If you’ve ever wondered what the benefits of winning a ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award, or any award, might be-we’ve come up with a short list of what you should expect from your kudos:
- Awards further legitimize an author/publisher's work and give the title longevity by stimulating sales.
- Awards aid in the critic’s selection process from an ever-growing field of submissions.
- Award seals or other cover art encourage face-out display at bookstores.
- Awards enhance the credibility of the title or topic covered.
- Awards provide renewed life to an "old" title for continued publicity efforts.
- Awards complement information used in media kits, sales sheets, cover copy.
- Awards spillover effect helps other titles by the same author and publisher.
- Awards stimulate author/publisher interviews.
- Awards can be incentives for future publishing deals.
- Award images can be reproduced on back-to-print jackets, reprints, and websites.
What’s Next?
Publicize, publicize, publicize! Highlighting your finalist and award-winning status is just another step in an on-going marketing campaign that combines advertising, trade show appearances, book tours and
their publicity efforts. You should be able to depend on the award organizer to alert the trade and national media through their own publicity
network. But YOU need to take the steps to further help your individual title rise to the surface at a local, regional, national, even international level.
A recent finalist/winner sent me the following email just days after receiving her award:
Dear Victoria,
My book is already getting attention on the front cover of Norway's "New York Times", AFTENPOSTEN, due to the wonderful Silver-Award: Book of the Year 2001 for Business. My book is The Art of Leading Yourself/ Business. 100 e-mails from Norway thus far + lots of interviews. I want to thank you. This means a great deal to me! This is my life work. I wish you so much luck!
Sincerely,
Randi B. Noyes, President
Leadership International Inc.
www.leadership-international.com
I’m betting Ms. Noyes and her publisher Lost Coast Press began their publicity efforts upon learning of her finalist status…a number of Norwegian natives of some importance accompanied her to the awards ceremony at BookExpoAmerica 2002 in New York City!
Jodee Blanco, of BLANCO & PEACE, is an "Award-winning" publicist who was a guest speaker at our awards ceremony at BookExpo America in NYC. She has put fifteen books onto the New York Times best-seller list, five of which hit the number one slot. She shared a golden nugget with the audience about "multiple publishers" that provides the perfect launch pad for your newly revised press kits and releases highlighting your winner status-whether it be Gold, Silver, Bronze or Finalist.
"Multiple publishers are companies that publish clusters of weekly community papers. Liberally scattered throughout the United States, multiple publishers vary in size, some churning out as many as two to three dozen neighborhood weeklies. One of my best-kept secrets has been how to use multiple publishers to jump-start p.r. campaigns," relates Blanco in her book THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO BOOK PUBLICITY (Allworth Press).
Typically, a multiple publisher will print a separate, regionalized edition of the same weekly paper for each individual suburb in its territory. If you are able to secure an author interview with a multiple publisher, which Blanco assures us is a cinch now that you are an "Award-winning" author/publisher, that article is likely to appear in every edition they issue. If you live near a multiple publisher in a bigger metropolitan area, the effects could be amazing. And given the nature of the newspaper business and conglomeration-even smaller regions have great potential to create momentum for notoriety and tremendous sales. Go to the library and/or surf the net to find the multiple publisher in your area.
As with everything in publishing, it seems like your work has only just begun. Taking advantage of multiple publishers only scratches the surface of entry into the media your award-winning status provides. If we can be of further assistance, or if you would like to share some of the rewards of your efforts, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Congratulations on your Book of the Year Award!
Victoria Sutherland, Publisher
ForeWord Magazine
About ForeWord Magazine: ForeWord Magazine is the only literary review trade journal devoted exclusively to covering independent presses-who range in size from university presses putting out hundreds of tiles a year to micro, POD and eBook publishers who may put out one title in a lifetime.
The Book of the Year Awards program was set up specifically for booksellers and librarians to share in the process of discovering gems from each of these types of publishers in a number of popular categories, and who base judgements on their own authority in each category and on patron/customer interests.
For further information on seal orders, certificates, submission forms for BOTYA
2006 or other questions, please contact whitney@forewordmagazine.com, Operations Manager for Book of the Year Awards at ForeWord Magazine.