What about contests?

Normally I avoid literary contests. At the worst, they are a scam, like the national poetry contest that invites wannabe poets. The result of the submission is likely to be a notice that your poem is to be published (copies available for you and your family members, relatives, friends, etc, of course) for only xxx dollars per copy, and you are invited to the national meeting at a fancy hotel (expensive registration, etc.) which turned out to be a way to lure people to a meeting and cash in on he fees. This play on the egos of the gullible and, perhaps, desperate for publication is unethical.

Other contests typically charge an entry fee,  ostensibly to provide an honorarium for the judges who spend their time screening the submissions.  Some of the entry fees are pretty steep, like for the book awards, several hundred dollars. One reason for he steep fees is to weed out those who are too cheap or poor to pay, but also to limit the inevitable flood of submissions. As one reviewer pointed out, some people who are bad writers have money, so a price gate doesn't keep them out.

Publication is like a game, especially academic publishing where one collects brownie points, titles on the resume, like tokens to be used to cash in for raises or promotions. The so-called "little" magazines are like the long dead one, "Tailings,"  that had a very brief life at Michigan Technological University. Being the editor of a campus literary magazine can provide an element of prestige with the department head. Academic authors who write for such endeavors can trade, "I publish your piece and you publish mine." I did a satire of this in a short story in my collection "Misplaced Persons" where the professor, hungry for tenure but not capable of doing great writing himself, decided to edit a book of poetry, set up a contest with a fee, sold copies of the published booklet,  and was doing great until it turned out the winning poem was stolen lyrics from an obscure musical number. He got sued for plagiarism and fired.

There are also reviewers playing their own sort of game. For several years I actually did review children's books on my radio show and gave three books a plug with each broadcast. Over ten years of broadcasting, I acquired a collection of 800 delightful children's books my daughters picked out of the publishers' catalogs. Other reviewers only want books they can sell and might not review at all. Authors review each other's books, too, a variation of "I'll publish your story and you publish mine." My daughter, who used to work for Coffee House Press,won't read anything if it isn't reviewed in the NY Times. I'm not reviewed there, so it's only because I'm her dad that she'll read mine.

The upshot of all this is I don't give much credence to any contest that charges an entry fee.  I do review books I've read on my Kindle. I think if you've posted enough reviews you begin to get some notice as someone with a reliable opinion. Maybe.
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