How to Make the Most From An Award Program: Bookselling Strategies

An awards program is a way to recognise excellence in your industry. It’s a way to shine a light on the movers and shakers and engage your community. But it’s also a clever way to shine a light back on you as a trusted source and steadfast player in the industry.

A book award program (like ACABA), highlights the achievements of authors, and is a symbol of their book’s potential. It is a non-monetary award that seeks to recognise, celebrate and promote quality in Christian authorship in Africa.

How to Maximise the Award Program in the Submission Year:

1. Start by understanding the criteria for the award program and what the judges are looking for.
This will help you tailor your involvement to meet the expectations. For ACABA, there are two metrics to win the ACABA Award:

a. The judging Criteria
A criteria is the standard on which a judgment or decision is based. When you submit your two copies in ACABA, they are sent to the judges to read and give feedback based on a pre-determined criteria. This is available at https://africanauthors.net/judges-and-criteria/

It looks at:
(i) Audience (12 points) – Is the audience clearly defined from the title, presentation and content of the book?

(ii) Content (20 points) – Is the content’s perspective, depth of treatment, and reading level consistent with the purpose of and audience for the book?

(iii) Writing Style / Mechanics (12 points) – Does the style of writing make it accessible to the intended audience?

(iv) Author (16 points) – Based on their writing, does the author appear to have sufficient experience/credibility to write such a work? If not, is the work itself strong enough to give the author credibility?

(v) Design / Format (20 points) – Does the format of the book facilitate the purpose of the book?

(vi) Impact (20 points) – Does the book have the potential to significantly influence the Christian community or significantly substantiate information already available?

The above six metrics accumulate to100% from which the judges give their feedback. The tallying is done by getting an average from all participating judges. A comprehensive write-up is also presented to accompany the judge’s justifications. This highlights both the strengths and weaknesses of each book.

Once you submit your book, you have no further control of the outcome of the judges. You just need to wait and get the feedback to enable you know how to maximise on the strengths and improve on the weaknesses of your book.

b. The Level of Engagement and Participation of the Nominee:
This is a (soft) requirement for any award. Every initiative needs engaged participants – this is because the success of an author’s book is in two parts. One part has the author and their engagement in their book’s initiatives. The other part has the interested parties including publishers, book agents and award programs. This is with the understanding that a book cannot work if the author is not working.

How can a nominee be engaged in ACABA?

(i) Focus on promoting the submitted book in the co-marketing efforts by ACABA. Upon submission, every nominee gets:

-A web page: Share your page widely with family, friends and fans to get as many reviews as possible. This serves to get you reviews and testimonials but also to publicise your book.

-I Have Been Nominated (IHBN) poster: Share it widely for the public to know that your book has been accepted for a possible award. While only 10 books will be awarded, the nomination alone also carries the publicity impact your book needs for further publicity.

-Selling Links: Once you fill the selling form, your books are listed in all participating booksellers. Take those links and let your readers know that they can purchase your book at their preferred stores, bookshops or ecommerce platforms. You can also participate in the frequent campaigns as will be communicated to you from time to time.

-Nominees Journey: CLC Kenya/ACABA uses the journeys as a form of storytelling bookselling strategies. Readers connect with real stories and thus, sharing your story of why you wrote your book(s) becomes critical to engage readers. Share this widely.

-Comment and Reshare the CLC Kenya/ACABA Posts of You: Posters, links and stories of each nominee are shared on all social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. Find a platform that works for you and reshare widely.

By leveraging on social media and other marketing channels to spread the word about your participation in the award program can showcase your books in a compelling way.

Benefits of Active Participation in ACABA Award Program:
– You get points towards your book being awarded. There are participatory points that go towards determining the overall awardees. This is because we are looking for active authors to support – to whom has, more is given.

-We have an award for Influential Nominees who had most participation in the submission year – including the most reviews, the best attendee of the Award Program’s events and the best engagement on social media.