Support for Indie Authors discussion

There are numerous non-poetry writing contests available to authors. Most have entry/reading fees. Some are legit, some not so legit, and some are publisher phishing contests.

a) The "legit" contests give kudos and benefit an author, story, and/or book that can be used for marketing/promotion purposes and hopefully give the author some monetary return.

b) With the "not so legit" contests, everybody wins and your entry becomes part of an anthology with the only print buyers being the authors themselves, as the story collections range from okay to awful writing that nobody else will download, even if it was a give-a-way!

c) The third are the "publisher phishing" contests where a publisher is looking to create a collection of good stories to publish. These publishers pay handsomely for #1 (to entice entries) and only a limited number of the better entries get included in their anthology at little to no reward. Plus contractually, the publisher locks up the author's resale/use rights for long periods of time. At times, one gets the feeling that the winner is chosen in advance of the contest and the contest is a way to fill-in the remainder of the book.

So, the question is: What contests have you entered that are legit and have been beneficial to you as an author? What are your non-poetry contest experiences?

Thank you Temple for the feedback and the 50 awards lists. Planning on looking into several of them.

I entered 3 competitions this past year that I view as legit:

IPPY (in 2014 I won a gold medal in this competition, but not the past 2 years)

Forword Reviews Indie (entered 2 years adn am a finalist in scifi this year final announcements in June)

Next Generation Indies (Just entered last year and this year) award announcements in mid may

I know there are other legitimate awards. I think the Ben Franklin is supposed to be legit and in Colorado we have a Colorado Author's League which runs a competition. Check your state.

Michael wrote: "I entered 3 competitions this past year that I view as legit:

Thanks Michael, we were unsuccessful with Forward Reviews but we are an Anthology Finalist in the Next Generation Indies. When was IPPY?

I entered a short story contest sponsored by the Limestone Genre Expo, a writers' conference. I have attended that conference and bookmarked its website. It seems to be a good option for my first ever entry.