SPFBO 5 – The Judges Round-up
If you’ve been following our SPFBO 5 adventure, you’ll know it’s now all over. Our heartfelt congratulations go out to the winner, M. L. Wang with her superb book The Sword of Kaigen. It was an excellent competition, and we should congratulate all the finalists on what was a really strong final round.
We decided we couldn’t just leave it there though, but before we sign up to the next one like the mad-cap busy little bees we are, here’s our final round-up of SPFBO 5…
So panel members, tell us a little bit about your involvement in SPFBO to date.
Theo:
OK first off I’m not really called Theo, but as my pen name is T.O.Munro and I’m currently based in Belfast, someone (cough) Laura transmogrified T.O. into Theo.
I had entered books in the competition in SPFBO1 and SPFBO3. I’d also been a judge on a few rounds of flash fiction competitions that Agnes Mezaros organised on her ThatThornGuy website (which is how I first encountered Laura, funnily enough).
Mark and Laura invited me to help out one blog last year by picking up the reviewing of their last five books at the phase two finalist stage.
When the Hive came in as a fully fledged blog this year I was delighted to be involved again – and from the outset with phase one.
Julia:
For me this was actually the third round of SPFBO! I did it twice with Fantasy Faction, and this year I switched between The Hive and FF. So yay! 60 Books to try at first… Why do I do this sort of thing to myself all the time?
But I must say I really enjoyed this year much more than the last two. Mostly because this year I found a lot more books I actually loved!
Beth:
You are an absolute trooper Julia, and you’re both quite the SPFBO veterans! Personally, I’ve followed SPFBO from the sidelines, enjoying watching the contest play out, but this was the first year I’ve been involved as a reviewer and I was so excited!
Laura:
I actually participated in SPFBO 2 and 3 as part of Fantasy Faction’s judging team. I sat out SPFBO 4, but clearly I’m a glutton for punishment and can’t stay away from the contest. Though the ten-month format of SPFBO 5 has been slightly stressful at times!
Nils:
I was asked by Laura to join the final round this year, and I’m so glad she asked. I’d been following the Hive’s thoughts through each round, and was itching to get involved! Although I joined right when we were all in a mad rush to get reviews written, I’ve had such a great time!
Laura:
Yeah, sorry for dragging you in right near the end, Nils! It’s been brilliant to have you with us, though. 🙂
What do you think are the great advantages/strengths of SPFBO as a means to lift novels above the noise signal?
Julia:
First of all I really love to find indie gems – and that was always hard. There’s just so many out there, it’s basically impossible to go and dig through them all, or even a portion of them. So what I think is great is the big amount of books entered into the SPFBO and the way they get filtered down, so that not only the finalists get limelight, but with most blogs there’s also semi finalists and enough info about the others that it’s much easier to decide if they might be something I’d enjoy or not…
Theo:
I agree, Julia, I think that the finding of indie gems has to be the great strength of the competition and it certainly has uncovered some excellent books and given them a great boost. Along the way, the different blogs have all structured their process to give good airtime to all their entrants.
Beth:
Self-publishing is such a massive playing field in fantasy, that it is hard to know where to start. When it comes to trad-publishing, those books have great marketing backing, so it’s easy to find those in your radar. But self-publishing authors have to market themselves, and it’s a much harder task. I really think the SPFBO is an opportunity to give them the kind of push that trad books would get. Other people are now talking about your books, other people are pushing your books out there, and that’s a different kind of sell to “please buy my book”.
Theo:
There is a wonderful freedom too, to the simple structure of the competition. No seeding, no pre-filtering, just random allocations mean that all books genuinely do start with an equal chance in a competition which is pretty hard to “game” in any meaningful way. I never look at the goodreads pages on any of the books in case, even subliminally, it influences me or sways me from reading a book entirely on its own merit.
Julia:
Me neither. Not even at blurbs. I try to start any book for SPFBO as “blank” as possible!
Theo:
Absolutely Julia, blurbs are for selling books, not to act as a preface to the story. Some of them can even be quite spoilery. To be honest, I rarely even look at the cover much before I plunge into the text.
(Julia: Spoilery blurb instantly makes me think of Never Die…)
Beth:
Lol Theo that has become apparent. I’m like you Julia, I’m not a fan of blurbs. Like having a general gist of the story is fine, but I find most blurbs are trying to push you in one direction or another and I hate it.
What do you think are the disadvantages/challenges of the SPFBO format?
Beth:
Theo you said that an advantage is the random quality of the competition, that everyone starts with a level playing field, but I think the random nature can be a disadvantage too. There are ten blogs, and we all do things very differently and have very differing tastes – we’ve discovered that a book that rated highly with one blog absolutely bombed with us. So this luck of the draw aspect could really work against your book in one blog, when if you’d landed with another you could have flown…
Julia:
Especially when there’s one judge to rate them, and not a team! We so often had books some loved and other DNFed (Did Not Finish) and the other way around for the next one in our team!
Theo:
I think the process can be a little bit brutal. I know it can be hard being an author and watching out for every review. It’s important to appreciate that people’s opinions will vary and reading/reviewing is an interaction as much as a judgement. A lot of it is a subjective matter of finding a good match of book/reader alongside trying to make any objective determinations of quality.
Beth:
I remember seeing some comments last year and thinking ‘Wow that’s brutal, that’s someone’s book baby’. I’ve tried really hard this year to be constructive with my criticisms – there are real people behind these books.
Theo:
The peril in SPFBO is that every book gets commented on and even scored. It is necessary for the process, but I personally don’t like putting numbers on books and the normal hive reviews are scoreless. I prefer to say what I liked or didn’t like about a book and hopefully that guides people in deciding whether a book is for them or not more than a simple number would or does.
Beth:
Agreed! I absolutely hate scoring. The SPFBO finalists themselves brought up a very interesting point in their Quarancon panel, that even though each blog is scoring the books out of ten, those scores are still subjective. As Alicia Wanstall-Burke said, one person’s 6 will mean something different to another person’s 6.
Julia:
Especially as you need to rate them as you go, if you don’t want to drop all the reviews at the end. And so if I rate the first two books rather high or low it might get hard to keep the comparison right between books if others are much better or worse. I much prefer to have read the whole bunch and then rate them.
Theo:
Indeed, there’s no gold standard SI definition of what makes a 6 or a 7, but provided each blog is internally consistent it shouldn’t be a problem. However, there could be an issue that a blog’s “influence” on the final outcome increases if they use the full range of marks available. If a particular blog’s scores are all bunched in the 7 to 8.5 range then they shift each finalist’s average by a lot less than if they use scores ranging from 2 to 10. But these niggles are difficult to “legislate” away and SPFBO is a profile raising event, more than a precision assessment.
The exposure to criticism and the bald numbers can be painful though. Normally, if a book doesn’t appeal to me, I will just put it aside in discreet obscurity. SPFBO doesn’t really allow for that. I worry it can make for a disheartening exposure to criticism for some authors, which – even if constructive – can still be uncomfortable. It does take courage (or maybe just confidence) to enter the competition
Julia:
Oh yes… The brutality is one of the hardest parts for me too! Usually I simply mark books I don’t like as “did not get into” and move on. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad book after all!
Beth:
Ha yes Julia, what doesn’t work for me might well work for you!
Julia:
Here if you throw a book out of the contest, you gotta give a reason. And even though I’m no author myself, I know enough authors to know how much pain it can cause to see something you spent so much time and effort on being ripped into pieces. At the Hive we do try to keep it as objective as possible, hoping it might help the author to understand why we didn’t like it, and possibly (if it’s not just down to taste) help to make the next one better.
Nils:
I also agree with you all, I hate giving scores on books. Which is why I like on the Hive that we don’t give scores/stars on our regular reviews. I think, like Julia said, it’s much more productive to give your opinion, objectively, on what personally works in a book and what doesn’t, and I think that’s what authors and readers look for, rather than just scores.
Theo:
There is still a large slice of luck in the process. The randomness can work against the books. If yours happens to be in a very strong batch then you can miss out on a finalist place. If your book doesn’t match with the blogger again, you may miss out. So all this is by way of saying that while I’m pretty confident that the right books make it to the upper echelons of the finalist board, there are many others who will have narrowly missed out on a distinguished mention. I guess that’s also why I like the team approach with the Hive, it smooths out some of those bumps of opinion.
Julia:
Agreed again – this year it wasn’t as noticeable to me as I found favourites in both my batches, but last year I wasn’t in love with any of the books… I like that it’s randomly assigned, as it avoids anyone playing favourites, but it also means some batches are incredibly strong and it’s almost impossible to choose, and others might have a hard time to find any book to forward. I personally would have used the Senlin net at least once, but the rest of the group decided not to, and as it is in a nice democracy, I voted for the one I found least weak?
Beth:
Julia you said the ‘S’ word!!
Theo:
Yes, the Senlin net is a tricky thing (it’s the option for a blogger to put a strong second favourite into a pool from which another blog might pick it up as their finalist if they had none they thought strong enough. It’s named for SPFO1’s Josiah Bancroft’s “Senlin Ascends” which turned out to be one of SPFBO’s great success stories despite not making it to the final in SPFBO1 because… er there wasn’t a Senlin Safety Net then).
It can be very disheartening though for one blog’s set of semi-finalists to find out not simply that “yours wasn’t the best of our bunch” but “none of you were good enough so we’re drawing from the Senlin net.” Then again, this is about finding the best of self-published fantasy, don your thickest skins before you enter here.
Beth:
In all honesty, I think the ‘Senlin Net’ provides an opportunity for favouritism. There’s a lot of care taken to ensure objectivity in that first batch of thirty. If you’ve reviewed the book before, you don’t get it; if you’ve worked with the author, you don’t get it; if you’re in a writing group with the author – you get the point. But then if you can just pick a book from someone else anyway, that underpins the whole idea of this being a random contest. You could argue this is only my first year in SPFBO, and we were fortunate to have good books in our first batch – I’ve heard plenty of judges say, like Julia, that they’ve sometimes had a batch of books and not loved any of them. But I think there’s still a disservice being done to them that they get brushed aside for a book from another group.
Maybe tell us a little about your own process and the Hive’s process in approaching the entrants
Julia:
As I was reading for two blogs, I had made it known from the start that I’d probably not read as much as I did the last two years. Both in not reading all the titles necessarily, and also in DNFing way earlier. Before I tried to read anything that wasn’t actually repelling me as far as possible – but I kinda burned myself out with that approach. “Having to” read that much turned me off reading as a whole quite a bit and instead of enjoying it, it felt like a chore. This year, when I allowed myself to just stop even if it was after just 30 pages but the book simply didn’t grab me, it was a lot more fun and way easier to stay motivated!
Beth:
I have never liked DNF’ing a book, but SPFBO has certainly taught me to embrace it a little more? If you are forcing yourself to pick up a book though, then that in itself is a pretty good indictment of how you feel about it!
Julia:
I love the way The Hive reads as a team. So not everyone might have read every book, but every book had at least 3 or 4 people giving it a good try!
The way we did it was color coding books we really liked at the start and wanted to keep reading green, those that were ok, but not really hooked us fully yellow, and those we didn’t like red. Any book that had three greens would become a semi finalist and we’d read it in full. I think that worked very well! It also meant every book got different opinions and views which is something I love to see – as this is all so much down to taste! We had books that had green and red both, and it made it really exciting (and the arguing back and forth kept us awake as added bonus…)
Theo:
Yup that’s a good summary. It will surprise no-one who knows me to find that the spreadsheet based process appealed to me. I may even have inserted a few formulae.
I liked the fact that the first pass was to judge a book on its first 10 or 20% to get our semi-finalists. That meant we were doing something different and saying something different with a review of the full read at the semi-finalist stage.
Beth:
I loved our colourful spreadsheet in round one! I’d try not to read everyone’s comments on there before I started any given book, in the hopes it wouldn’t influence me too much. I think what I loved most about this process was that every book was read by all of us (I think there were a couple Julia, understandably, didn’t get round to) – I thought this was a really fair process. I really felt like we were part of a team working through these thirty books together.
Theo:
When it came to the finalists themselves, we went into full Hive mode with a Googledoc to share opinions.
The whatsapp group was great (or was it snapchat – I get my SM platforms confused). Lots of excited chatter about the books (with some digressions into other stuff) one of the funnest parts of the Hive team approach.
Beth:
Whatsapp Theo lol!
Julia:
The team chat was definitely and absolutely the best thing about the contest (beside finding new favourite books and authors obviously!) The banter and discussion was a lot of fun, and especially with how crazy the world went in phase two it kept me sane! (Or as sane as I ever was…)
Beth:
Oh my days these last six weeks have been challenging to say the least, so our SPFBO discussions have definitely been a very welcome distraction!
Nils:
I genuinely loved the way we approached reviewing the finalists for many reasons. Firstly, I think reviewing as a team worked well because there wasn’t any pressure to read every single book, as long as we had at least 3 reviews for each book, we could share the books between us. I’m not someone who deals well with pressure, so at least this wasn’t a stressful experience.
Secondly, having at least 3 varying opinions on each book I feel is the fairest way to judge. As you’ve all said before, our opinions vary. So I think it’s more beneficial to an author, as well as our team, to see a differing range of views, which also made choosing which ones were our favourites easier.
Thirdly, it was fun doing it this way! Kind of like a big ‘buddy read’, our conversational style of reviewing generated some fantastic discussions and the WhatsApp chats were the best!
What have been the highlights for you this year?
Theo:
I’ve been really impressed by the range of original ideas within the genre. There is so much more to fantasy than elves and dragons (though I have been known to write about both). There have been some really left field book concepts that you can see would have struggled to get traction with a mainstream publisher. What stopped many of those rising through the SPFBO ranks was always the execution rather than the concept. That is to say, an entertaining and original premise just wasn’t carried through into sufficiently high quality writing, clear conflict, consistent and engaging plotting all experienced through compelling characters.
Beth:
Oh Theo that is such a good point, one I hadn’t even considered. I don’t think there was any book where I found myself really hating the actual concept of it. Any authors reading this please note – edit that script before you send it in! Edit it HARD.
Julia:
Definitely the surprises. My absolute overall favourite this year is a type of book I usually don’t enjoy! Going in blind and just reading definitely broadens the horizons. I also like getting the instant feedback via the group. Where one of us would go “oh I hate this part, because X” there was a “oh, I actually liked that because Y!” as often as agreement. There were a lot of different opinions and views, and I loved how things were critically questioned that might not have occured to others yet.
I also am quite happy that we have three very strong books that have all been written by women at the top of the list at this moment! We had a few questions about there being many male finalists before, and I enjoy seeing that luck and fate can go either way!
Theo:
Oh yes, that has been a definite positive for me this year. As others have said, the majority of bloggers involved in the contest do seem to be women so it would be hard to claim any bias behind four male winners so far, but a woman winner is well overdue and the books vying for the top three spots are all excellent with some brilliant writing. I do have my own personal favourite though!
Beth:
Ha, you do Theo? Really? Funny you haven’t mentioned it in our chats… -Sarcasm-
I think the highlight for me was the sheer range of stories. I have a comfort-zone within a comfort-zone when it comes to reading, so having to crawl out of that was difficult at first but SO rewarding.
Julia:
Also I need to mention at least one non-finalist book here: The First of Shadows by Deck Matthews. It didn’t make it to the finals, and it’s not a perfect book. But it was absolutely thrilling to me in one aspect! I have really bad eyesight, aphantasia (no visual imagination) and two blind grandparents. And there’s one scene in this book that introduces a blind character, and it blew me away! He just nailed that bit, and it’s something that is really close to me, so that was one of my highlights!
Beth:
I loved that book! It’s a shame it ended so abruptly. I’ve learned since that Matthews hadn’t realised he’d included Welsh in it, and so since our review he’s been learning it – I find that amazing!
Oh if we’re talking about specific books, Snowspelled was another big highlight for me – again though, it ended much too soon. But that was a world I loved. Seriously, we’ve had an incredible range in our books!
What have you learned as SPFBO judges?
Beth:
Theo loves a spreadsheet? And maths. Theo loves maths.
Theo:
I learned that LitRPG is a thing, when one of our batch turned out to be a LitRPG format. I’ve now read a couple of books in this style and that is far too few to come to any general conclusions about what is a potentially very broad genre. But I was curious at this merging of forms, breaking down the barrier between books and gaming.
Julia:
As someone who really enjoys Lit RPG, I’m still not utterly sure if you fully get the genre Theo… *winks*
What I’ve learned is something I’ve mentioned above already. Slush reading. Not forcing myself on and on when the book just isn’t working for me. Being able to decide early if it’s a “keep going” or a “DNF”. That was a hard lesson for me to learn!
Nils:
I’ve learnt that even a book outside of what I would usually enjoy can also be one that wins you over.
Beth:
Allowing myself to put a book down if I’m not enjoying it was a big one for me too, and as I’ve said, like Nils, enjoying a book I probably wouldn’t normally have picked up…
What would be your advice for future contestants?
Julia:
There’s a few ones…
- Entering the SPFBO is like playing the lottery. While obviously a good book has good chances, there’s still so much luck involved! So you have to get a thick skin to enter, and not expect too much. See it as an opportunity to make connections and get involved in the community! And – it should be obvious – don’t be a douchebag. The community is small, and bad news spreads fast. So if in doubt please think twice before posting an angry response. (I’m very happy that we had little drama lately! And actually being gracious about a bad review might make it so much more likely for bloggers to give you a next shot happily, even if this book didn’t work for you! If there’s insults and arguing however, that’ll be a stain on your reputation for ages.)
- It’s greatly appreciated if the book is actually readily formatted to read for the judges. So having an epub and kindle file that actually work and look decent on the device is a plus. Reading a really fragmented book that has a paragraph every two lines or a word file so old the judges have to reformat it to current word to be able to reformat it to something that works on an ereader is not a good start.
- With SPFBO we start with slush reading. That means you need a strong start! That includes not only the story, but also the whole book. I once had one that started with “other works by the author”, then acknowledgments, then a foreword, then some quote. I finally made it to “chapter one” on page 21! And then, after that Headline it said “Subscribe to the authors newsletter with this link”. Right underneath “Chapter one”… Please don’t do that…
Theo:
Absolutely agree with you Julia, particularly on point 3. Your story must speak for itself. Don’t tell us why we should like your book or set out the unnumbered members of team-author who have helped you to this stage in life. Acknowledgements and afterwords go at the end. Put your story front and centre.
The other thing, leading on from my earlier answer – an original premise is great, but it is NOT ENOUGH on it’s own. Hone your craft, get beta readers in (family in general and mum and dad in particular rarely count as good beta-readers) and get an EDITOR. I speak from bitter experience as an author who got eviscerated by one reviewer because I thought I knew a bit about English and could self-edit my work. Steven King has an editor, he doesn’t think he can self-edit. A good editor will not only save your grammatical blushes, but they can help tweak the story, sharpen your prose and even point out the plot holes. (I can also say this without any fear of being accused of touting for trade for those of my fellow Hive judges who are also editors, because they’re too busy to take on new clients! – yup other people are using editors, you should too.)
Nils:
Completely agree, Theo. Good editing is so beneficial, and for us as reviewers it is more enjoyable to read a book that isn’t full of inconsistencies, typos and grammatical errors.
Beth:
The problem is you get too close to your work – you can’t see the woods for the trees anymore. Obviously, paying someone else to edit your book isn’t always an option, so in that case polish polish polish. Try all the tricks. Reading aloud. Changing the font so it looks different (sounds simple but it tricks your mind). Keep a separate doc or spreadsheet of events and character names – for the love of god don’t get your characters’ names wrong!
Nils:
I also agree with Julia in regards to her first point. I think authors need to be aware they’ll need a thick skin before entering, and to be gracious when they get critical feedback. I’m certainly more inclined to read future books by authors who are polite and pleasant.
How would you like to see SPFBO develop?
Julia:
I’d personally like it if there was a limit to only enter one book per author, per year.
I’d also like it if authors who have multiple books published in the trad publishing world, and/or have been on fantasy bestseller lists wouldn’t be able to enter. Not because their books aren’t good, but because for me this contest is all about finding the hidden gems! If you already have a big fanbase and are well known, you don’t really need to enter this contest and steal the spotlight from someone who has a great book but no one knows yet… *shrugs* obviously just my personal opinion, but I’d love to see this as rules.
Theo:
Good points Julia. I remember seeing a clip of Stanley Johnson (Boris Johnson’s incredibly posh upper class privileged father) on TV pontificating about how he had considered using his turkish heritage (a grandparent?!) to get himself on a Conservative party shortlist favouring ethnic minorities in parliamentary candidacies for MPs. I thought then, “How could you possibly miss the point by soooooo much!”
In the same way, I think that successful trad-published authors entering SPFBO is “missing the point.” At the same time that draws us into the tricky business of defining “successful trad-published authors” and SPFBO has done well so far to avoid getting entangled in the detail of that kind of definition.
That is, I think what makes this difficult because SPFBO draws so much strength from its purity and simplicity, so I’m wary of any tweaking or tampering that might distort the nature of the competition.
Beth:
I think what’s needed is a clear understanding of what the competition is for. Here at the Hive, we believe the SPFBO is an opportunity to give self-published authors a platform. It’s hard to get heard in that world, but having your book reviewed by ten separate blogs makes a lot of noise about you and your work. Therefore, we don’t understand why authors may want to return to the competition after they’ve already been finalists. There isn’t a cash prize. There isn’t a publishing deal up for grabs. Just being a finalist will get you all the attention that being a winner does, and for an author trying to make a living – that, surely, is the ‘prize’ in this competition.
However, it seems other blogs believe it’s about finding the best book, regardless of the author behind it. I can’t quite see the point behind that… obviously we are reading singular books by that author. We are not judging authors. We are judging the books they enter into the competition. But that one book is representative of them as a whole, and its success in the competition raises them up as a whole.
What is it exactly we want to achieve with this competition? To celebrate one book individually? Or boost the career of an author who otherwise might go unheard?
Theo:
Timing is an issue for me. I’ve been fortunate in being able to devote a fair amount of time to this alongside doing a masters course, but
(a) ten months has been tight to turn it all around and
(b) I think the “calendar year” time-slot that we seem to be migrating towards may be a sub-optimal option.
Julia:
I agree on that. Ten months has really brought me to my limits reading wise. I also fear that I won’t be able to join if it’s going over a calendar year, as I am a bookseller, and work silly hours from mid november on until after Christmas. And after those silly hours I can’t really focus enough to judge the finalists.
Theo:
Exactly Julia, we should think of the poor book sellers and those with small families (families of small children I mean). December is not a good month for those bloggers to be wrapping up reviews and writing posts.
Beth:
December is a crazy month in my house. I have two primary-school aged children, but they’re in different parts of the school. I spent one week in December going back and forth to the school twice a day to see the multiple performances of both their shows!
Even if I’d managed to read all the books before December, the thought of organising everything else that goes into blogging – the editing and scheduling and social media-ing and promoting and pushing… fitting all that in as well is the problem.
Theo:
I appreciate that a competition that starts in one year and finishes in another is a bit odd, I mean it’s longer than the F1 motor racing season.
But actually I think we have stumbled towards an almost perfect timing running May to April, with a first round finishing around October. That actually fits with October events like FantasyCon and Bristolcon, and Easter events like Eastercon and Edgelit. But these are good opportunities for the publicity of SPFBO to work to the authors’ advantage.
My other question, to which publishing friendS may have the answer, is what time-slots would most align with mainstream publishing cycles? When would they have the freedom to be looking around to pick up on the latest best thing in self-publishing?
Julia:
It’s also not ideal for the authors. If we finish up after Christmas most people have just bought and received books as Christmas presents and used their vouchers already. And if I learned something working as a purchaser in a bookshop for 17 years, it’s that people quickly forget things again. This world moves fast and the next interesting thing comes along quickly. So if everyone is busy reading their Holiday books they might not think about the SPFBO by the time they start buying the next batch!
Beth:
Oh DAMN that’s a good point Julia! *high five*
Nils:
Agreed! I would also struggle to read over November/December. I think a lot of us have so little time what with Christmas prep and family/work gatherings. It makes little sense.
I also feel the same as Julia – there should be a rule, so that if you’ve already been traditionally published and are a well established author, you shouldn’t be able to enter. If we’re being honest, it’s not really fair for authors who desperately need this chance to get recognition, is it? I was actually very surprised to learn well-established authors could enter.
I also think it was a tad unfair this year that the winner was announced on all social media platforms before all the reviews and scores had been revealed. I feel that it’s only Mark’s place to do this. So maybe next year, this should be put into the rules.
Beth:
I absolutely agree with you Nils. I felt like we’d been somewhat underpinned, when another blog announced who the winner was before we (and another blog) had dropped our final reviews! And considering it isn’t any one blog’s individual competition, I did wonder what gave them the right to make that particular announcement. Mark Lawrence’s role in the competition as intermediary is there for a reason, and frankly it was highly disrespectful to sidestep him that way.
Any final thoughts or future hopes for SPFBO6?
Beth:
Take it away Theo…
Theo:
I’m really excited to be signed up for SPFBO6 and looking forward to coming at our batch of 25-30 books with a completely blank sheet of expectations and the hope of finding another stunning SPFBO finalist or even winner.
I’m also looking forward to working with you guys again (and the other judges/blogs) because SPFBO is really about much more than just finding a “there can only be one” winner. It’s about the dialogue, the discussions, forging the online connections and making new friends (all the more important in Covid times). I think Miracle Wang’s post and the Quarancon2020 panel they took part in were both excellent in emphasising how the finalists all bonded through what can be a bit of a bruising process. (Though I am strangely curious/nervous about the throwaway idea of the finalists scoring/rating the bloggers!)
I think it’s also important to thank
- the entrants for being so fecking brave as to put their books in (without them there would be no SPFBO),
- the judges for all the time they devote (without them there could be no SPFBO) and of course
- Mark for being the moving spirit, driving force, and ultimate navigator of this fantastic beast (without him, what SPFBO?)
This was the best SPFBO contest ever. I enjoyed all ten books and had a 6 way tie at the top.
It was a brilliant contest!
Great work guys. I appreciate gaining insights into how a group of reviewers collectively act as judge for the contest.
Thanks! All ten SPFBO blogs work differently, and we found this was the best, or certainly the most enjoyable, way for us to work.