Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Hi & welcome Jaclyn & Monica.

First question - Jaclyn is that the world's biggest cat posing with you, or is that an optical illusion? 😁

Secondly I was wondering if we could get a ruling on awards. My opinion is that to go in the awards field the awards should be awarded no more frequently than yearly. There are some awards in the awards field now that are seasonal or monthly & I do wonder where we draw the line, before we get weekly or daily awards.

I tried asking Support, but that part of my message wasn't answered.

Latest thread https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I deleted the Literary Titan example given in #3 but the others were deleted by someone else.

I have been ignoring awards that are given more frequently than annually. Just my opinion.

But the awards module has gotten out of hand anyway.

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "I have been ignoring awards that are given more frequently than annually. Just my opinion.

But the awards module has gotten out of hand anyway."

Yup, needs a total overhaul. But I thought I would give Jaclyn & Monica time to settle in.😉

Christmas Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂ wrote: "Yup, needs a total overhaul. But I thought I would give Jaclyn & Monica time to settle in."

A generous thought. They should have their high-performance running shoes on anyway. ;-)

Hi Carol, and Elizabeth. 😊

The cat (Miso) is a regular sized cat, but I think her bad attitude is so oversized that it's somehow affected the photo.

Thanks for this question! I'm discussing it with other members of the team and will loop back once we've reached a decision. Please feel welcome to add any other motivation you might have as to why we should limit awards to annual. I'll include it in the conversation.

Personally, I can't think of any serious, legitimate book award that is awarded more than once a year.

The sole purpose of seasonal and monthly awards seems to be to make money off of hopeful authors in return for a meaningless "prize".

lethe wrote: "The sole purpose of seasonal and monthly awards seems to be to make money off of hopeful authors in return for a meaningless "prize"."

Agreed. Though I can conjecture that is the reason for some of the annual awards, too.

Oh yes, I didn't mean to imply that all annual awards are sound :)

& like Elizabeth I do agree there are some very dubious annual awards.

& with lethe that the more frequent awards are money making exercises that take advantage of desperate authors & naïve readers.

I did this award recently because it looked ok to me.
https://americanlibraryinparis.org/bo... What 'sealed the deal' for me was the judges were named - & I had heard of some of the ones from previous years (not that 2022's judges didn't look awesome!)

That looks like a great award Carol. I'll have to explore!

(Why do GR friends *do* this to me! I already have enough books and here they are showing me where/how to find more and more!) :-)))

I've discussed with the team and we agree that going forward we can limit awards to annual awards and encourage authors to rather include seasonal / monthly awards in the book's description. If recognised literary awards start giving monthly awards, we can consider these on a case-by-case basis.

I'll leave this thread open for comments until Monday 12/19, at which time I'll close it and update the Manual.

Jaclyn wrote: "I've discussed with the team and we agree that going forward we can limit awards to annual awards and encourage authors to rather include seasonal / monthly awards in the book's description. If rec..."

Cool - there are some monthly/seasonal awards already on GR. I'll look at removing some of them over the coming days.

Great, thanks Jaclyn :)

Jaclyn wrote: "I've discussed with the team and we agree that going forward we can limit awards to annual awards and encourage authors to rather include seasonal / monthly awards in the book's description. If rec..."

Thank you and the rest of staff.

Christmas Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂ wrote: "Cool - there are some monthly/seasonal awards already on GR. I'll look at removing some of them over the coming days.
"

Thanks, Carol. That should help with the overloaded award module.

Jaclyn wrote: "I've discussed with the team and we agree that going forward we can limit awards to annual awards and encourage authors to rather include seasonal / monthly awards in the book's description. If rec..."

Oops in my general euphoria I missed the going forward bit. Does that mean I can't remove ones that have been incorrectly added? This will be (in my view) impossible to enforce & will lead to situations like the thread I quoted in #1.

Awards aren't always added in chronological order. Here is a good quality award that has 2021 entries https://www.goodreads.com/award/show/... but someone has just asked for a 2020 nomination to be added.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Yeah, I think the going forward policy is problematic. It is akin to all of the books/short stories that were added and then marked NAB.

The policy that seems relevant here is

A literary award should be presented periodically by a recognized literary source such as a writers' organization, book council, library association, publishing house, or major review site ...

The awards handed out quarterly/monthly don't fit this criteria. There may be quite a few awards in the module that don't fit this criteria. Not that I'm going to remove them, just saying.

What would be the new wording, Jaclyn?

You're welcome to remove those awards and add them to the descriptions, if possible. I didn't suggest actively removing these as I didn't want to add more tasks to Librarians' already-full plates.

The Librarian Manual has now been updated:

https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/...

A literary award should be presented annually by a recognized literary source such as a writers' organization, book council, library association, publishing house, or major review site and should be subjectively selected by that source. Bestseller lists are not subjectively selected and should not be counted as awards.

and

Seasonal and monthly awards, along with other non-award accomplishments such as bestseller lists or reading list selections should be noted in book descriptions.

Jaclyn wrote: "You're welcome to remove those awards and add them to the descriptions, if possible. I didn't suggest actively removing these as I didn't want to add more tasks to Librarians' already-full plates.
..."

Thanks Jaclyn - removing them actually would make librarians who do the awards jobs easier, as having them in that field confuses librarians into thinking these awards are ok. :)

Nice, Jacklyn.

Thanks, Carol. And maybe we should be asking about some of even the annual awards that seem not to fit the definition of "recognized" etc.

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Nice, Jacklyn.

Thanks, Carol. And maybe we should be asking about some of even the annual awards that seem not to fit the definition of "recognized" etc."

I think so. There are so many that I wouldn't want to list them, but there are certain warning signs that we could list.

Christmas Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂ wrote: "There are so many that I wouldn't want to list them, but there are certain warning signs that we could list."

I think you're more aware of these than am I. But we have threads "Is this a series" and I don't see why we can't have threads for "Is this an award"

Rivka didn't really want to deal with awards and she freely admitted that she wasn't involved in the process. That is most certainly not a criticism - she was so involved and helped us in so many ways. But maybe it is now time that the whole awards module get closer attention. I think it truly could be the center for literary honors that the founders of Goodreads envisioned.

Is this an award? Thread would be a great idea.

I agree the 'recognized literary source' part might need some more attention.
Several years ago, a lot of those 'for profit awards' started. I don't think the discussion here lead to something, but I read quite a few articles elsewhere that warned authors for these awards. It reduced my interest in working on the awards here, I nearly only do awards I know.

But I also think 'recognized literary source' is a grey area, so it might be difficult to make a decision what fits the definition and what not. Some awards/organisations grow through time to become a recognized source. Some start promising but after two awards nothing is heard from them ever. And some are niche subjects.

Thanks everyone for the feedback on this thread, I'll be closing it, as promised above.

To recap, going forward we will limit awards to annual awards and encourage authors to rather include seasonal / monthly awards in the book's description. If recognised literary awards start giving monthly awards, we can consider these on a case-by-case basis.

Librarians are welcome to remove awards that don't meet these standards, but the preferable action is to then add these to the book's description.

The Librarian Manual been updated here:

https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/...