The Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off (SPFBO XI)
A very slow film festival
Have you heard of the Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off Contest? (SPFBO)? Now it its eleventh year, it's a contest where three hundred self-published books are selected at random to participate in a book death match!
I entered my latest book, Reflections Upon the Anniversary of My Descent into the contest, and it made the long list via a fortunate lottery win.
How does the contest work? It's a contest run by esteemed fantasy author Mark Lawrence. Books are submitted, three hundred are chosen by lottery for the long list, and then they're randomly assigned to various book bloggers. There are ten blogs assigned thirty books each. The blogs will select one book from their thirty, and then those ten are reviewed to find the ultimate winner!
But how? It's rather random - an urban fantasy book might be in the same batch as a romantasy, grimdark, epic and cosy fantasy. So the judge's tastes count for a fair bit.
But it's a chance for more reviews, which is fantastic. And there's also more focus and publicity on indie books in general. Reviews are linked here on Mark's website, as they arrive.
In fact, I'm thinking it's more like a really slow film festival, except with books.
I've been reading a few of these and will have a few review blogs up shortly of the books that caught my attention. Stay tuned...