1. Sparksofember says:

    Too bad we can’t sort the library by publication date! Hmm, I’m off to think!

    • Sorting books in the Library (by order of addition or publication) was available for a while until something stopped the app/plugin from working.

      Fixing this option now becomes a higher priority.

  2. So this is open to self-published authors this year?

    • Yes, we’ve decided to open the award to self-published authors. I’d hoped we’d have an indie author division of the award, but we’re not in position to do that and not sure that’s even the direction we want to go. So this year we’ll put the books published by either of the two into the contest and see what happens. 😉

      Becky (not Minor)

  3. Celesta says:

    Does this include middle grade fiction? Is there a certain length that the book has to be?

  4. Celesta says:

    Also, what if the paperback came out at the end of 2013 but the kindle version came out in Jan. of 2014? Would that book be eligible?

  5. Just for moment of clarification/correction, the gathering interface for votes has changed a little, due to a technical oversight on my part, but no worries, none of the votes submitted right when things opened yesterday afternoon have been lost.

    To address a couple questions that have come up, the books need to be novel length (over 50,000 words) and can be written for Young Adult or Adult audiences, for the sake of maintaining an “Apples to Apples” comparison.

    With the rising prevalence of publishers releasing a book electronically first to determine whether a print run is profitably justified, the first release date on any format of a book will serve as its publication date. So, an ebook released in November of 2013, followed by a print edition in February of 2014 has a publication date of November 2013, and would thus be ineligible for this year’s award.

    We are allowing self-published works to join into the fun this year, and we’ll see how that goes. Because authors are not permitted to campaign for their books, there will be no labor gap between a “big published” author getting the vote out as opposed to an independently published author. These books compete in the retail marketplace without segregation, and so we have opted to try structuring the contest in the same sort of intermingled way.

    Best of luck to all you 2014 authors of speculative fiction!

What do you think?