Your Book Can’t Win an Award If You Don’t Enter

By Nettie Hartsock - Mar 07 , 2008

Last week, three authors I’ve worked with (as their online outreach publicist) scored fantastic wins both in silver and gold categories for the Axiom Awards, which were founded by the Jenkins Group. The authors were Geoff Livingston, Erika Andersen, and Lois Kelly.

Often when I work with authors, one of the first things I will ask them is how many awards they’ve entered their book into. It’s always surprising how many people have not done one thing in terms of trying to garner an award or two. What’s most surprising is that this is definitely a no-brainer! For the small amount of investment it takes for an author or a publisher to enter contests like the IPPY, Benjamin Franklin, The Ethan Awards, or the Axiom Awards, it’s well worth doing so in the long run.

Even if your book garners only a finalist mention, that helps it stand out amongst a crowded field of books that don’t have any finalist mentions or any award wins. In bookstores when I shopped with my kids, I was always drawn to the children’s books with the bright shiny Newberry Award sticker on them. Why? Because I knew they had been vetted by an objective and savvy group of book enthusiasts and voted tops for kids.

The same holds true in terms of the awards I’ve listed above. The awards are serious business, and the people who run the contests make sure they have a stellar panel of folks reviewing and scoring each book as the “best” in its category.

And don’t forget there are many awards available through local community and regional clubs, for instance, the San Diego Book Awards. If you’re feeling that twinge of “poor me! my book isn’t in published form yet, so I can’t enter” — don’t be silly! You can enter for Best Unpublished Novel awards or Best Creative Non-Fiction awards, to get a good list of those you can simply keep abreast of the ones noted by Writer’s Digest and other leading writing magazines.

Don’t forget Amazon’s annual novel awards every year. They just announced their finalists, and you’d be inspired and amazed to read about the finalists, the synopsis for their novels, and what they do in “real life” when they’re not trying to be famous writers!
The link to the announcement of Top 10 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award finalists is here. Go vote for the finalists!

If you don’t know where to start in terms of how to find awards, then here’s one good spot. Now go and enter!