Last week the three finalists for the Outskirts Press Book of the Year were announced. Congratulations to Sharon Rhodes for her novel, It’s a Family Affair; Whitney J. LeBlanc for his book, Blues in the Wind – Revisited; and Basil Pallis for his true experience brought to the pages of 46 Days in Ukraine. Last Friday, these three finalists were put into a public poll on our Outskirts Press blog to determine the winner of the 2012 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year. We are accepting votes until tomorrow.
Sharon jumped out to an early lead last Friday, quickly capturing over 90% of the votes. As of today, her vote percentage remains in the mid 80’s. Whitney and Basil have their work cut out for them if they wish to end the reign of female authors winning the Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year prize. Last year Susan Mercer won the 2011 prize for her book, Pathway to Math Proficiency: Mastering Equivalent Fractions, Decimals and Percents…With Ease and Doris Kenney Marcotte won the 201o Best Book of the Year award for her novel, The Beads of Lapis Lazuli.
It’s strange writing “last year Susan Mercer won the 2011 prize…” because that makes it sound like it’s 2012. That’s always been one of the problems with book awards. Typically the year of the Award doesn’t coincide with the year of publication. For instance, our CIPA EVVY finalists were just awarded their 2013 EVVY Awards, even though those same books were in the running for the 2012 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year Award. Yes, the 2013 EVVY contest was concluded before the 2012 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year awards. What kind of sense does that make?
But it is important to note that our awards are for a specific year in which the book was published. So I think we’ll slightly change the way we mention our award. Instead of calling them the 2012 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year Awards, it may be more effective to say the Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year for 2012. A small matter of semantics, yes, but that’s what a writer worries about–semantics.
In any event, a new board on Pinterest has been created to recognize our Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year finalists and winners and you can see them here: http://pinterest.com/outskirtspress/best-book-of-the-year-winners-finalists/
When the public poll on our blog determines the winner for 2012, he or she will be added to the Pinterest board. Good luck to them all.
President of Outskirts Press 