The publicity firm that I have worked for these past 16
years was the proud sponsor of a book-publishing award called
The IPPY Awards. The awards celebrated
their 19th year of honoring the works of independently published authors. I saw firsthand why authors get
so excited to win an award when I attended the ceremony, which was held a mile
from Book Expo America in Manhattan.
A few hundred authors gathered to be honored and to interact
with one another. Many authors do not
meet other authors, so when they see a room filled with them they either feel
at home amongst their peers or fearful of all the competition – or perhaps
both.
There are many, many awards out there, given by various
groups and organizations but each is special when it involves books. There are so many books published annually,
yet fewer than 1% are even nominated for any kind of award – let alone win one. Fewer than 1% make any kind of bestseller
list for even one week. Maybe 2% of all
published books are reviewed by Publishers Weekly. So the odds of any kind of recognition
bestowed upon a book are rare.
When an author can refer to their book as an “award-winner”
it sounds so much better. It sounds
authoritative and tested. It sounds
substantial and final.
Judging books is very challenging. It’s easy to dismiss garbage – ugly covers,
poor editing, dull plots, flat writing – but it’s much harder to choose the
best of the best. It often comes down to
personal preference, as there’s no exact or decisive formula to figure out if
one book is truly better than another.
Still, if we can get a consensus, even if subjective, a picture starts
to form.
The public doesn’t know one award from the other. Is the Indie Book Award better than the Ben
Franklin Award or the IPPY Award or USA Book Award or any of the other awards
out there? People know the Pulitzer, National Book Award, and Nobel Award.
They may have heard of a few others, but no one distinguishes one from
the other. But you hear award-winning
and you sound like you won the lottery.
Same with the bestseller list. We
all know The New York Times is the gold standard but people can say they’re a
bestseller if they make any of a dozen or more lists for a brief moment in
time. It doesn’t matter which list – or
where you ranked on it or for how long.
It’s like the old joke, “What do you call a person who finished last in
med school? Doctor.” Once you have a title "award-winner" or
otherwise – you have been elevated in class.
You start to see yourself differently and as such, you may
start to get treated differently. Authors should definitely enter books for
awards. It’s a great feeling to win and
to be told your book is good, if not the best.
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