Book Awards Roundup: Part V

The Audies, The Nebulas and Firebird Book Awards!

Jan 06, 2025

Happy New Year! I hope that everyone is rested, recharged and ready to read, write and listen to books! I spent some time on my vacation working on a domestic suspense WIP. I was less productive than I’d hoped, but enjoyed some much needed rest and relaxation with the family and did a lot of amazing SCUBA diving, which, along with writing is my other happy place.

This is the final set of awards I will be reviewing based on my experience submitting REINCEPTION! I will finish out the series in a separate post, talking about how I actually used these awards to promote my book and what I learned in the process. I will also share where I have and have not submitted book two of the series, DEINCEPTION, and why.

Friendly reminder that if you have read or are reading DEINCEPTION, please, pretty please, post reviews, especially on Amazon, Goodreads and Audible, but anywhere else you share books. Word of mouth is the only way for us small press authors to cut through the clutter!

If you have my book and want an autograph, send me a direct message or email and I will happily send you a bookplate free of charge as my thanks!

Here is a quick recap of the awards I’ve reviewed so far. If you are already familiar with my previous posts, jump on down to the reviews starting with the Audie Awards, which I’ve been dying to get to!!

PART I: FINDING AND VETTING BOOK AWARDS AND MY CRITERIA

If you are new to my series, start here where I tell you how to find book awards, how to vet them, and what my criteria for selecting awards to review was. This is especially helpful if you write in genres other than sci-fi because there are lots of genre specific awards out there that I might not be covering.

PART II: The Wishing Shelf Book Awards, The Chanticleer International Book Awards and the Foreword Reviews INDIES Book Award.

PART III: IBPA Ben Franklin Awards, IPPY Awards & Eric Hoffer Awards

PART IV: American Writings Awards, IAN Awards and Pencraft

Other than Part I, you don’t need to read these in any particular order. Feel free to jump to the awards you are interested in! So, without further ado, here are my reviews of the Audies, The Nebulas and The Thunderbird Awards!

The Audie Awards

I’m particularly excited to review the Audie Awards because I have the privilege of being a judge for the second year in a row! It’s a wonderful opportunity to be on the inside of the awards process and to give other authors the time and consideration that so many judges have given to me. Last year, I was a finals round judge for Science Fiction. This year, I’m a first round judge for science fiction and a finals judge for YA.

The Audies are sponsored by the Audio Publishers Association and are the premier audiobook awards. This is the only audiobook-only awards that I’m aware of. Even within larger awards, many do not have audiobook categories, so this is a highly competitive awards program.

While REINCEPTION won an award for Best Audiobook-Fiction in the IBPA awards, sadly, it did not win an Audie. Fingers crossed for DEINCEPTION for 2026!

AIA also gives the Audies a “Recommend” for its clear judging criteria. While they ding the award for its light marketing of winners, the Audies kind of speak for themselves and I feel that a win has clear meaning in the marketplace. If you can put that awards seal on your book and do a good job marketing it yourself, the marketplace knows what it means.

When Can I Submit?

Submissions for the Audies open in June of each year and close toward the beginning of November for the following year. Awards are held in March and there is an awards Gala! (Read Part II to know why this is something I place value on in rating an awards program and about my amazing experience at the IBPA awards gala).

How Much Does it Cost?

Current pricing is down as submissions for 2025 are closed. I will update in June when 2026 submission open.

INDEPENDANT AND ANONYMOUS JUDGING

It can be difficult to know exactly who judges awards competitions, what the criteria are and how independent the judging really is. For awards that are not specific to Indie Books (e.g. small press or self-pub), it can seem like rewards are biased in favor of books published by large presses. As someone who is judging these awards, I’m comfortable in saying that they are independent. I’m not certain who the other judges are, but anyone can apply to judge the Audies so long as they are a member of APA. In submitting my application, I shared that I am a writer who has had the experience of publishing an audiobook as well as an avid listener of Audiobooks (I have listened to hundreds of audiobooks, was an OG Audible listener and was even filmed for an Audible commercial before they were acquired)! That’s it. I’m just a huge consumer and fan of audiobooks and they picked me to judge.

I will say that, as a Round 1 judge, there are A LOT of books to listen to—something like 50-60, at least in the sci fi category. The books range from well-known authors and presses to indie to self-published. I did my best to give each submission a fair shot and enough listen time to feel confident before moving forward if I DNFed a book. There is nothing about the way that the books are presented that gives any one book an advantage over the other. When I listen to the books, I’m considering each book on its own merits. Who wrote it and who published it does not come into play. I don’t know who the other judges are, where they are from or how they approach reviewing, but I trust that each of them are also trying to give every book a fair shake. This gave me a lot of confidence that when my book was reviewed, I was on equal footing with books from bigger publishers and from better known authors.

The hardest part about judging was putting aside personal preference, especially within sub-genres that I’m not generally a fan of, to consider whether a book should be a top pick in spite of my personal taste. For example, there were a lot of great military sci-fi submissions. This is not something I generally read, but it’s a category with a huge fan base. I tried to fairly consider whether it would be a top pick for many other sci fi fans even if it might not be for me.

I’m allowed to share that I judged the Audies, but not which books I considered or advanced, so you’ll just have to wait for the awards in March to find out who the winners are!

The Nebula Awards

Ah, the Nebulas—every sci fi writer’s dream award. It’s the highest award for science fiction writing and is given out each year at the Science Fiction Writer’s Association (“SFWA”) Conference, which is also in a different location every year.

I found the process for entering the Nebulas to be very hard to navigate and overly complex. I also felt that, at least for full-length novels, it heavily skews toward certain well-know labels, like Tor and Orbit, or well-known authors. Not to say Tor (and other large imprints) does not have amazing books—they are some of the best. It’s just that the voting process for the Nebulas makes it almost impossible for Indie or self-published authors to get a fair shake in the novel category. Votes are often going to imprints with the most Members or the writers with the biggest fan base. Getting enough people to nominate you if you’re are not well known either by name or by labels seems almost impossible to me.

How To Enter

Eligibility runs on the calendar year with awards announced the following spring.

To enter, members and non-members make their works available for review on the Nebula Awards SFWA Fiction area on the discussion forum. The discussion forum is open only to members who can then “suggest” a book.

Here is where this gets super confusing:

From the submitted pool, a “Suggested Reading List” is created based on member recommendations.

SFWA member can contribute to the Nebula Suggested Reading List.
Members can make as many recommendations as they wish at any time during the eligibility year

Submissions are then nominated as follows:

Full, Associate, and Senior Members are eligible to nominate for all Nebula Awards
“Works must be nominated by…Members with no fiduciary interest. This means not the author and not the editor, the agent, or the publisher.”
The nomination period runs from mid-November through the end of February of the following year

Rules

The Nebula rules are extensive, but it’s important to know that eligibility is in the calendar year that the book is written and submitted. The later in the year your book is published, the harder it is to get noticed, recommended and nominated.

Other rules can be found here: Nebula Rules

Would I Enter the Nebulas Again?

Unlikely, at least for a novel. Unless I eventually publish with a large press or build enough of a fan base to consider myself well-known, the effort to get attention is not worth the time spent. I don’t feel that I had any chance of real consideration nor did I feel that the process exposed my book to more readers. I might consider throwing in my hat if I were in one of the other categories for less than novel length, where it seems that some smaller presses are represented amongst the winners.

Should I Join SFWA Even If I’m Not Entering the Nebulas?

Absolutely! The SFWA is a phenomenal organization and I’ve gotten a ton out of it. The Nebulas are just small piece of what they do. I have been a panelist for the virtual SFWA Nebula conference and enjoyed working with the other speakers. It’s an event I’d love to attend in person when it gets closer to home. I think it would be very worthwhile in terms of education and networking and seems like fantastic fun. Year round, they offer chats, virtual writing dates, sub-genre meet ups, spec poetry open mics and more. To find out more about SFWA Membership, click here! SFWA Membership

Writers Beware!

In researching this post, I came across a resource on SFWA called “Writers Beware” whose mission is to expose issues that affect writers. They have a subsection for contests and awards where they list predatory awards. If you read Part I of my series, you’ll know that I’m only sharing information about awards that I felt were legitimate. My aim was not to go into what is or is not predatory or contests that I do not recommend. However, SFWA has done this and their piece is well-worth the read if you are considering entering your book for an award, especially if I have not reviewed it. Please read their analysis and review their list of predatory awards here: Writer Beware: Contests and Awards This list is across all genres, not just Sci Fi. Please also read the section on Assessing Contests and Awards. It reiterates some of what I shared in Part I and has similar criteria to AIA.

The Speak Up Talk Radio Firebird Book Awards

While not very competitive (intentionally), I highly recommend the Firebird Awards for many of the same reasons I recommended the Wishing Shelf Awards—they are fun, conversational and for a good cause. They do a lot to promote their winners and it feels to me like a low risk, positive experience.

It’s worth sharing what the creators of these awards promise:

We are accessible, approachable, and not anonymous – We want to build a human connection with you. Every interaction with us is prompt and personal. You will always receive a reply from Pat Rullo, founder of the book awards. You are not just an entry but a new friend, and we treat your book submission with the care and attention it deserves.

In my experience, this was all true. The awards process felt personal and friendly.

All Entries Are Deductible, Charitable Donations

Again, in their words:

Tax Deductible Charitable Giving – Your entire entry fee/donation is tax-deductible to you. There are no additional fees, and we do not push post-contest merchandise. Your entry donation supports our ongoing partnership with Enchanted Makeovers – a 501(c)(3) and other shelters. This enables us to send fun and colorful handmade pillowcases, children’s books, and pampering room and body spray mists to shelters around the country to make someone’s life just a little bit brighter – thanks to you!

Low Barriers to Entry

Firebird tries to make entry easy and low cost for writers. You can send your book in just about any format including as a PDF or word doc and you can enter at any time on a rolling basis. Self and trad pubbed books are all accepted. All publication dates are accepted, so if your book is a little older and needs a boost or you missed firm deadlines for other contests, Firebird is always open to you.

The $55 entry fee is relatively low and, again, tax deductible for a good cause.

There are a HUGE number of categories, so I won’t list them all, but they can be found here: Categories

Judging

Judging criteria is very clear!

Two of 23 available judges evaluate each book
Books are judged based on a scoring system that “assesses the content and quality of the writing and production aspects.”
“All judges evaluate using the same scoring criteria.”
“Each book is given a score from 0-100. The top 3 scores of each category are named as Winners.”
All titles that score and 80 or higher (and are not winners) get “Honorable Recognition.”

“All judges consist of published authors, editors, owners of publishing houses, librarians, audiobook producers, and writing professors. Our judges are also a diverse group of humans and represent a cross-section of ages, cultural heritage, race, religion, gender, and experience. To mitigate any bias, Pat Rullo is not a judge.”

Prizes

Firebird gives prizes that are of more intrinsic value than some of the cash prizes offered by other awards where you can easily spend more than you can win, especially if you enter in multiple categories. Here, the prizes involve exposure. Prizes are explained here and include some of the following:

30-minute Authors on Fire interview
Four different 60-second spots to air for the four weeks following your entire interview
PLUS: Your full interview will be heard on iHeart Radio with over 80 million registered users, as well as additional online venues – Spotify, Stitcher, Spreaker, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Deezer, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, and many, many more

Prize eligibility is based on how many categories you enter your book into.

ReInception was entered into the Firebird Book Awards through Book Awards Pro, which I reviewed in Part I and was a 2023 Winner for Dystopian Books.

I have recommend this award to other authors who want a high chance of winning or placing with a high return and positive experience. I have especially recommended it to authors who write books that are related to doing good or bettering the world. It makes for great publicity to promote winning an award that does good for a book that does good!

PHEW!!!! (What’s next?)

I THINK THAT DOES IT! This sums up my book awards experience and recommended contests! If you’ve stuck with me on this journey, thank you and I hope you got a lot out of it! If you did, please share these posts with other writers, editors and publishers!

In the final Part of my Roundup (for now), I will talk about how I used these awards to promote my book, what worked or didn’t work and how I could have done better.

While I don’t expect to continue comprehensively posting about awards, I will keep you up to date on my future awards adventures.

I hope that when you win an award, my lessons learned will help guide you to optimize your precious little promotional time.

And again, if there is an award that you wish I’d reviewed or you would like to share your experience about your award(s) entries, please comment below or direct message me. If you know of a great award that I missed, especially in genres other than sci fi, please comment, message or email me so I can include those recommendations in the future.

Wishing you a 2025 full of lots of gold seals!

Thanks for reading All These Worlds by Sarena Straus! This post is public so feel free to share it.