Christianbook.com Fiction Blog

It takes countless hours for many staff members and volunteers to read judge and pick the selections for the final nominees. Volunteers around the country are sent a questionnaire to determine the number of books they can read in a two month period, and their preferred genre, anywhere from 5-25 books. The volunteers’ responsibility is to read every single book sent, even if they’ve read the book before. Then the volunteer is sent their box of books based on the genre and number selected. All boxes are sent on the same day. From the point the boxes are received, the volunteer starts reading, judging that book prior to moving on to another book and then sends the score sheet to the coordinator. The coordinator adds up the scores to make sure they’re right. When the final day of reading arrives two months later, every score sheet is in and tallied, right down to the tenths of a point, and the winners from these tally sheets go on to become the nominees. Then on to the finals…where the winners’ announcement will be made in St. Louis, Missouri at the ACFW Gala Ball on September 25th. If ever there is a conference for aspiring writers to attend, it is this one

For months, I’ve been trying to decide which “reader” to buy, and have asked many of you on facebook.  Overwhelmingly, the answer comes back to buy an IPad. My one concern was that I want to access pdfs and, of course, the CBD app!  As of today, you can now access our CBD app both on the IPad and Android, in addition to most other “readers” on the market!

We do a great deal of traveling, and as you can imagine, lugging books and galleys becomes cumbersome, especially when I’ve left a book behind that I really want to finish as happened last winter with Lady in the Mist by Laurie Alice Eakes. Deep into the story, I discovered that the galley was left behind and had to wait until the book was published before finishing the story (grr!). What a relief to finally be able to purchase the IPad, as suggested by several author friends, including , B.J. Hoff.  Thank you CBD for making this possible!