Build the award plan
Evaluate expected usefulness before paying an entry fee
Before paying an award fee, answer one question: what would a win or finalist result let you do for this book? If you don't have a useful answer, keep the money.
Why it matters
Award fees add up quickly, and the programs that market most aggressively to authors are not always the ones that reach anyone beyond authors. Evaluating fit first keeps the budget for the programs that suit the book and stops the decision being made by whichever deadline email arrived that morning. This site describes programs factually so you can decide; it does not rank them or tell you which are worth it.
Your part
- What you do
- Decide. Make a judgment about fit, cost, or strategy.
- Who normally owns it
- Author and publisher together. Whoever pays decides; author should see the reasoning either way
- When
- Before every paid entry (Build the award plan: twelve to six months before publication, because eligibility windows close early)Checked September 13, 2026
How to do it
The full walkthrough
Many award programs charge to enter, and the fee is not by itself a reason to avoid one. Juried programs, genre programs, and independent-publishing programs all charge, because judging costs money. The question is not whether there is a fee but what you would get for it, and the honest answer varies from "a great deal" to "a seal you can put on your own website".
A few questions sort this out. Who judges, and are they people whose opinion the book's audience respects? Who sees the results: librarians, booksellers, trade press, the general public, or mainly other entrants? How many categories are there, and how many winners and finalists per category? What do previous winners look like, and did the recognition appear anywhere beyond the program's own site? Is the fee per book or per category, and does the program encourage entering many categories at once?
None of these answers make a program good or bad. A program with many categories and modest visibility might still be worth it if the seal helps at a specific bookstore or with a specific audience. A program with real prestige might not be worth it if your book is a poor fit for its categories.
Traditionally published authors should ask the publisher's view; publicity departments have seen which programs move anything. Hybrid and self-published authors usually decide alone and should write the reasoning down, so next year's decision is faster.
Common mistakes
- Deciding based on the program's own description of its prestige.
- Entering because the fee is small, without asking what it buys.
- Skipping every paid program on principle, including the established juried ones.
- Entering many categories to improve the odds instead of the one that fits.
What done looks like
- A short written answer, per program, to who judges, who sees the results, and what a win would change.
- Total cost per program including fees, copies, and shipping.
- A look at the previous cycle's winners and where their recognition was reported.
- A yes or no decision recorded in the awards calendar, with the reason.
- A total awards budget for the year that the decisions add up to.
Ask your publisher
Copy this into an email. Replace the bracketed parts with your details.
Sources and last checked
- Official source
- No single official page for this step.
- Last checked
- September 13, 2026
- How confident we are
- Verified
Rules and deadlines change. We last checked this information on September 13, 2026. If you see something that needs updating, please tell us.