Archive for 'Book Awards'



Oct
31
EBooks Getting the Shaft from Writing Awards

For romance writers, the RITA is the equivalent of a writing Oscar. This year there were changes to the qualifications for the RITA awards including one that effectively eliminates ebooks from competing. The RITA contest will not be open to any book that is not “mass-produced by a non -Subsidy, non-Vanity Publisher in print book format.”  What does mass produced seems to exclude print on demand books which how ebook publishers fulfill their orders.

I’ve also been told that the Lambda Awards which recognize excellence in the GLBT field explicitly excludes ebooks but will accept self published books.

These awards should be about quality of the book and not print runs and formats.

Jun
17
Joanna Trollope Gives Chick Lit Some Props

Chick lit is a taboo term in publishing right now and even in its heyday, the sub genre took alot of heat for being substantiveless pap. Joanna Trollope blogged for the Guardian that the effortless entertainment of chick-lit is actually difficult to write.

The thing is, it’s hard to write good romantic fiction, and it’s much, much harder to write funny good romantic fiction. One of the criteria we judges were given was that if we hadn’t laughed, or been really beguiled by the end of chapter one, we should hurl the book away from us (and yes, a lot of books deserve hurling, but that’s the fault of their quality and not their genre).

Trollope is one of the judges for the new Melissa Nathan prize, an award for Comedy Romance. Thanks Rebecca for the tip.