Friday, September 18, 2015

National Book Awards: No Indies

It's happened again: another award another troubling result: the National Book Awards fiction longlist contains no Indie books:

Jesse Ball, “A Cure for Suicide”
Pantheon Books/Penguin Random House


Bill Clegg, “Did You Ever Have a Family”
Scout Press/Simon & Schuster


Karen E. Bender, “Refund”
Soft Skull/Counterpoint Press


Angela Flournoy, “The Turner House”
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt


Lauren Groff, “Fates and Furies”
Riverhead Books/Penguin Random House


Adam Johnson, “Fortune Smiles”
Random House/Penguin Random House


T. Geronimo Johnson, “Welcome to Braggsville”
William Morrow/HarperCollins


Edith Pearlman, “Honeydew”
Little, Brown/Hachette Book Group


Hanya Yanagihara, “A Little Life”
Doubleday/Penguin Random House


Nell Zink, “Mislaid”
The Ecco Press/HarperCollins


Surely some Indie writer somewhere penned a tome that should have found its way onto the list. But wait, there's a catch: Indie publishers are eligible IF they have published the works of other authors. The full eligibility text is here:








"WHO CAN SUBMIT BOOKS?


Each April, the Foundation sends the official National Book Awards guidelines and entry forms to the publishers in its master database. Those publishers who do not receive the materials automatically can call or email the Foundation to request a copy. Authors cannot submit their books themselves; they must have their publishers contact us directly. However, the guidelines are always available for informational purposes here:www.nationalbook.org/nbaentry.html.

In order to be eligible for the Award, a book must be written by an American citizen and published by an American publisher between December 1 of the previous year and November 30 of the current year. Self-published books are only eligible if the author/publisher publishes the work of other authors in addition to his own. Books published through services such as iUniverse are not eligible for the Award."




 

Did any Indie writers make it onto the long longlist? Or even the long long longlist?

Are there other Indies out there who, with me, would like to form a publishing co-op with an eye toward entering the NBA next year?

Just saying.