Why People are Disappointed with the "Little Black Book" Challenge

Vocal’s “Little Black Book” Challenge has by far been their largest and most successful challenge to date. With Vocal’s partnership with Moleskine, the challenge comprised of the largest $20,000 cash prize ever offered in the history of Vocal. Unsurprisingly, this attracted an enormous submission pool with no less than 12,488 entries. After the challenge portal closed, thousands of hopeful participants waited excitedly for the official announcement with hopes of their stories being recognized.

When the announcement was released and the winners were identified, there were mixed emotions from the public. Vocal’s Instagram post with the announcement quickly began racking up comments with congratulatory messages to the winners, and comments of disappointment about the validity of the contest itself. Naturally with any contest, there will be wounded commentary from participants who lost, but there seems to be an overwhelming consensus among negative opinions about the contest.

Below I will summarize some of the top concerns and comments that arose after the contest. Otherwise, you can check out the post and the comments for yourself here:

#1: The winning stories lacked creativity

Many people were upset with the content of the selected top 3 stories, feeling like they dealt with topics that lacked creativity. However, it is also important to note that writing and creativity are entirely subjective, so it is never possible to please everyone.

The 1st place winner, “The Delicate Art of Counting to Three” by Jess Sambuco, follows a man struggling with OCD and the reasons behind his compulsions.

The 2nd place winner, “Dog Hill Wood” by Joshua Studebaker, focuses on Old English riddles in a black book that begins a night of twists and turns for the protagonist.

The 3rd place winner “For The Things You Want To Remember” by Laura Jeffrey follows an elderly man struggling with dementia.

Interestingly, all the winning stories were written using 1st-person narration and do not focus on the identity of the main character. As well, the 1st place story (still) contains a particular typo that is leaving many people extremely frustrated with the lack of care or edit by the winning author.

#2: The winners were all selected from the same genres

Analyzing all 13 stories, the winners were pulled from one of the four following genres:

Humans (6) – “Dog Hill Wood” by Joshua Studebaker (2) “When Among the Living” by Canan Devorak (5) “The Importance of Equanimity” by Daisy Kelly (6) “For My Louisa” by Boshmi (7) “Ennui Go, The World Goes On” by Mimi (9) “We Girls Have To Stick Together” by DeEtta Miller (12)

Futurism (3) – “Wet Wood Burns Black” by Lacey Doddrow (4) “Rent Seeking At Ragnarokk” by Theis Orion (11) “Vague Shapes” by Lucy McKeon (13)

Horror (2) – “An Interstitial” by J.W. Kells (8) “Madame Mirage’s Game of Terror or Treasure” by Fiona Teddy-Jimoh (10)

Families (2) – “The Delicate Art of Counting to Three” by Jess Sambuco (1) “For The Things You Want To Remember” by Laura Jeffrey (3)

Considering there are 35 total publishable genres on Vocal, the fact that only 4 genres were selected as “winners” proved disappointing. It made participants feel like only a certain style of writing was being recognized, and if you did not submit to one of these genres, you had no chance of winning.

#3: Most submissions are single-submission-wonders

It is easy to tell which creators are active on the Vocal platform, you just need to visit their page and view their number of recently published stories. It is understandable that a challenge like this will draw the attention of new Vocal members (myself included), but most of the winning submissions were published by creators who remain single-submission creators. A whopping total of 8/13 creators who were awarded prizes from this challenge only have that one winning story published on their Vocal profile.

These 8 creators include the authors of the #1 and #2 winning submissions, who combined to win $25,000 in prize money, as well as the authors of #5, #6, #9, #11, #12, and #13. Considering the 10 runner-ups were awarded a free 1-year membership on the Vocal platform, it is understandably disappointing for Vocal’s loyal creator base to see a $120 value go to creators who probably will never post anything again. But I guess we can remain optimistic that this experience will encourage these winners to keep creating on this platform.

#4: Concerns about the consideration of all submissions

Many participants voiced their concerns about whether all submissions were considered. The period of time before the closing of the submission portal and the announcement was 10 days – between March 2nd and March 12th. However, there were so many entries submitted in the final days of the challenge that it took multiple days after the portal closed for Vocal’s panel to publish all the last-minute stories.

I personally noticed on March 2nd there were about 6,500 stories published. In the next coming days, that number shot up past 12,000. I was not the only one to notice this, as a common question arose afterward as to whether all stories were able to be fully considered because of the short time frame. This on top of the fact that all the winners were selected from the same 4 genres, added fuel to the fire of this burning question. Ultimately, creators are left to wonder if there were some unspoken guidelines for the contest that were not shared in the initial requirements.

In the end, I believe most people just want to make sure that the judging of this challenge was fair and honest considering the size and weight of the contest. As much as we need to understand that Vocal is a membership-driven business with a goal to grow its membership base, it is also important for Vocal to ensure that these challenges do not feel like scams. After all, there is nothing worse for a creator than to feel like you lost because you had no chance to begin with.