The Quills Awards

Q: What do you get when you combine the Golden Globe and the People’s choice Awards?

A: The Quills Award

Not literally, but it is as close as you’ll get if you are an author. The Quills Literary Foundation sponsors these awards as "consumer-driven awards created to inspire reading while promoting literacy."

The process works like this:

• The Quills committee picks five books in nineteen categories. The books must have been published in English during the previous year. AND they must have an institutional sponsor.
• Readers are allowed to vote one favorite in each category

Earlier this month the awards were given in a black tie gala event. The entire Awards Program will be televised by NBC-TV’s Universal Stations on Saturday, October 27, 2007. Be sure to watch.

I will ruin the suspense to tell you that Angels Fall by Nora Roberts won as book of the year. And according to industry news releases it won on the strength of her fan base voting for it.

I do find the whole process a little curious.

The committee is by definition composed of a bunch of industry insiders -- certainly a group of people with an agenda. Note, that the major supporters are: Reed Business Information, NBC/Universal Television, ICM, Sirius Radio, HBO, Borders, Barnes & Nobles, most of the big publishers. They are hardly what you could call dispassionate judges. And yet they act as the gatekeepers of literature and literacy.

Readers are “allowed” to vote and evidently sway the results. Presumably they are very important.

What I want to know is how did readers find out about the award? Over the summer I visited both Barnes & Nobles and Borders on many occasions – market research. Not once did I see any information about the Quills Awards, never mind how to actually vote.

I guess there is no use in being disappointed (or bitter) because I didn’t get a chance to vote. Honestly, I am just thrilled to see books and authors getting any notice at all.

I know what I’ll be doing this Saturday night. Eating popcorn and watching the awards; hopefully you will to.