Book Awards Are Useless (Unless You Do This)

There are hundreds of book awards you can submit your book into. Each one, of course, has a fee to enter, and if you do win, not much happens most of the time. So, are book awards useless? Well, if you're wondering if you should enter your book into a book award or 10, this video is for you. Hey there, I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers, your one-stop shop for all things nonfiction book publishing. As part of the marketing we do for authors in their post-launch phase, we submit their book to book awards. We've submitted my book to book awards too, and I've won a bunch. Recently, the second edition of Self-Publish and Succeed won two, and I'll tell you about those in a second. But before you go and start spending hundreds of dollars on book awards, I have to tell you that book awards are largely useless. Not kinda useless, not nice to have. They are actually completely useless for most authors. You win one, you post about it, you might update your cover, and nothing changes. But the thing that I wanna share is that the award isn't the problem. It's all what you do after you win it. An award is not a be-all end-all. It's not really gonna change anything unless you use it like the tool that it is. It's kind of like if you buy a treadmill and expect you're gonna get fit just 'cause it's sitting in your house. I have a rowing machine in my house, didn't give me a six-pack. I wish it worked like that, but I also wish if you won an award, especially a good reputable one, that it would mean your book gets immediate traction. I recently won a Book Fest award for the second edition of Self-Publish and Succeed, and I won a Literary Titan award. Winning either award didn't magically change anything. So what do I mean? Well, there was no sudden spike in sales, no flood of opportunities, and I don't even know if I've posted it on social media yet, so we'll get on that. But ultimately, Book Fest is actually a pretty darn good award. I'm less familiar with Literary Titan, And I wasn't super excited when I won the award and then immediately got a, "Congratulations, you're invited to purchase stickers and a certificate to show off your win." I don't like that. Book Fest did not do that, but they do have a listicle you could pay to be a part of. It would have been better if you just got to be in the listicle because you're a winner. Outstanding Creators, they send you trophies, belts, medals, and certificates, no extra charge. They post about all their winners over and over again. That's my kind of award. Now you might be thinking, well, I've never heard of Book Fest. Does it matter? Well, how many book awards can you actually name? Pulitzer? Yeah, right. National Book Award? Maybe. Most people don't really know what is a good book award. So just because you haven't heard of an award doesn't mean it's not valuable, but ultimately an award isn't even validation, it's leverage. So let's talk about how to make whatever award you win valuable, because it really only works if you leverage it. So what are you gonna do? Well, number one, change your positioning. The fastest win is just to say you're not just an author, you are now an award-winning author. So use that, add it to your Amazon page, your website headline, your LinkedIn, your speaker page, your speaker sheet, your email signature. People don't read everything about you, they scan. And when they scan, they're asking themselves usually unconsciously, is this person legit? And an award helps answer that question. And really what people's minds are looking for is what's the risk here? And an award winner has a slightly lower risk, which makes faster yes decisions, whatever that person might be searching for. Number 2, use this to create a new moment to talk about your book. An award gives you a reason to talk about your book. Now marketing runs on what's new. Nobody cares that your book came out a year ago, but they will care that you just won an award. So now you have a reason to update your cover, even relaunch your book if you wanted to that, send emails, pitch your media again, especially local media. Your local media— TV, radio, newspaper— they are looking for local people they can talk and brag about, and they'll be pretty excited sometimes to feature a local award-winning author, especially if it's a slower news cycle. So reach out to the hosts or authors of your favorite media and just see what might work. Number 3, set Sell the story. I won an award, it's not a story. Why did it win? Why does it matter? Tell that story. So instead of saying, "I won a Book Fest Award," I should be saying, "The book is being recognized because it helps authors turn their book into real businesses." Or even better, "The second edition was written because I needed to address the changes in the market that have arisen since AI, and now it's being recognized because of blah, blah, blah." Right? Now it will connect more. Number 4, use the award to justify higher value. An award signals this person has been vetted. And if you're a speaker, and this is really important, I was explaining to someone the other day that when I book speakers, whether for my own events or when I was learning chair for the Las Vegas EO chapter, I would never book a speaker that wasn't vetted. Generally, that meant I had to have seen them speak or know someone that had seen them speak. But if that wasn't the case and I needed a speaker within a specific topic, I would book them based on their resume, which would include a speaker reel, no more than 2 minutes, by the way. I'm not gonna watch more than 2 minutes. Their awards and points of recognition. Basically what's on their resume that I can sell to my audience as making them worth listening to. This means they worked for NASA, they were a speaker with Tony Robbins group, they have a Guinness World Record, or they're a multi-award-winning author. Sell that story and use it to reposition yourself. And now you can justify higher speaking fees, higher consulting fees, charging more for your service. This is about building authority and then making sure the world knows about it. I wish authority magically appeared all around you, but you have to strategically build it and then tell people about it. Number 5, speaking of authority, put it in your authority system. Let's make sure you are noting this award in a lot of places so that it's being seen by the LLMs and search engines and of course future clients, podcast hosts, media, and speaking bookers. If your platform doesn't mention your award, your award doesn't really exist. So landing pages, webinars, email sequences, lead magnets, like I said, your media kit, speaker one sheet, even one line like, "From the award-winning book," can increase conversions because people trust what feels proven. If you take nothing else away from this video, remember the mistake to avoid is winning an award and then using that award once to post on social media, maybe twice, and then stopping. And I get it. Sometimes it feels awkward to keep talking about it. And I know, I've thought about this and so have our clients. Well, that wasn't a great award, was it? Forget about it. Nobody knows. You don't even know for sure how great the award is, so let go of it. I have a friend that just interrupts you when you say something like that. Well, she says more colorful language than I'm going to use, but she says, "Stop. Own your greatness." So own your greatness, my friend. You should be using that award for years because the market forgets fast, but book awards are useless unless you are leveraging them, all right? And that's the difference between an author who is building authority and an author who is looking at their award wondering why it didn't do anything. All right, so if you were in my shoes, by the way, how would you leverage the awards that I just won? Would you relaunch your book? Or maybe this is what you have done. Did you relaunch it? Did you do a giveaway? Did you do something more creative when you won an award? Let's talk about it in the comments below. Oh, and if you want an easy way to win some really good awards, check out our partner Book Award Pro. You can head over to booklaunchers.com/bookaward. That's our affiliate link. We use them with our authors for getting book reviews and book awards. Don't just publish, build an empire with your book. I'll see you in the next video so we can do just that.