Gertie Saves the Day is now a Purple Dragonfly Children’s Picture Book Award Winner. The Purple Dragonfly Book Award is a worldwide competition to celebrate the best in children’s books. The contest is open to children’s stories in 56 different categories. It is awarded to books that are original, innovative, and creative in content and design. This is the second award that Gertie Saves the Day has won. The first award was the Literary Titan Gold Award. Applying for book awards should be part of your author marketing plan. Here are a few reasons.
Visibility
Winning a book award will allow you to gain exposure and media attention, both locally and nationally. The Literary Titan Gold Award caught the attention of my local newspaper. The editor contacted me and we had a great interview. From the interview he wrote a full page article on my journey as a self published award winning author.
Credibility
Credibility comes with winning a book award. As a new and self-published author credibility was very important to me. Awards play an important part in a reader’s decision to select your book. I know when I see a children’s book with a seal I will take it off the shelf to look at the seal. The seal helps me to learn more about the book, topic and the award. Winning an award serves as a neutral third-party endorsement for you and your book. When looking at a group of books on a topic, an award will give your book an advantage and help your book stand out from your competition.
Book Sales
Ultimately, all authors want to increase book sales. A book award encourages readers to pay attention to your book and provides a reason for them to buy it. A book award tells readers that the book is of high quality. This is particularly true when buyers are purchasing children’s books to give as a gift. If the book has a seal, they will choose it over one that does not.
Opens Doors to New Opportunities
Book awards can open the doors to new opportunities such as speaking engagements, book signings, and author visits to schools. I was invited to participate in a podcast. I was recently a guest on You May Contribute A Verse Podcast. It was on this podcast that I spoke about the first award and mentioned that I was waiting to hear about the Purple Dragonfly Award.
As you can see, winning a book award is a terrific way to promote your book and expose your book to new audiences.
Requests …
I am so glad you’re here and so grateful that I can share my writing journey with you. I believe that you have a story to tell and the world is waiting to read your story.
I’m looking forward to helping you as a children’s book writer in any way that I can. Speaking of helping — please leave a comment below and let me know what questions you have about picture book writing. This will help me to tailor my posts to your needs.
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I am now booking author visits for the Fall, 2022. I am available for local in person visits and virtual classroom visits. Please book early as availability will become limited as back to school begins.
Have a great week.