Forword Reviews Preparing to Book of the Year Awards for the Books and Publisher from Indie and Academic Publishing

June 17, 2013---The winners of the fifteenth annual ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Awards will be announced at a ceremony in Chicago at the American Library Association Annual Conference, June 28, 2013, at 6pm at The Pop Top Stage. Books receiving ForeWord’s awards are recognized as some of the best books produced by independent, academic, and small presses over the past year. The awards ceremony is open to all ALA Annual Conference attendees.

An overall award for the Best Fiction and Best Nonfiction titles will highlight the competition, in addition to Gold, Silver, and Bronze awards in over 60 categories. The ForeWord editors will also select an Independent Publisher of the Year honoring the press that best exemplifies innovation, excellence, and that hard-to-pinpoint something extra resulting in spectacular books.

Unlike other award programs that give little attention to independent and academic presses, ForeWord’s Book of the Year program is solely focused on books from the smaller publishing houses. ForeWord’s judging is unique in that winners are selected by booksellers and librarians after the initial entries are narrowed down to twelve finalists by the magazine’s editors. The books are judged by the same criteria these trade experts use in their own acquisition process: editorial excellence, professional production, originality of the narrative, topic timeliness, author credentials, and the value the book adds to its subject matter. Their decisions affirm ForeWord’s belief that “great books do come from independent voices.”

ForeWord Reviews, a quarterly print journal dedicated to reviewing independently published books, was established in 1998 to provide booksellers, librarians, agents, and publishing professionals with reviews of the best titles from small, alternative, and academic presses. ForeWord also provides a myriad of services to publishers, including international trade representation,Clarion fee-for-review services,an interactive website for the reading community, as well as the Book of the Year Awards program.