2018 has begun in Australia and I’m delighted that my first post for the year is to announce that INSPY Award nominations are now open! It’s been an honour to be on the Advisory Board since we created the INSPYs Awards and I love working with my amazing Advisory Board members AND helping bloggers and readers showcase the brilliant writers in this industry. Be sure to nominate your choices for the BEST books published in 2017 as the longlists are determined by books with the most nominations.

I’m sharing the INSPYs Nominations post here so it’s easy peasy to start nominating now!

Hello, INSPY readers. The advisory board is excited to open year eight of the INSPY Awards, a program for the bloggers’ “best in fiction” award is welcoming a new year and opening the nominations for 2018.

The Inspys were created to select and showcase books with the highest literary standards that grapple with the Christian faith and were designed to help readers in their search for the preeminent faith-inspired literature of today.  This program is organized and judged by book bloggers who have considerable experience and knowledge of books published for both the CBA, general and INDIE markets.

If you haven’t nominated a book in recent years, please note, we’ve made a significant change to our nomination process. For you, the nominator, the rules remain the same, only difference you’ll note is the lack of a publicized long list. This is because the advisory board will be collecting our long list from the top 15 nominated novels in each category. So, even if you know someone else has nominated your favorite read of 2017 or you’re certain it’s already been nominated, go ahead and add your voice because that nomination could be the 15th vote that gets the book into the top fifteen.

Once the task of the top 15 is calculated and complete, we will publicize our long list, which will be then narrowed down to five books and from there, the same judging process will apply. For more information on the changes, please refer to our announcement post.

Please read through our nominating refresher post, and the nomination rulesbefore you submit nominations.

The dates of eligibility include books published in print between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2017. If a print book was released as an ebook prior to 2017, it is ineligible. Reissued books are also ineligible.

Books may be nominated in any of the following categories:

Debut Novel

General Fiction

Contemporary Romance/Romantic Suspense

Historical Romance

Speculative Fiction

Mystery & Thriller

Literature for Young Adults

For more detailed description of categories please see the Revised Nomination Categories. If you’d like to read more about the nominating process, read our blog post with some tips on nominating the right books in their best categories. Pull out those lists and let’s begin!

The deadline to nominate a book is January 16. Winners of the seventh annual INSPY awards will be announced June 28, 2018.

To stay up to date with all things INSPYs follow along with us on Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | Goodreads

Or email us with any questions: inspyawards@gmail.com

We look forward to your nominations. Besides nominating the best in faith-driven literature, another way to help today is to spread the word — blog about the INSPYs, tell your friends.