In this video, Julie Broad (founder of Book Launchers) explains how nonfiction authors, speakers, and consultants can determine whether a book award is worthwhile. She argues that all awards charge entry fees, so the key is not whether an award is free but whether it offers real value when leveraged. Julie introduces a series of practical tests: (1) Judge Transparency – does the award name a real, qualified judge? (2) The Math Test – how many categories, entries, and winners are there, and does the competition size justify the win? (3) Prize vs. Upsell – what tangible benefits do winners receive versus optional merchandise or marketing packages? (4) Gatekeeper Alignment – does the award’s judging panel match the audience you need (librarians, booksellers, industry professionals)? She also advises checking past winners, using watchdog resources like the Alliance of Independent Authors, and being wary of bundled award packages that may be paid for by vendors. Finally, she stresses that an award seal is only useful if the book is discoverable, offering a free discoverability audit at booklaunchers.com/auditmybook. The overall message is that a “good” award is one with transparent judges, measurable competition, real gatekeeper endorsement, and tangible, non‑upsell benefits.
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In an era where credibility and authority are everything for discovering an author, book awards are part of that puzzle that authors need to put together. But there are so many book awards. Whew. So if you're a nonfiction author, a speaker, a consultant, and you're sitting there with a list of book awards trying to figure out how to tell if a book award is a good book award, this video is for you. Hi, I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder at Book Launchers and your host here at BookLaunchers.com. Book Launchers, on a mission to help 100,000 books be discovered. Now, I made a video a few months back about why book awards are mostly useless unless you leverage them. And the comments were fair. A lot of you said, okay, Julie, I hear you, but how am I supposed to know which ones are the good ones? I have to tell you, this question isn't that easy to answer because there isn't really a clean line between legitimate and scam awards. There's a whole bunch of gray in between. In the middle. The other part of this challenge is that if you try to focus on a more prestigious award, it doesn't mean it's actually gonna do any more for your book than one of these mid-ground awards. Again, the video I did was all about how any award is useless unless you leverage it. Every book award open to self-published nonfiction authors charges you to enter, including the good ones. The Independent Book Publishers Association charges $99 per title per category for members and $234 for your first entry if you're not a member. Forward Indies is $119 for the first category, $99 for each one after that. Those are very respected programs in independent publishing, and they have to be paid so you can play. One of my favorites is Outstanding Creator Awards, and of course they charge, and they should. There is a cost involved in reviewing books, providing awards. When it comes to Outstanding Creators, they hand-make their awards and make sure every award winner gets coverage. Pay-to-play? That's not going to be the test, because if it were the test, the answer would be none of them are good, and we would be done. Here's how I look at this. A book award isn't necessarily an honor. I'm not saying it's not cool when you win one. It's more like buying media. There's definitely things that make an award better than another, and I'll cover that now. First, is there a judge? Can you name a human being who's going to read your book? Not our panel of industry experts, but a name, a bio, a job. Victoria Strauss runs Writer Beware for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, And she has been tracking this stuff for decades. Anonymous judging is one of her 6 red flags, and it's the one I'm putting first. Legitimate programs name their judges because naming them is the whole point. IBPA's Benjamin Franklin Award runs with over 170 publishing professionals— librarians, bookstore owners, reviewers, designers, editors. They send you the verbatim judging forms, so every entrant gets the actual feedback, win or lose. Forward Indies uses over 100 librarians and booksellers as judges. Now go look at the awards sitting in your inbox right now. Can you find a name of who the reviewer was or is going to be? If the answer is no, that's it. That test will clear a lot of awards from your list right now. The next test that I like to do is what I would call the math test. How many categories, how many entries, and how many winners? This is the first test that when I started running Book Launchers, I felt a little silly. About my early book awards that I won with More Than Cashflow and The New Brand You that I wrote before. Writer Beware documented Reader's Favorite running more than 140 categories, National Indie Excellence more than 150, the Beverly Hills Book Award more than 150. And this is okay if they have a lot of entries. I actually won the Beverly Hills Book Award for Best Sales Book for The New Brand You, and I also won an international book award. And I paid for plenty of other entries at the time that went nowhere. But how many other sales books were actually in that category? I have no idea. That number was never published. It could have been 40. It could have been 2. Jane Friedman published a piece by an author named Mary Garden who ran the numbers on an award she had entered. 129 books in and 45 winners out. That's like getting a participation ribbon. So look for 2 numbers before you pay. How many categories does this program run? And it's okay if there's a lot, as long as they also have a lot of entries so that you know that there's actually been a competition for the victory and you're not just buying a win. 'Cause otherwise you're just buying the words award-winning and hoping nobody ever checks on these things. When you win, what do you actually get? And what do you actually have to buy? Strauss's list flags worthless prizes and upsells. And we see this all the time. I've talked about this in other videos. They tell you, woo, you win a press release, a listing on their website, a digital seal. Well, these cost the organizers nothing and give you no value. Then comes the value they say, which is buy stickers, you can put them on your book, buy your plaques, you can display it, and they start selling you the stickers, the certificates, and all of those things. And then they say, and now promote it, and they'll sell you the $1,000 marketing package afterwards. Congratulations, you won, now buy a bunch of stuff. That is not a great award if you ask me. Now, Mary Garden, going back to the story from Jane Friedman, she paid $99 to enter and then $275 for the gala dinner, plus a flight and a hotel to Melbourne. And nobody told the finalists in advance who had actually won. I think if they sell merch, that's probably not your ideal award to enter, and especially when the merch catalog is bigger and better organized than the judging page. All right, finally, Maybe not finally. I might have another one after this. But the next test is the gatekeeper. This is the one that decides whether the award does anything for your business. What we really want to think about is who are we doing this award for? And readers, they don't know the difference between any one award, right? The podcast booker, the meeting planner deciding on your keynote, the corporate buyer. So the good news is they don't know that the International Book Award probably wasn't that valuable. But at the end of the day, what you have to figure out is if you were vetting someone and you looked at the award website, website and you looked at the past winners, what is your initial gut feel? Is that person holding your speaking fee who has never heard of a single one and happens to check one and it doesn't look legitimate? Now you're in a little bit of a pickle. Awards judged by librarians and booksellers in Forward Indies carry weight with librarians and booksellers. The judges and gatekeepers are the same people, and that is what a real award is. It is a group of gatekeepers publicly telling other gatekeepers that your book is worth their shelf space. So if you're trying to get bookstores and libraries, pay special attention to the awards that are read and rated by the people that are the gatekeepers you want to get to. For a business author chasing corporate work, that might be an industry association award nobody outside of your industry has heard of. But that will do 10 times more for you than a general book award with 150 categories. And I alluded to this, but I want to highlight it. Check past winners. Not the award's own testimonial page, but go to the actual authors. See if they are featuring their awards. If they won the award 2 years ago and they're not even talking about it, well, maybe it's an author that needs my video on how to leverage their book awards. But also, maybe it's because the award didn't turn out to be all that they hoped it would be. If you want a little bit of a shortcut, check out the Alliance of Independent Authors. They have a watchdog desk that rates book awards and contests on exactly this stuff: transparency of judging, fees versus prizes, rights grabs, upsells, Their partner level and recommended list includes the Benjamin Franklin Awards, Forward Indies, and Eric Hoffer Award. Also the Wishing Shelf Awards and the Book Life Prize. But their caution list is long and has a lot of names on it. I will put all these links and sources in the description below. So go take a look. Oh, one more thing. I know an author who paid $20,000 for a book package and bundled into that package was a guaranteed award with a red carpet where she got her photo taken. Getting the award? It was written into her deal. Think about what that means for every seal you've ever seen on a cover. Some of them were included in a vendor package. Think about some of your author friends that you see winning a grand award on a red carpet in front of people. Did they really win it, or did they buy it? Now, your reader can't tell the difference, so for some people, they don't care. Before you spend one more dollar on entry fees, let's find out whether your book is actually discoverable Because an award seal on a book nobody's finding, well, that's like putting a sticker on the other side of a closed door. So go to booklaunchers.com/auditmybook. We'll audit how discoverable your book actually is right now and show you some gaps. And that is worth more than a seal. And we'll do it for free. And then if you want help afterwards, well, of course we have services for that. But your audit will give you all the steps you need to take to improve your score. So is there such a thing as a good book award? Yeah. But not in the way you were hoping. A good book award is where you can name the judges, count the number of competitors you had, and point at a real person who cares that you won. Everything else is a sticker or a certificate that you're paying for. No matter what award you win, it doesn't build authority. It might confirm it, but nobody ever got taken seriously because of a seal. They got taken seriously first, and the seal was just one more piece of proof.
