We typically email the first, second, and third place winners. We also announce the three winners in the blog post. So yes, the three who make it to round two will be notified.

We make a good faith effort to verify that the story that wins the contest is the original work of the person who submitted it. As long as the work belongs to the winner then anything is fair game, including previously published stories.

Are short stories that have already been published on-line eligible for this contest?

Thanks very much.

Jenny

Anyone can enter the contest. For writers living outside of the United States we can send a $50 USD check but we recommend that winners outside of the USA accept an electronic Amazon.com gift card instead of the check. We convert the $50 USD into the equivalent currency for this transaction. The winner of our fist contest did not reside in the USA and he accepted an electronic Amazon Gift card.

We have several posts on our blog about our review expectations, see links below. We largely leave it up the the reviewer to determine what constitutes a thorough review for each work they critique. The perceived quality of the critiques you give, based on the critique feedback scores you will receive, help us match authors for critique.
http://www.reviewfuse.com/blog/2009/01/charging-into-the-review/
http://www.reviewfuse.com/blog/2008/09/responding-to-a-bad-review/
http://www.reviewfuse.com/blog/2008/08/critiquing-you-are-the-expert-i-think/
http://www.reviewfuse.com/blog/2008/09/is-it-better-to-give-than-to-receive-a-review-2/

We currently only match authors based on they type of work they submit (short story, chapter, poem, essay, etc…). Our group is not large enough yet for finer segmentation yet. I believe that if you know what constitutes a good story in one genre you can easily transfer that knowledge to critiques of other genres. in about another 6 months we will probably start using your input when finding works for you to critique.

There is no one to opt out of an assigned critique. However, if you are patient, assigned critiques do disappear after 16 hours. We have set our system up like to ensure timely critiques for all members.

1. Do you have any guidelines about how to write a critique? In particular, are there any rules about how long a critique should be? Obviously “Great” or “Awful!” are too short, and I would guess if the critique is longer than the story that might be a bit much But some guidance might be nice.

2. Can we provide some guidance TO YOU about what stories would be reasonable for US to critique? I do Specfic (SF, fantasy, etc.) and would not feel comfortable trying to critique a romance or a western, nor would I be likely to provide much useful feedback to authors in those genres.