Electric Literature: Year One”–a complete set of the first four issues of the journal–a $40 value.


If you didn’t sign up for the contest but wish you did, email GalleyCat with the subject heading “Remix Waiting List.” If any writers drop out, we will fill the empty slot with a writer from the waiting list.

We are emailing individual selections to participants today–if you signed up and don’t receive your selection by tomorrow, don’t hesitate to email. Joe’s Luck is a badly written, meandering, and oversimplified public domain parable of capitalism just begging to be remixed. It contains bears, guns, gold mining, and some of the most wooden dialogue you will read this side of pulp fiction.

Never fear–we plan on running similar remix contests in the future with other public domain books. All the writers on the waiting list will be among the first group tapped for the next installment.

Follow this link to read more about GalleyCat Reviews.