Shop Girl among Blog Award-winners

Written by Liz Thomson

Wednesday, 21 April 2010 09:14

Emily Benet, author of the recently published Shop Girl Diaries, which grew from a blog begun in June 2008, has been named as the winner in the inaugural Author Blog Awards, organised by CompletelyNovel.com. She is joined at the winner’s table by author and blogger Neil Gaiman, whose online following was challenged right to the last by author Richard Jay Parker. Sam Starbuck claimed victory in the unpublished authors category.

The Author Blog Awards highlight the power of social media to offer a more level playing field for authors who are willing to interact with their audience online, and gain exposure for their work in the process. The winners and runners up were announced at the last night’s (20 April) official London Book Fair Tweetup, when the publishing Twitterati was out in force. All shortlisted blogs and a number of the most popular nominated blogs will be put into the CompletelyNovel Blog Directory.

Since nominations opened on 8 April, more than 25,000 people have visited the blogs page, over 3,000 of them voting. Some 500 blogs and microblogs were nominated over four weeks. The blogs that received the most votes were put on a shortlist, and book-lovers had 10 days to vote for their favourites. A flurry of activity in the Twittersphere, blogs and Facebook pulled in thousands of people to check out a diverse selection of 28 authors and their web feeds.

It’s not just the authors who have been the winners in this competition. Hundreds of books have been sent out by the Random House Group, Simon & Schuster UK, Quartet Books, Penguin, Bloomsbury, Allison & Busby, Faber & Faber, Mills & Boon and Headline to the people who nominated and voted for blogs.

CompletelyNovel.com, founded in 2008 by Oliver Brooks and Anna Lewis, is a social reading and publishing platform. It links writers to online publishing tools and print-on-demand, to offer a slick and affordable self-publishing service. Readers can read thousands of books for free online, build up their own online library and support new writers by offering feedback and buying their books. The Author Blog Awards have been developed and managed between CompletelyNovel.com and Jon Slack, co-creator of the recently announced South Asian Literature Festival to be held in October this year, and the “canon tales” event series.

Lewis is a finalist in the UKYPE Awards, to be announced at the Fair today.

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