Finding the best awards for your book: An interview with Book Award Pro founder Hannah Jacobson
"No matter how you decide to publish your book, there are accolades for you"—and Book Award Pro will help you find them.
Annie Mydla, Managing Editor
This year, Book Award Pro is giving three free months of their unique accolades-finding services to all entrants and winners of the North Street Book Prize.
Book Award Pro founder and CEO Hannah Jacobson joins Winning Writers managing editor Annie Mydla to discuss:
- Why book awards are within your reach as an author
- How Book Award Pro finds the best awards for your book from over 11,000 submission opportunities
- How book awards connect your book to new audiences
- How Book Award Pro's in-house-designed AI protects author privacy and intellectual property
- What is included in the 3 free months of Essentials- and Pro-tier services that North Street entrants and winners will receive
Watch the entire interview with Hannah Jacobson or read this lightly edited transcript.
ANNIE: Hello, welcome, thank you for tuning in. I'm Annie Mydla of Winning Writers, and this is my blog. I'm joined today by Hannah Jacobson. She's the founder of our North Street Book Prize co-sponsor, Book Award Pro, a service that connects authors to curated submission opportunities for their books. But how does that connection happen? What is Book Award Pro's evaluation process for the books for the submission opportunities, and why is it helpful for authors to have this narrowed-down, personalized list of places to send their books? Hannah, thank you so much for being with me here today.
HANNAH: Hi, Annie. Thank you so much for inviting me here. And, you know, thank you for the opportunity to be a co-sponsor of the North Street Book Prize. We're really proud to be a co-sponsor.
So first, let's just let people know a little bit about what we're talking about. What is Book Award Pro and how does it help authors?
Validation and credibility are so important in your author career. Validation is just the knowledge that your writing is really resonating with your readers. And credibility is building trust with those readers. And quite frankly, in the book world, there's not a better way to do that than through book awards. Book awards give you a way to build that validation, to build that credibility. And Book Award Pro is a technology platform to help you actually pursue those awards, pursue those accolades, and know what's actually out there for your book.
Yeah, it can be really hard for people to know what the opportunities even are.
And you know, historically in the book world, there hasn't been a lot of great information on when to get awards, how to get awards, what does that look like? And as an author, you're really busy. You're a business owner. There's a lot of things to keep track of. So knowing that there's a service like Book Award Pro that can just handle that for you, that's kind of where we come into the book world.
We always believe in transparency, so directly on our website, we always include our plans, our pricing information about our services. You can go directly to BookAwardPro.com, you can just give us a few details about your book and that helps our system understand, what is your book about? So from there, you choose the best plan for your book from among our three plans, and if you would like to do your own entries or if you would like to have our team perform professional entries for you. Our system gets straight to work on your very first award matches. In fact, our authors have told us that they get their first award matches in moments.
You mentioned these three different plans. Are those different from the kind of pricing levels or subscription levels on the website?
No, those are exactly, those are our subscription levels on the website. We always believe too, again, from the very beginning of Book Award Pro that we wanted to offer a variety of pricing, a variety of plans to suit not only your needs but also your budget as an author. So you can essentially use our services to find what accolades are out there for your book, and then you can decide if you would like us to actually submit those opportunities for you or if you would like to do it yourself.
Can people only submit one book at a time, or can they submit multiple books?
Authors add multiple books all the time. And something we've come to find is that many authors actually not only write and publish a single book, maybe you publish a series, maybe you have multiple series, maybe you have just multiple standalone books. But our services work for every single book, no matter whether it's fiction, nonfiction, part of a series. You can absolutely use our services to find accolades for all of your books.
Do you mind if I ask how many contests roughly or how many, sorry, submission opportunities roughly there are in the Book Award Pro database?
Book Award Pro is really proud to operate the world's largest database of legitimate awards and reviews. And at this time, that's more than 11,000 accolades and counting, every single day.
Oh my gosh, I didn't even know that. That's a lot more than I thought you had. That's amazing.
I love to hear that from you as well because I know you're very well-informed in the awards world. And there are thousands and thousands of awards out there and it can be really frustrating for authors to figure out what's the best fit for my book, what's even out there for my book? And there are so many different data points to consider. We're really proud to really simplify that and make that easy for authors to find, make it accessible.
Do you accept every book that people send to you, or are there some kind of requirements?
Yeah, I love this question, actually. So Book Award Pro, we firmly believe that we're not a gatekeeper. Our purpose, our goal is to show you what opportunities exist for your book. So no matter whether you're unpublished, maybe you haven't published your book yet. If you're independent, if you're self-published, hybrid-published, even traditionally published, we work with authors, thousands of authors every year all around the world. And I can tell you that no matter how you decide to publish, there are accolades for you.
That's awesome. And you know, I can actually imagine a developmental function for Book Award Pro, because a lot of people who are creating manuscripts would really benefit from knowing, where am I trying to send this after it's finished? So if they can get an idea of the kinds of contests that would be available to them given the document that they currently have, it could actually help their editing process and kind of help to work towards something that's more focused, and also more geared towards specific opportunities.
You're really digging into the important questions here because there's so much to consider as an author. We actually do have lots of authors who sign up with us prior to publication. As long as you have a book and it's kind of ready to go, it's ready to present to these readers. Readers are award judges. So a lot of authors find validation in their first kind of, you know, those are those last steps of producing their manuscript, maybe even finding a publisher and even becoming an award-winning author prior to publication. We have authors who work with us all the time who do that.
Wow. So you're talking about these readers. How does Book Award Pro gauge whether a contest is right for a book? Who's making that decision? What do they kind of think about? What factors do they think about when they're looking at a book?
We actually collect more than 70 unique data points on these awards and reviews. And I tell you that because it's really important to understand. We understand exactly what an award is wanting on a very nuanced level. We heavily research all of these awards and ensure that our database matches your book to the perfect awards, to the right ones for your book. And that is taking into account millions of data points. That's even more than a human being can manage. But our goal is to find kind of the perfectly nuanced award, the award that will bring the most value to your book.
You mentioned these 70 data points. Can you just talk a little bit about them and maybe mention what a few of them are?
Absolutely. Thank you for that clarifying question because there's a lot I'm thinking of: word count, page count, your copyright date, which may be very different from your publication date. How are you published? Are you an independent author? Are you hybrid-published, independent, traditional? Are you unpublished? There are even details such as, how are awards treating authors? First and foremost, are they upholding their promises? Are they delivering value to winners? And like the North Street Book Prize, are they delivering value to entrants as well? Are they doing their best to do well, do right by authors?
So we have all these different kinds of unique data points, not only to find a great fit for your book. Does the copyright date fit? Does the word count fit? But also, does this award hold high value for this book? And then those awards are the ones that are more highly esteemed in our system that do really well for authors. Those will always kind of float to the top and you will see more matches, more submissions to those awards.
You know, those are really great angles to look at, just all of the little nitty-gritty details about the publication, copyright, page number, these things that authors may not actually be thinking about because they're so concerned with what's in the book. But, you know, I'd like to ask you a question and I know this is kind of a delicate topic in the book world right now. Are you guys using machine learning to like kind of look at the PDFs, or are they people, or…?
I love your questions. I'm the founder of Book Award Pro and I got this started. But I have a team of people, software developers and a systems architect, who design our technology to be useful for authors. There are all kinds of different AI, I've come to learn. We create our technology to best serve authors. So all we use our technology for is to understand what your book is about. Our AI is kind of handcrafted at Book Award Pro and we never share those details externally. That's only used for the benefit of providing your service.
That's great to know. That's really valuable. So there's no chance that like Google could end up with your data or Open AI, or it's just all in-house and it just stays there.
That's exactly right. And I think it's really important, like I said, I don't think that I understood a few years ago that there are different kinds of AI. It is important that your information is kept private and purely for the use of providing your service. So that's why we also give authors the option. It's really easiest for them if they upload a PDF book file because it's kept only within Book Award Pro. We don't provide that to any external sources. But for authors who are really, really sensitive about that, you can still use our services. There are still ways to give us information and tell us about your book that wouldn't inhibit your services.
Oh, yeah. So authors don't actually have to send the full text. They can answer these key questions and get all the benefits anyway. That is really good to know.
That's exactly right. The only time that we require a PDF copy of the book is when we're actually submitting it, you know, like digitally submitting it to the North Street Book Prize, to all their awards that are asking for a PDF book copy. But again, that is only ever shared with the awarding entity and never externally, never for the use of other technologies. It's only used to provide your service at Book Award Pro.
It's really great that Book Award Pro thinks so much about people's intellectual property as well as their privacy.
Absolutely. And in fact, one of our key technology executives is actually formerly in information security. So a lot of our background is really strict on privacy, security, keeping things very, very safe. Your book file we only ever share to an award that you have explicitly asked us to submit to. So everything is really kept under lock and key to really protect your information, protect your privacy, protect your book.
That's fascinating. Wow, you know what? Sorry, now I'm talking to you, I'm just like thinking about a lot of stuff. Before I met you, I was just like, oh, yeah, Book Award Pro, they just match up contests, but like…
Thank you for kind of the off-the-cuff conversation. This whole kind of process, there's a lot that goes into it. Book Award Pro, I started by myself in 2019. I actually launched my own services to submit authors to award services. Even at that time, wow, even at that time, Annie, I didn't even do awards submissions yet. I had done them previously with my book publishing background, but my goal was to find awards for authors. So I would maybe serve up to five authors at a time. My authors were really happy and they started telling their friends about my services, and their friends would tell their friends, and quite honestly my journey in awards has really grown, as well.
The technology is changing so fast, but also like, when you scaled up from just you, you just had to evolve so much. Like, can you just tell me a little bit about that process?
So a long time ago, I actually got my start in the book publishing world, working in a university press. And one of my jobs was to find awards for our books. As time passed, and even after I had finished that job, I always wondered what awards are out there for other authors. What awards exist? How can more authors use something like that, have that kind of tool in their toolkit? Because something I've learned is that authors don't know. They don't know, number one, that awards are something to pursue. It sounds like something that's just kind of bestowed upon you, but it's actually a process you have to pursue. In a lot of cases, it's very time-sensitive. There's a lot of information rolled into that. So I happen to really be passionate about awards and kind of finding that connection for authors.
So in 2019, I launched my own services to help match your book to accolades. And over time, that really kind of blew up in how fast that it grew. And at that time I chose to bring on my technology co-founder who has that background in information security. And he actually helped me scale this to actually serve more authors at a time. So instead of only being able to take on five, we could serve more authors, find more accolades for more authors around the world. And that kind of transparency, that kind of research and information has been a backbone of our growing company. That's kind of a long answer, but yeah, we really believe in bringing that information, that power to authors. It shouldn't be so shrouded in mystery.
I think people really don't realize either how many very specific and particular contests there are. I mean, in North Street, we accept a lot of different kinds of material, but some contests are just looking for a very specific subgenre.
There's a book award specifically for books about chess. There are also awards that feature either a feline main character or a canine main character, which I happen to love. And something important about those very specific awards is that they highlight almost this certain part of your book or a certain theme, if you will. And that really helps authors kind of find a new way to market their books, a new way to share it with their readers, a new way to connect with those readers.
In that case, it's not just about kind of getting a stamp on the front of your book saying this book won an award. These contests also have their own constituents, shall we say, readers who just love to read that kind of material. So when you win that kind of award and you get your information on their website, it must open up a whole new readership for this book.
That's exactly right, Annie. And now that we're kind of, we're really, really deep into this, but those are some of the details that we also collect in our system. So we know this award has a really great romance book audience. It's really, you know, maybe they're open to other genres, but they're really looking for romance. Romance books have the, they're held in the highest regard among these readers. That's not something that you can immediately know just from casually browsing a website or just trying to figure out what's out there. But we do a lot of research to understand that nuance and help really connect books with readers. We really, really believe that.
Can you tell me a little bit about the research process? How do you find new contests, for example?
We've got a lot of different sources and different ways that we kind of keep tabs on the awards industry. Once you have a database, it goes stale very quickly. So you have to constantly monitor what that looks like. It's a tremendous ongoing process. So we have a team, we're constantly monitoring awards. Are they continuing to uphold their promises? Are they still, you know, have they fallen off the face of the earth, they're not operating anymore, or are they still continuing to do a really good job for authors? So we don't have a single way that we, you know, like a single way that we research an award or find a new award. We just have so many touchpoints and have such a pulse on awards that we have this information coming in all the time. We're always doing that research and always maintaining it. It's especially kind of technology back-end things.
Wow, that is so fascinating. I freaking love it. And I really love the idea that by using technology, especially technology that keeps things so private for the authors, it's just able to expand the amount of authors that are served, the amount of opportunities that are there for them, and also it's able to allow you guys to maintain the quality of your database by checking up on these contests and accolades opportunities again and again and again. So, I mean, I think this sounds like a really good use of the current technologies, maybe a force for good instead of the evil AI scenario, like apocalyptic stuff.
Our core, our number one value at Book Award Pro is to do great for authors. And we literally build that into our software. We build it into just everything that we do. And I truly believe, especially, you know, and you and I have talked very candidly that I didn't start with any kind of technology background, it was me doing things very manually. Understanding that technology can be used for good, it's the people behind it, it's the heart behind it.
You know, I often reflect on kind of the earlier days of self-publishing. Like in the 90s and the early 2000s. And there were some very predatory services back then—no transparency, hid their fees, told authors that they were a traditional publishing house when actually the authors had to pay for everything out of their own pocket. And I think at least a lot of people who are in the Winning Writers world, I think they're actually traumatized by these times and now they've got this mindset that if they're in a transaction with anybody except like traditional publisher, capital T, capital P, that somebody must be out to get them. Somebody must be out to scam them. But you and I know just how many people are there across the world who just want to help authors, pay authors, honor authors, help authors find readers, and also are subjected to monitoring activity like Book Award Pro performs for their own database.
It's important to understand, where is this award coming from? You know, just because you charge an entry fee, that doesn't mean anything necessarily good or bad. It means that you have a business to run. It's a legitimate business. That money goes to run that. But you do get a good sense, especially just keeping a pulse on awards, who has the author's best interest in mind? What's actually a legitimate opportunity? And there are higher-value opportunities, like Winning Writers. All of your programs really go to serve authors. There are other awards that don't do as much for winners, for entrants. They just don't have as much kind of firepower, if you will. But it doesn't make them less legitimate. And so we always kind of try to put the power in our authors' hands to choose, you know, there are so many other thousands of accolades out there. If you don't like a certain one, move on from it. There are so many other opportunities to pursue. You should never feel locked in.
I think when people started to really explore non-traditional forms of publishing, this industry didn't exist. There wasn't a service like Book Award Pro. And people were really looking for their own ways to get their writing out there rather than just depending on the old traditional methods.
You know, it makes me think like in our history, in our, you know, in the human history, progression of history, whatever, like it's really a time, maybe because of the internet that people are really learning how to be themselves. And not having to, in order to get along in life, feel like they have company, feel like they're not like an outcast. They don't have to conform to the local standards anymore. We can find people who are like us as we already. So I really see Book Award Pro as kind of just extending that really important kind of social progress that we have just to the book world, where people don't have to have these super boxed-in like traditional products. They can really produce the book that they want and be connected with the people who are already looking for that book as it is today.
You know, with self-publishing, it puts the power in your hands. For better and for worse, that means you're managing your own business as an author, but it also means that you get to publish exactly the way you want to. You get to choose your book cover design. You get to choose your story. You can choose what awards, what reviews you want to submit to. But with that does come a lot of, with freedom comes great responsibility, something like that.
With great freedom comes great admin! I don't know if the listeners or the viewers know this, but in the past couple of years, Book Award Pro has been very generously supplying our winners with three months of Essentials-level service. But this year, actually, every entrant will be receiving three free months of the Book Award Pro Essentials-level service. So what does that actually include for them?
So our Essentials plan, our authors tell us that it saves them hours of research in trying to figure out exactly what awards are out there for your book. Our service will actually work for you and you can think of it as almost a personal awards researcher. So you actually have access to our research directly within your dashboard and you'll get ongoing award matches specific to your book. So when you see an award match in your account, you can trust that this is a good fit for my book. It's already been completely researched for you.
So that's amazing. You know, we usually get between 1,900 and 2,000 entrants in the North Street Book Prize, and every single one of those entrants is going to be able to have that level of research in over 11,000 other contest opportunities. It's amazing that we can offer that. Like, thank you so much for being a co-sponsor. It's awesome.
Oh, we, I mean, we really love being a North Street co-sponsor. We've enjoyed meeting all kinds of different writers from all around the world. And I can say that no matter how you decide to publish your book, what it's about, what your word count is, your page count, Book Award Pro will go to serve your book. So plug in and get those three free months when you enter the North Street Book Prize.
So the entrants are getting the Essentials tier. The winners this year are getting the Pro tier, three months free of the Pro tier. So what are the differences between the Essentials and the Pro tiers?
Our Pro plan takes things to the next level and our authors have told us that the Pro plan is the way they find the very best awards for their book. So in addition to actually seeing those ongoing matches, those ongoing awards for your book, you'll know exactly which one you should submit to for its high value. You'll also get access to special awards and you'll actually be able to see awards that are for book cover design, illustration, even best editing. There are all kinds of different accolades out there that can celebrate other aspects of your book.
And you'll also get access to editorial reviews. If you're wondering how to maybe increase distribution, get some extra marketing for your book. These awards and reviews connect you to different readers, to different audiences, to different ways that you can market your book. And we even have, separate from that on the Pro plan, you unlock the story marketing feature, which is a really easy way to share your award progress, your review progress with your readers, with your social media followers, your email newsletter. There are all kinds of different ways to use the news that you were doing as an author pursuing these accolades, a way to share that with your readers to entice them and keep them interested in your work.
Thank you so much for all you've told us about Book Award Pro today. And I'm wondering if you have any words of advice for viewers who might be preparing their books for a submission opportunity right now.
First and foremost, feedback that we have seen award judges provide directly to authors is to make sure that you have professional-quality editing for your book. Most of the time you may have a really great story and it's a polished professional book, but without editing, that's a really key way to make your book feel really professional, really polished. But I would also say, just remember that there are thousands of awards out there. You should never feel pressured to pursue a single one. Really focus your time, your effort, your resources, your money on the best fit for your book. And if for any reason you don't really like a particular award, pass on it. There's always a new opportunity around the corner. And just really give your book the chance to shine, to be recognized, and to be awarded for its beauty.
Thank you so much. Beautiful words. Well, we need to be wrapping up right now, but Hannah Jacobson, it's been a pleasure to speak with you about Book Award Pro. I'm so glad that our North Street entrants. not just our winners, but every entrant, is going to be getting the benefit of three months of this amazing service. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Annie, and to everyone watching, thank you so much for tuning in. We would love to be a part of your award-winning journey.
Disclosure: This interview includes affiliate links to Book Award Pro, where Winning Writers receives modest compensation if you purchase from them.
Categories: Advice for Writers
