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Amazon.com is asking its reviewers to help choose the winner of a competition for a book deal and a $25,000 advance from Penguin.
The US online retailer and some of its most prolific reviewers have picked 836 semifinalists from 5,000 entries to compete for the book deal, according to the Associated Press.
Reviewers who post their critiques on 25 books will be entered into a draw for an Amazon Kindle, a $2,000 gift certificate and prizes from Hewlett-Packard.
Readers can download excerpts of the semifinalist entries and help rate and review them, and Penguin editors will consider the comments when picking 10 finalists by 3rd March. A winner will be announced on 7th April.
The competitions follow Amazon.com's launch of its on-demand book publishing unit, CreateSpace. Depending on the success of the winning book, Amazon.com will decide whether to make the contest annual, said Aaron Martin, director of print-on-demand for Amazon.com.