Nominations Please: My Cybils Prep Steps

In roughly 48 hours, the nominations period for the Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards (Cybils) opens. From October 1 to October 15, readers can nominate one book in any or all of the Cybils categories.

• Book Apps
• Easy Reader / Early Chapter (fiction and nonfiction)
• Elementary / Middle Grade Nonfiction
• Elementary / Middle Grade Speculative Fiction
• Fiction Picture Books
• Graphic Novels (younger audience and young adult)
• Middle Grade Fiction
• Poetry
• Young Adult Fiction
• Young Adult Speculative Fiction

In years past, I’ve kept a running list of books I think represent the Cybils mission and would make great candidates. This year, I forgot. Over the next day or so, I’ll be going back through my review list to select nominees and put together my cheat sheet.

Make a Nominations List

As I learned back in 2010, I will need to have some alternates on my list for all my categories. A book can only be nominated one time, so if Itry to add a book that’s already there, the online form will kick it back to let me know it’s been nominated already. Having a few titles for each category is a great help.

Get Meta

Once I have my working list of titles, the next thing I’ll check is the publication date. To be eligible for this year’s Cybils, a book must be published between 16 October 2014 and 15 October 2015.  I browse publisher and bookseller websites to get that level of detail. For example, when I search for a book at BarnesandNoble.com, you’ll get the exact publication date (month/day/year) in the return.

While I’m there I will write down the ISBN. That is the piece of information I need for the nominations form.

Sidebar: I don’t know a lot about Book Apps, but I know they don’t have ISBNs. So I asked the expert – Book Apps Chair Cathy Potter. She says that you just need to enter the title for the Book App on the nominations form.

Get Psyched

Over the past two weeks, and in the coming weeks, the Twitterverse will be abuzz with news about the Cybils Awards and process. Join the conversation by sharing your Cybils-related blog posts or retweeting #Cybils news.

Follow @Cybils to get the word when nominations open.

Dear Reader,

The Cybils is about recognizing books with the highest literary merit and kid appeal across ten categories. For some books, nominations are easy. That isn’t always the case. Some middle grade fiction has a comics narrative, for example. It can be a hard call. Nominate the book in the category that you think it best fits.

Please play by the rules! Please don’t  (a) nominate a book (like the graphic middle grade novel) in two categories; or (b) nominate two books for one category by entering it in the wrong category in hopes that it’ll be moved. .

Gaming the system isn’t cool. It doesn’t help a book’s nomination, because a book can only be nominated once. Each person can nominate ONE book in a category. Moves will be voided. If you have books that you feel should be nominated, create a list on your blog. There are readers (like me) who don’t read books in every category who would be happy to nominate a book from a trusted source.