Gather.com picks winning novelist
A contest that's been described as "American Idol for Books" has a winner, said Gather.com, the Boston-based social networking website that's a sponsor of the competition.
The winner is Terry Shaw, and his winning manuscript is about a newspaper editor who investigates his best friend's death in a coastal town in Maine, said Gather.com and publisher Simon & Schuster, another contest sponsor.
Many social networking websites aim at consumers between 15 and 25, but Gather.com seeks to target well-educated middle-age adults interested in online discussions about everything from politics to fine dining.
In January, Gather.com and Simon & Schuster launched a competition called First Chapters, soliciting manuscripts from aspiring novelists. A top prize? A guaranteed publishing contract.
According to the competition's sponsors, they received 2,676 manuscripts, and the manuscript by runner-up Geoffrey Edwards was so impressive that he too will be awarded a publishing contract for a novel described as a "character-driven historical thriller set in the antebellum South."
Winner Terry Shaw is from Knoxville, Tennessee; runner-up Geoffrey Edwards lives in Chicago. For more about these writers, readers can check out their Gather websites: http://terrys7.gather.com and http://geoffreye.gather.com.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)
