• Judges, what the hell is happening?

I remember looking at a book blurb I was about to judge and seeing the accomplishments.

Wow.

Nice.

Though this isn’t enough to convince me –

Until I saw the dialogue in the blurb.

“Lamee, just calm down. You know you can’t blame writing skills on a blurb.”

Yes, I know that, me. But something feels . . .

I look at the first paragraph of the blurb before looking back up at the accomplishments.

Okay, the blurb might just be horrible but I’m sure (doubting) there is a gold mine inside.

“A bad blurb is one thing. But are you sure there will be something good inside if the blurb alone has so many grammatical errors, Lamee?”

No, I think I’ll be fine.

I look back at the accomplishment before tapping read.

Holy Cow!

I am going to be blunt here.

Huge faults like these are sometimes done by judges who don’t know what the hell they are doing. But we won’t be focusing on that as it cannot exactly be avoided or anything.

Plus, a lot of judges are good, but sometimes . . .

Anyway. You guys do know that one part you can get high scores are your cover and book title, and there will certainly be someone with a horrible book that has those things far better than yours; sorry, that’s how some awards work.

So let’s say you aced the story and everything itself, but your book doesn’t have a blurb or your blurb is bad, someone with a horrible book having those things will take a position before yours, of course.

Let us also not forget the fact that there are judges who believe a book is good even with a lot of grammatical errors; that’s why I said some judges don’t even know what they are doing.

Let me tell you something.
If a book has a lot of grammatical errors, there will definitely be something wrong with their writing format.

This honestly works nearly all the time, irrespective of if the grammar is good or not. There is also the fact that some especially may not judge characters well; though I haven’t come across judges like that, but I have heard cases and seen where some judges judge crap that I wonder if their eyes was kept in a jar while using their empty sockets to read.

This is a major reason I suggest awards should clearly state what they want the judges to mark out in each criteria. This narrows down and teaches judges like that what they are actually supposed to look for in a book.

Something like this;

There is another aspect you seriously need to consider too.

These awards are small and most of the time when you enter an award, your book is going to stand beside other piles of trash.

It is the truth.

If all the books in a particular genre happen to be trashy, it is obvious that the least trashy one will be the first.

There are many times I have judged and seen that every book in that particular genre was horrible. So it was up to the least trashy one to take the throne.

Honestly, these awards aren’t even much of a competition because, apart from the possibility of having a judge who doesn’t know what they are doing, your book is being pitted among a SMALL number of other books out of the MILLIONS out there.

So, people, if a crappy book got first place, don’t let it bother you, because your book may not even get to the top 500s out of the books in the whole app.

I feel you shouldn’t exactly bother or worry if books like that get first place because in most cases . . . there was no other choice.

At first, I was annoyed when I saw a crappy horror book having so many achievements. Then I remembered it might have been paired with other crappy books. So it’s understandable.

However, as I said earlier, if your book was actually better than the one before yours, there might have been something missing in your book compared to the others or your cover, blurb, and title kind of sucked compared to them.

In the long run, good books and bad books alike receive accomplishments and it is your choice to list it out, but I personally feel it doesn’t amount to much.

These are small awards so don’t get your panties in a twist if you win or lose. Doesn’t matter and doesn’t exactly make a difference. But it is very helpful for you to contact those judges and ask how you got those scores so you can see where you need improvement.