It’s that time of year. Time for literary awards.

In Canada, the publishing industry is buzzing with the recent announcements of who won the prestigious Giller Prize, Governor General’s Literary Awards, and the Writer’s Trust Non-Fiction Prize, among others. Not only are the prize purses significant, but the prize insignia on the cover designates the book as a winner. It stands out on the shelves and encourages holiday sales.

What’s frustrating for “do-it-yourself” authors — though hardly surprising — is that none of these high-profile awards are available to self-published books.

But that’s not to say that self-publishers are out of luck altogether. There are several awards programs that focus exclusively on self-published works, or that warmly welcome a self-published effort.

While these smaller awards don’t have the profile of the mainstream prizes, they are certainly a boost to crediblity and exposure. Adding “award-winning” to the list of terms that describes your book is always a good thing.

With that in mind, it can be very worthwhile to submit your book to one or more awards programs. Here are four of the bigger and better known prizes for self-published books:

• The Benjamin Franklin Awards
• The IPPYs
• The Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards
• The Axiom Business Book Awards

The Ben Franklin, IPPY, and Writer’s Digest programs are all currently accepting entries for their 2009 awards. The Axioms just closed submissions for their 2009 awards, but if you have a business book, check back with them in May 2009 when the 2010 program will open up.

And may the best books win!

Regardless of how it was published, just because a book exists, does not mean readers will buy it. For sales to happen, you have to find innovative and cost-effective ways to let your intended audiences know about your book.

Many authors have already developed a potential readership through their blogs or their interactions on other Internet-based communities. If you haven’t, finding these communities of interest and participating in them is not difficult. One of the easiest ways to make your product known to them is to sponsor or participate in a contest.

Let’s look at two examples of blogging/interest community contests.

Example #1:

The blog badge pictured above is part of a publicity campaign surrounding the release of Cell Hell: 55 Cell Phone Users You’d Like to Silence by Dr. Mike O’Malley. Bloggers can grab the badge at the publisher’s site when they enter the blogging competition. It’s certainly a great way to engage a larger audience in thinking about the author’s topic. At last count, the site had gathered 46 entries. That’s 46 different bloggers writing about cell phone etiquette (and 46 different blog-reading audiences hearing about the topic) in competition for $1,000 in prize money donated by the author.

There are only two problems: First, the prizes are awarded randomly in the end. There is no reward for blogging skill, for depth of engagement in the topic, or for audience discussion in which the author could participate. Second, contest entrants are obligated to link back to the contest announcement on the blog of origin. They aren’t obligated to link back to, or even mention, the author’s book sales site or the book itself.

Example #2:

Once Written is an eclectic site offering a variety of features and information for both writers and readers. The mix of audiences does make for a slightly strange editorial mission, but both readers and writers are part of one larger group: bibliophiles, or people who love books.

Each month, the site hosts a number of book giveaways. This contest, like the rest of the site, features an eclectic mix too. There is literary fiction, popular fiction, non-fiction, and sometimes poetry or children’s books.

According to information on the site, authors can participate in the giveaways for $75 plus the cost of the books and shipping. While this is definitely a bargain promotions package, there are still no links to book sales or publishers’ sites.

The Take Away?
Obviously, you can spend as much or as little on book promotion as you like. Analyzing these two examples is a great place to start identifying promotional channels. What do you think — in these two examples, does the pay-off match the expense of sponsorship or participation?

Tomorrow is I Love To Write Day. Yay for people who love to write! But guess what? Some very successful authors don’t like writing. Or find writing difficult. Or write veeeery, veeeery slowly.

But whether you love writing or find it painful, soon or later you will face that accursed foe: writer’s block. You have things to write. You know you should write. But somehow you can’t make it happen.

Many successful writers will tell you that the key to unblocking is discipline. Force yourself to write for a certain amount of time each day, whether you feel like it or not. Write junk or write a masterpiece, just write.

Cue Write or Die from the Dr. Wicked Writing Lab.

Wrote or Die is a simple (dare I say wickedly simple?) online application that helps you set a goal and get it written. You choose either the number of words you want to complete or a time limit. Set your grace period to Forgiving, Strict or Evil, and then set your punishment mode: Gentle, Normal, or Kamikaze. With Gentle, you get a nice little pop-up window if you stop for too long. On the Kamikaze setting, your words start to erase themselves. Talk about incentive!

The tool is a great boost for just letting loose with ideas, getting words on the screen, and gaining momentum. Later you can go back to edit and refine.

I used the tool myself to write this post, and the idea that I’d be buzzed if I didn’t keep going provided just enough push to keep my fingers flying. It was kind of fun, actually.

The tool has a secondary benefit as well: it helps you identify the habits that might be slowing you down. I couldn’t believe how much I was trying to erase and re-write things I had started, and how often I stopped to re-read what I’d just written. Fighting those urges will help me be more a productive writer.

I can see Write or Die becoming a tremendous tool for authors. Set yourself a goal of a page or a chapter and see how far you can get with just letting the ideas flow. It’s always easier to edit than to create, and a session with Dr. Wicked gives you the raw material you need for getting started.

When you’re done, you get a gratifying note that tells you how many words you wrote in what amount of time. I was a bit surprised to learn that I had written this whole post in 8 minutes. And surprisingly, it took less editing than I thought to make it ready for publishing.