Well done and congratulations to all the finalists. Also, a word of thanks to Ken and Paula for all your efforts with Page Turner Awards.
I'm among the group of writers not chosen as a finalist. While I appreciate the kind words of encouragement in the Finalists Announcement email, I'm left feeling as though I've reached a dead end and need to start over. But do I? Maybe I was close and needed further editing. Maybe I wasn't, and the manuscript belongs in the bottom desk drawer. I have no way of knowing.
Feedback is essential for all writers to learn and grow. Our submissions were judged, appraised and scored. The email referred to scoresheets, submission scores being close and a few of last year's finalists rising in scoring.
Why can't each submission receive their scoresheets, as well as the submission's overall score relative to the line of finalist's scores? Also, how many entries were there in each category? 50? 5,000? This is valuable, available information that could benefit writers immensely if they could see the evaluation of their writing. Withholding feedback is a missed opportunity to help writers grow.