Borders Chooses Epic Failure
Borders ran a contest to publish the best novel produced by one of their employees. And instead of Killian's book of complete win they chose complete shit.
ANN ARBOR, Mich., April 24, 2008 – Borders Group, Inc. has selected Ralph Ashworth, a supervisor at a Borders store in Tarentum, Penn., as the winner of the retailer’s fiction writing contest open to its 30,000 employees at Borders, Waldenbooks and Borders Express stores, the distribution centers and the company’s corporate office. A panel of judges at the corporate office singled out Ashworth’s crime-thriller novel entitled, “The Killer of Orchids,” from over 200 submissions. Ashworth will be awarded a book deal under the company’s proprietary publishing program and the full support of Borders’ merchandising and marketing arsenal.
Ashworth’s winning manuscript, “The Killer of Orchids,” follows two amateur sleuths, Xander Pooka, an 11-year old boy who is bright-beyond-his-years, and Jeff Redwing, a single, gay computer genius, as they investigate the murder of two local men by a samurai. Their investigation leads them into an underground ring where murder is the game and they become the hunted.