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How many out there have used Book Awards to gain recognition for your books? Seems they have to be newly published to qualify. There are so many to choose from and submitting your book to several can be costly. Good idea or not? Do they really help elevate your promotion status to retailers or prospective customers? I'd love your comments...

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I think book awards are just another avenue to gain recognition for your work. They are great if you win them but not winning does not mean that your book is not worthy of recognition. Getting recognized for your work depends on the quality of the content whether it be a book, an article or anything else. Like you said there are numerous awards available and many are limited as to the type of book they are applicable. The process of submitting a book for an award can be costly as you stated but going deeper into the subject the process of determining the winner is the key. I am not critical of any book awards that exist or the process they use but if books are honestly evaluated against others regardless of whether they have had other recognition they are great. In respect I feel book awards are great but it would be hard to determine if winning any would elevate your promotion status as there are usually a number of activities authors do to gain recognition.

One last point to make is that I have a page on my web site titled literary awards which might be useful to others.
Thanks Dennis. Great thoughts on the subject! I will most likely enter 5-6 Book Award contests this year since this is when I released my revised edition of my book, Mission Possible - Spiritual Covering.
Like you say, it can't hurt. Just being nominated for a certain catagory is awesome. Many of the book award sponsors that I am interested in are for the self-published and small press catagories. I appreciate your candor and of course, quality and content are key to anything being great vs good...
Great comments Dennis! You are right - not winning an award does not mean you don't have a great book (just that it might not have made its way into the right hands). Thanks for all your input & the literary awards page mention on your site!
Hi Deborah,

If your question flat is do they help sell books...no. Book awards are probably the least effective book selling tool their is. For one thing, no one pays attention to them and they really don't matter. They matter to authors more than they will ever matter to others. Libraries don't care. Booksellers don't care. Reviewers don't care and fans and readers don't care.

I've won book awards. I never submitted my book, but my books were nominated. I felt more appreciative knowing that the awards committee enjoyed my books enough to nominate them on their own. I do mention this on my site and in interviews but other than that, I don't think an award is a big deal in terms of promotion. It's a good thing to do and it does open someone's eyes when they see a book has won an award, but it's just a title. It matters more for the author than readers. My publisher was happy though. Awards don't mean much to readers. They are only going to read books that interest them, no more or no less. An award can't sway a reader either way.

Maybe the Pulitizer can, LOL! But readers rarely pay attention to this. There are millions of literary awards out there people haven't even heard of and so, they wouldn't think twice about an author winning this anyway. The best chance for book sales is to write good books and build a career off those books. That might sound vague, but this, unlike other short fixes is the only way to sell books.

Best Wishes!

http://www.stacy-deanne.net
Thanks for your viewpoint, Stacy. There are actually (3) I'm going to enter my book in this year. One is with a publisher's group that I belong to, another with a well know Christian online magazine, and the other referred to me by someone else. You're probably right about customers not really being influenced one way or another. That's alright... if I do win a placement or acknowledgement from one of them - it will bring attention to the book. I'm not interested in attention to me as the author. It's all about helping women with the message of the Word.
Blessings,
I'm in agreement with you Stacy. I don't really put a whole lot of stock in winning an award - but it is pretty cool when you do! Just being nominated for an award or book contest is flattering. And yes, awards probably won't sway any readers - but just the same - they don't hurt either!

Writing good books is the answer. They need to be attractive, engaging, and helpful. Thanks for your thoughts!
So, after months of waiting and wondering - I finally got notification of an award for my little Christian non-fiction book for women. I am a 2010 Gold Label Winner on Readers Favorite website - "Mission Possible" http://bit.ly/RFaszySf
I congratulate you for that.
Thanks so much! Of course, God gets all the glory for my book and the hearts it touches...
Congratulations, Deborah. That is great news!
Thank you Sarah for your congrats. God bless...
does anyone know of any book competitions/awards etc for historical fiction?

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