One of the first objections critics raised when Simon & Schuster announced its deal to publish the winners of the Sobol Literary Enterprises contest under the Touchstone/Fireside banner was "What if none of the entries are good enough to publish?" Well, M.J. Rose scoured the fine print, and here's what she discovered in Sobol's rules:

"In the event less than 2000 entries meeting the minimum standard criteria of the Contest are timely received by Sponsor, Simon & Schuster reserves the right to not award any publication prize."

As you'll recall from the earlier coverage of this deal, Sobol currently has "more than 1,000 entries," which is clearly not 2,000 or they would've said so. Good thing they extended that deadline another three months, isn't it?

Oh, and here's another fun surprise. The winners, if there are winners, might not be published by Touchstone: "Simon & Schuster shall in its sole discretion determine under which of its imprints it will publish the Manuscripts referred to herein." Actually, it's hard to suss out the significance of this one; I mean, what are the odds of finding Scribner-quality material in this slush pile, right?