Monday, August 20, 2012

The Integrity Of Award Shows

There is an overwhelming number of people that look to earn awards to help bolster their popularity and spark sales teams and book clubs to snatch up their book. Awards are an excellent way to promote and indicate a persons success and literary endeavors achieved making them worthy of honor. Having been in this business two years, I have created an awards that I have ran for two years, and it has had success and is designed to do what awards do: heighten an author's spirits and chutzpah, create a buzz for the author, and prompt people to pay attention to them. Below, I will outline what motivated me start the awards, and the nomination and voting process.

Prior to learning about the African American Literary Awards Show (AALAS),  to my knowledge there was only one other literary awards for African American authors hosted by African American's On The Move Book Club (AAMBC) and Club President,  Tamika Newhouse. The AAMBC awards show was hosted at a yearly conference and winning authors were given a plaque. I liked the concept, and found that there were a few categories that weren't represented that I wanted to see author's rewarded for like: Best Book Cover, Best Dressed Author, Best Web Site and Best Book Trailer. With that I set out to start my own event, Prodigy Publishing Group Urban Literary Awards.

In a recent article written by book club maverick, Tanisha Webb titled, Literary Awards: Have We Lowered Our Standards Just to Get Ahead?, I decided to write this blog to discuss some of her points that I totally understood. Tanisha complained that her blog talk radio show KC Girlfriend's Book Club was nominated for Radio Show of the Year at this years AALAS, despite the fact that their show had been off the air for two years. In her article the host criticized the nominating and voting process. This is not the first incident that an awards have been talked about negatively. I have been blasted for having a Best Dressed Author category, because people think that that is a non-literary factor. I have heard that Author of the Year awards are often based on popularity and not an author's body of work or sales, which would indicate whether or not they truly were the best author of that year. And lastly, I have heard complaints regarding how can a person be on an awards committee and be nominated repeatedly for awards. With these things in mind I created what I thought was a transparent and ethical approach to not have my creation criticized for just giving away awards and falsely stroking an author's ego.

Utilizing a Face Book Group I have brought together a band of 40+ people that make up the award's nominating committee. In that committee are authors (K'wan), editors (Carla Dean), book club members, (English Ruler, ARC Book Club), Blog Talk Radio Host (The 1Essence), Book Reviewers (Adrienna Turner), and Book Interviewers (Joey Pinkney). I listed in parenthesis one representative from the sort of executives on the panel for my awards. Each of them are required to submit a full ballot, which I E-mail and they forward it back to me with their name, and I print them all out. Hence, I have a record of each nomination sheet, so that I can shut down anyone that questions how a person was placed on the ballot. Once I print out all of the sheets, I write down the nominees and the people with the most nominations in any given category make the actual public voting ballot, and all others receive an honorable mention. Each nominee has to have at least two nominations to make the public ballot. Once I have completed the entire list of final nominees, I personally verify the release date of each nominees book. Any book that falls out of the previous years window is removed, and any book that has not been released over 90 days is removed. My position on the latter is that a book needs time to pick up steam and to truly mature into a worthy book. Certainly, a notable like Wahida Clark can shoot right to the top of the Amazon ranking on her release date, but that is a testament to her followers not the greatness of a book. Anyone on the committee cannot vote for themselves and they have been warned that calling on others on the committee to nominate them is frowned upon and prohibited. Each winner is mailed an Oscar-like statute for their win.

Once the nominations have been compiled, I first have a two week voting block to determine the winner of Blog Talk Radio Host of the Year. I ask a radio host to announce the winner of that category only and award that winner the privilege to host the actual awards on their radio show on a date determined by the host and I. That award has been given to Kisha Green (2011) and Mack Mama (2012).

Once that date and time is set, I begin to ask people to be award's announcers. Each announcer must call into the show and announce the winner live. The announcer does not learn the category and winner until the day of the show (just a few hours prior to), and they are sworn to secrecy. To date, I have not heard about any violations of that rule. During the past shows each announcer has been prompt and respectful to the timeline and schedule which they are also forwarded so that they know where they fall in the line-up to be ready. Each announcer is special as they have the opportunity to be on a show that has a large reach and can mention and promote their web site and brand to an audience without cost. Each show is archived and can be listened to at anyone's leisure: 2011 Show & 2012 Show.

I have had two problems with the awards: 1) People have questioned the purpose of having a sexiest male/female and best dressed male/female categories; and, 2) People have wondered if I have given Envy Red the awards that she has won because we are friends? I find that readers do buy books at times based on an author's sex appeal and look. As an author, I find that my sales at signings vary and I have found some connection to what I am wearing playing a pivotal role in that. If I am dressed in a typical jean and T-shirt, I am not approached as much as when I add a blazer. My female author friends have revealed that men do seem to pay them a bit more attention and buy a book just because of an attraction to them, and have no desire to read the book. They just buy with the hopes of getting their phone number. So, I find that commending authors that take the time out like T. Styles and Monique D. Mensah to look great and not head to an event looking like they're dropping their kid off at school at 7 a.m. is important. On the second issue, I was uneasy about Envy Red winning any awards, but she earned the two that she received. Her name was consistent on 90% of the ballots for one category or another, so it was no surprise that she won two of the three awards that she made the final cut. She went on to win awards by a book club and another literary event, as well as some other nominations, which added validity to her win at my awards.

My purpose for this awards is to truly highlight those authors that actually deserve it. I am so open with the process and what I do, because I want a Prodigy Urban Literary Award to matter on a persons resume. I intend to maintain the integrity of the event, and there will be no compromise on remaining ethical. I have won awards and I have been nominated for awards, and I believe that I have truly earned anything that I have received. I am determined to be the face of African American Lit and take on the torch of pushing this industry to the next level, and this awards highlights great book trailers, excellent book covers, respected book reviewers, and the stylish authors. In essence, looking at the nominees aspiring authors can look at the best covers, trailers, and dressed authors to see what it takes to effectively compete in this business.

Thanks for your time and attention, and I look forward to next years awards, where I plan to host the show live, while broadcasting on blog talk radio and youstream.

Rahiem Brooks
Founder & CEO Prodigy Publishing Group
Amazon


Vonda Howard, 2012 Best Independent Magazine 
Carla Dean 2012 Best Editor 


Ni'Cola Mitchell, 2012 Best Book Cover
Erick Gray, 2012 Sexiest Male Author


Mack Mama, 2012 Best Blog Talk Radio Host


T. Styles, 2012 Sexiest Female Author &
2012 Best Web Site Design


JaQuavis Coleman, 2012 Best Dressed Male Author


Urban Literary Review, 2012 Best Book Reviewer







4 comments:

  1. Great post. There are too many people making up simple awards just for the sake of being called "Award Winning", the integrity of literary awards in general is being tarnished.

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  2. Hey Rahiem,

    Thanks so much for sending me your blog post. I appreciate that and your well thought out entry regarding your award process. I think if people understand the nomination and voting process of any award it will at least allow people to look at the process and at least choose if they want to vote or even be nominated. I'm saying that everyone will be agreeable to whatever that process is but that there just needs to be a process in place so that the voting process is fair and unbiased. I've had a few friends that have decided to create awards in the past and I specifically asked not to be nominated, even if myself or book club was nominated because of the friendship that I had with that person so that it didn't come across as being biased. I never wanted anyone to find a reason to not think the voting process was compromised so I'm happy to see that you actually do a great job with keeping up with your submissions, nominations etc.

    With all due respect I get what you're saying about some people taking issue with some of the categories but honestly speaking in regards to the Best Dress Author categories I think the reason why you may have received a lot of flack by avid readers is because we don't care how sexy or well dress an author is. That's not going to make us purchase the book. If the author can't write their looks isn't what's going to keep us as fans either. Now if you're talking about a casual reader...I'm sure that some authors have sold lots of books based on their looks or how they dress! I think perhaps that could be an award voted on by fellow authors because you all see one another more often than the same readers do but for die hard readers we're more concerned about how we're approached by authors and how great their book is so we can support them. I've read many great books by not-so-hot authors. Jus sayin'! lol :)

    Anyways, thanks so much for your comments on my site and for writing your blog. The whole idea behind me writing the editorial was to get people to really understand what readers and book clubs really think about some of these awards and to also bridge the gap between what the literary industry THINK readers want and how we as readers and book clubs actually interpret what we see. They are not always the same and it's going to take a serious dialog in order for us to all come together and support one another wholeheartedly. I think at least this is a start. TaNisha Webb

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  3. In my opinion, putting other categories in literary awards is what would keep the same ol', same ol' from happening. The bottom line is that there are authors that are far too well-known and they're always going to overshadow the lesser knowns. The lesser knowns would literally have to go around bribing and begging for votes just to be nominated and thEY actually might be award worthy. It's just the wholehearted fact that an author with major buzz will have an easier time than the author who has to be grassroots with their approach. So yeah, maybe the self-published author has no choice to have sex appeal or to be dressed fresh ta def.

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