Use meaningful award results
Share meaningful award news
When a result is meaningful to a particular audience, send a short, specific note to the librarians, journalists, booksellers, and partners for whom it is relevant.
Authors often hire help with this: publicity or marketing.
Why it matters
Recognition that is relevant to a specific audience gives that audience a reason to act: a librarian may add the book to a purchase list, a bookseller may face it out or book an event, a local paper may run a short piece. None of that is guaranteed, and a mass mailing of every result to everyone produces the opposite effect. Targeted, specific notes are the version that works.
Your part
- What you do
- Do it. You normally do this yourself.
- Who normally owns it
- Author and Publicist. Author or publicist sends; coordinate with publisher publicity
- When
- Within a week or two of the announcement, after the metadata and profiles are updated (Use meaningful award results: after a result is announced, and at the next cycle)
How to do it
The full walkthrough
Some recognition is worth telling people about directly, and the test is relevance to the recipient rather than how it feels to you. A state library association award is news to librarians in that state. A genre award is news to the genre's booksellers and reviewers. A subject award is news to the association whose members read in that field. A broad, many-category program with modest visibility might not be news to anyone outside your own circle, and that is fine; it can still go in the metadata without a mailing.
The note itself should be short: what the recognition is, in the program's exact words, a link to the announcement, the book's ISBN (International Standard Book Number) and formats, and one sentence on why it might matter to this recipient. Librarians want the identifier and the availability; booksellers want to know if you can do an event; journalists want the local or subject angle.
Traditionally published authors should coordinate with the publisher's publicity team so that a journalist does not hear from both of you on the same day. Hybrid and self-published authors send their own notes, using the media list and library contacts built earlier.
Do this once per result. A second reminder about the same recognition is noise.
Common mistakes
- Sending every result, however minor, to the whole media list.
- Leaving out the ISBN and formats, so a librarian has to look them up.
- Duplicating the publisher's announcement to the same journalists.
- Sending the note before the metadata is updated, so a recipient who checks a retailer sees nothing.
What done looks like
- A short list of recipients for whom this specific result is relevant, drawn from your existing media, library, and bookstore lists.
- One short email per recipient group, with the exact wording, a link, the ISBN, and the angle for them.
- Coordination with the publisher's publicist on who contacts whom.
- Recognition also added to the metadata and profiles, so recipients who look it up find it confirmed.
- The mailing recorded in your outreach log.
Sources and last checked
- Official source
- No single official page for this step.
- Last checked
- Not checked against its source yet.
- How confident we are
- Verified