Go For The Gold; Today We Talk Awards

No, I am not talking about the Golden Globes or the People's Choice awards, I am talking about the literary awards which shine a light on your amazing work!

Like me, you probably once thought that the New York Times bestsellers list was compiled by how many books were sold in the US. As it turns out, that’s only mostly true in terms of sales numbers. 

According to a recent New York Times article dated 23 September 2020, come hell or high water the New York Times list is published every Wednesday at 7 PM Eastern standard Time.

So, who are the people actually make the selections? A tiny staff of three with a lot of help from computers.

Bookstores throughout the country send in their sales data to this team. Who are these stores? Literally they are stores big and small and in between. It took me two seconds to find the point of contact I would need to send in information if I was a small bookseller and wants to report my sales.

Okay, so if we accept the fact that it’s impossible to buy your way into the New York Times best-selling list, although there kind of is if you have a huge marketing campaign in your back pocket, then we have to consider some other options. You can either buy your way into a competition, which also could give you the side benefit of getting some reviews out of the deal, or you could participate in more genre specific competitions.

Undoubtedly, you have all heard of the Reader’s Favorite awards? It is, as I suggested, and award program where you pay to be listed as one of the competitors. They do promise to give you a fair review of book in exchange for the fee in addition to being considered for the award. And I have heard from other authors they do a really good job of writing a review.

I believe that winning the reader’s favorite award is a high honor and is worthy of praise.

However, you do have to be careful with these kinds of awards. There are a few out there which have come and gone which pretend to offer prestigious awards to authors for a fee.

Be careful and do your homework. Don’t just send money to any operation. This is where it comes in handy to be involved in the author writing groups. They can tell you if a particular award program is legitimate or not. There are plenty of people out there who will stop at nothing to try and steal those precious dollars from your wallet.

The other option for you to receive recognition is to participate in various groups. For example, I participate in the Horror Writers Association. Every year they give out the Bram Stoker awards. These awards are actually quite competitive. You submit your book to the team doing the evaluation who examine it for quality. If you pass that Mark, then the book is included in the competition that year.

Thanks for listening!

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