Why Another Book Award?

Rita Mills

FIRE Book Awards Competition

September 13, 2024

I was approached in the fall of 2023 to help brainstorm the pros and cons of creating a new book award program for the independent book publishing industry. In my 30+ years in the business as a consultant and a book packager I have seen many book award programs come and go. There are very few still standing after a couple of years, so my first question was, “Why another book award?”

In the late ’90s I attended a writers’ conference in Houston where one of the major players in the “self-publishing world” was a keynote speaker. He made a comment that has stuck with me all these years. “If you want to make money in the book publishing world, the only way you can do that is to create a book award. They are a ‘cash cow’ that allows us to publish books we think are winners.” One thing I knew for sure about a new book award was that I didn’t want to be involved if the award wasn’t more than a “cash cow” for the organizers and didn’t give something back to the industry.

Our research on existing awards found very few who really helped market the entries unless they were the big winners. So, if help marketing and selling product is what book publishers are looking for in the long run why are most of the awards that still exist completely missing the boat? I could only come up with two reasons. They didn’t know what “out-of-the-box” thinking was or they were only interested in the old “cash cow” theory.

After we had brainstormed the new approach to an award with a focus on marketing the books, we tallied up all the expenses involved in doing a “class act” award. There was no way it was going to fall into the “cash cow” category which I had been led to believe. I have to be honest—my first inclination was to back away from the project. By the time we paid judges, administrative help, prize money, server space and design of two websites, social media advertising and having a catalogue designed?we would be lucky to break even.

Then my “inner paradigm pioneer” stepped forward reminding me why I got into this convoluted and scam ridden business in the first place. I truly wanted to help those aspiring to write navigate the treacherous waters that the book publishing world can be if you are a newbie. Part of our mission was to help the indie publishing industry, so everyone involved agreed if we broke even the first year, we would be satisfied. Besides, we had an ace in the hole in that the four principals involved could handle a lot of the work involved the first year.

From that point forward our major focus for the new book award was to incorporate a major element of marketing the entrant’s books into our program.

Why Collective Marketing Is the New Paradigm in Book Awards for Indies

If you are a newbie to book publishing, you probably think the only reason to get a book award is for the kudos. Of course, we all want recognition from our peers, and it is gratifying to know that someone likes your labor of love. Winning an award should be a jumping-off-place to help you focus on marketing your winning book.

However, the “big elephant” in the room is that most authors are introverts and when they do receive an award, they don’t have a clue about what to do with it. Going out and hawking their book isn’t in their wheelhouse. And, the straight-up truth is the author is the face of the winning book and if they aren’t going to get out and market the award they shouldn’t have ventured into publishing a book at all.

Seems most awards stick to a formula that involves stickers and a gala with very little else like helping with marketing the winning books. More good for the winners can be done than the author just getting a couple of minutes of fame accepting an award at a gala and a sticker. So, why haven’t the awards people snapped to the fact that they could take the thousands of dollars they spend on a gala and put that money toward advertising and awareness for the winners.

A book award is a legitimate excuse to market your book as vigorously as you can for as long as people will listen. At the very least, someone reputable needs to be hired who can do the marketing and public relations needs to enter the picture. If not the project more than likely will be stopped dead in its tracks and the book will go nowhere. I have seen this scenario happen to many really good books that have had tremendous potential only to languish and never realize their full potential.

The name of the game when marketing anything is awareness, visibility, and exposure and the more the better. Before social media and the internet came along the average time a person had to visually come across a product to remember it was seven times. Last I looked in today’s world of social media that seven times has gone up to over 40. The pervasiveness of social media is largely to blame for shortening a person’s attention span.

Your marketing needs to include sending out press releases about your being a winner, post it on FaceBook and all the other social media out there. Get video involved by producing a trailer if you haven’t already done so. Repurpose that trailer for use on TikTok or Instagram or create your own YouTube Channel. Be a guest on?as many blogs and podcasts as you can find who focus on books in general or your particular genre.

The projected goal of our book award was to help the author with as much of this direction as possible because the name of the game is exposure, exposure, exposure.

Why is the FIRE Book Awards Different?

With our primary focus of marketing, we set out to get maximum exposure built into our game plan with the new paradigm of working as a “collective”. There is more power with a group of people who have the same cause than one person striking out on their own. So, we knew incorporating social media and getting the World Wide Web involved seemed to be a no-brainer for our marketing goals. Incorporating an internet vote to pick the Grand Prize Winners was to be our hook for both global awareness and viral marketing.

With an internet vote, an entry has the potential to be seen by millions of people worldwide during the two-week voting period in December. And if your book is distributed through Amazon, some sales could come from other English-speaking foreign countries where otherwise you wouldn’t get exposure by just marketing in the US. Gamification seems to be the latest trend in anything to do with the internet, so for some fun we incorporated prizes for those who cast the most votes to pull more people into the mix.

Even though marketing differentiates our award from others we also wanted to give back to the industry as well. From our years of experience working with many indie authors, most newbies strike out on their own with very little solid knowledge about how the publishing industry really works—they just want to share their story. So, we wanted to incorporate an educational element into the competition that could be beneficial for all those who entered. The result was evaluation sheets which act as a critique for the entry with major input and direction for future use in those areas that might be lacking.

Each book entered goes through two different judging evaluation critiques. The first Evaluation Sheet has a focus on content which incorporates storyline, character development, flow, grammar, industry standards, etc. These publishing standards go a long way in showing the credibility and professionalism of the author or publisher. The second Evaluation Sheet is strictly for design and the graphic elements of the interior as well as the cover design.

We anticipated some negative feedback because of our “collective” approach and we realize not everyone is going to see our vision so we wanted to be upfront about some of those objections. Some will say that because it is an internet vote, it is more like a popularity contest and books aren’t judged on their merit. If the book is included in the vote, it is already a winner, and if that winner can bring major exposure to “ALL” the books in the vote that is a very good thing for everyone involved, don’t you think?

Then there are those who don’t want the competition of having someone else’s book being showcased next to theirs. If you hear anything I have to say please remember this. People who are readers read many books, and yours isn’t the only one they are going to buy.

The FIRE Book Awards will be more than just kudos for your book, it will be a fun, exciting, insightful and an educational experience for all those who enter.