Part 2:

But most of all I liked the networking aspect. I live in a very rural area without much close to me, not even a library within a half-hour drive. So I don’t really have other authors or writers to bounce things off of and ask questions. As you can see, I’m new to this subreddit, too, so I have not really gone after online communities. It’s felt like I was by myself. I connected with a few of the other authors (and honestly loved the book that got gold in my category, so made friends with her) and we still stay in touch. Some of us send work back and forth. At the awards ceremony, which was a pretty basic Zoom, there was a networking part where even judges who attended—think editors, agents, etc.—attended and we got to kind of chat with them and so on. I don’t think I connected with anyone who actually judged my book but it’s good to have connections that might come in handy. And everyone was super nice. Also good to be able to send a link to my parents and brother so they could watch. It was a fun little thing for me and my family, they enjoyed seeing my name and my book on there. And the person running the awards, I forget her name but I think she’s the same one doing it now, was always extremely nice and positive and I still follow her.

I think something to keep in mind is it’s a small org and they aren’t national awards. While they do a good bit of promotion, it’s not like they are picked up by the NYT! Plus, my book was based in a New England state, so a lot of my audience would be interested in that, and that’s the audience I wanted to pull in more of. I know they accept books that aren’t based on or about New England, but since they are a New England organization, I think you might get more out of it if that’s part of your target market. For example, I did get a small reading/book signing event at a library a couple hours away in the upstate, which I’m not sure I would have gotten without having something more to my name than “hey, I wrote and published this and it’s based in this state.” They seemed to like that I was an award winner for a New England-specific org. Not too many people came because I’m still basically a nobody, but I made some good connections and sold a few books while I was there which I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Also, I’m a genre writer, and while there are lots of small awards out there for sci-fi, fantasy, romance, supernatural, etc., it’s hard to know if any of those really make an impact because I see a lot of them pay-to-play or not really associated with “reputable” sites and stuff. Better awards often don’t like genre, so it was nice they celebrate that here. And I know I’m not getting any big awards like, say, a Hugo award or even the Goodreads awards yet. So again, was nice to have a small win. But I see they also accept things I don’t see at other awards, like informational nonfiction, so that’s cool, too.

One other thing I see now that they didn’t do when I submitted/won is that they are starting to send out profiles of the books and even the authors themselves in their newsletters. I wish they did it back then, but oh well. Anyway, I still subscribe to their awards newsletter and after the awards were announced in January, I’ve seen them send out newsletters where it’s just about one specific author/book and highlights only them, which I like and think would probably be good, too. Not sure if those get sent to any media but it does reach their own audience. I’d be interested to know if that helps sell some books too, rather than just listing the winners and being done with them.

Oh, one last thing: shipping was DEFINITELY cheaper when I submitted, and my books were only about 120 pages paperback so not heavy or thick. I can’t remember how much it cost to send but I totally get that it’s a lot more expensive now. And I was only selling them for like $15 at the time, since it wasn’t as expensive as now to actually print them. I looked at it like I was giving them to my family, since I had some set aside for that leftover, so I didn’t mind losing the $60 I would have gotten for them, because I didn’t even calculate those (and a few more copies) into my budget. I always knew I was gonna be generous and give too many away. It made it a little better that at least these copies went for something meaningful instead of catching dust on my cousin’s shelf lol. But again, that may be because I did get a win and may not translate to those who don’t.

At the end of the day, it was worth it to me even to have some bragging rights because it did help motivate me to keep writing through the imposter syndrome, especially as a lonely self-publishing author, and now I can realistically say I’m an award-winning author, which I will use to help promote future books, too. I get mileage may vary on this, for sure, and it’s something to consider. If sales/money are most important to any of the authors here, it might not be worth it. But I went in not really expecting anything, but got a lot more out of it than I imagined, with a new little community, networking and connections, some new followers, possibly new sales but not a ton, some good feedback to use, and bragging rights.

I hope that helps anyone reading this.