Small Spec Book Awards - An Interview with the Founders

19 min read

Welcome friend! I learned about Small Spec Book Awards back in November. A brand new addition to the indie awards world, the mission of the Small Spec Book Awards is to recognize and promote independent and small press authors writing exceptional speculative fiction. I joined the team as an influencer and as the award cycle progresses, I will be posting updates here. Let’s begin with an interview with the founder, L. N. Holmes and cofounder, Millie Abecassis.

Small Spec Book Awards: Get to know the Founders and Mission

Welcome L. N. and Millie! Tell me and my readers a bit about yourself!

L. N.:

Thank you for the warm welcome, Kriti! I’m so happy to chat with you and meet your readers.

As for myself, I am a woman of many roles (writer, wife, writing center consultant, etc.) but the one I am most excited about right now—other than being the mother of my baby boy—is founder of the Small Spec Book Awards (SSBA). I’m also super excited to be working with Millie on this project.

Small Spec Book Awards founder - L N Holmes — L. N. Holmes

Millie:

Thank you for having us! I’m glad to be (virtually) here to talk more about the SSBA.

Like L.N., I wear many hats (too many according to my spouse, who’s slightly afraid for my workload and well-being). I am a writer, gamer, cat owner/slave (depending on the point of view), volunteer in my community, work full-time in the pharmaceutical industry, etc. I am the founder of #SmallPitch, a pitch event centered on small/indie presses, and the co-founder of the SSBA, L.N.’s amazing initiative to support small press authors.

What inspired you to create the Small Spec Book Awards? How did you decide to work together on it?

L. N.:

Long story short: I saw a need and, instead of waiting for someone else to fix it, I decided to try.

What’s the need? Marketing efforts by small and independent press writers are often buried under the advertising and influence of the Big 5 publishers, or they are stifled by social media algorithms. When it comes to awards, many come with an entry fee, and when you have a small or non-existent budget for your book, entering those competitions might just be impossible. With so much working against small and independent press writers, I wanted to create an award that was free to enter, and I also wanted to level the marketing playing field by including influencers and appealing to potential readers. That’s why I created the SSBA.

I should also mention that Mark Lawrence’s model for the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off (SPFBO) was a big inspiration. I loved what he was doing to elevate self-published authors, and I wanted to do something similar for small and independent press writers. Ultimately, we do things a bit differently at the SSBA, and the two different organizations are spotlighting two different groups of writers, but we love the SPFBO and would love for people to check out what Mark’s group is doing.

Finally, I knew I couldn’t launch this award alone, so I asked Millie to come on board as cofounder. As the creator of #SmallPitch, I knew she already had a lot of connections with small/indie presses and their authors. She’s also a small press author herself and has three different books coming out with three different presses!

Millie has done such great work for this award already. For example, she runs the Bluesky and Instagram accounts and creates all the lovely graphics that we use for the SSBA. She’s worked hard to help me find volunteers and influencers, and she helps me think through ideas for the award. Her insight and feedback have been invaluable. I am so grateful she’s partnered with me on this ambitious project.

Millie:

“What she said” would make a great answer to be frank, but to elaborate further, what I liked in L.N.’s idea was her “let’s fix the gap” approach, because I had had a similar motivation to launch #SmallPitch. When you look at the “best books” out there, those who get thousands of reviews and prizes and tons of fans, they are mostly from Big 5 publishers. Is it because these books are better than books published by smaller presses? Absolutely not. It’s because they have bigger marketing budgets that allow to push the books into readers’ hands.

Don’t get me wrong: I love Big 5 books. The majority of books I read are from Big 5 publishers. But I also love small presses and have read gems that I felt didn’t get the attention they deserved, solely due to the smaller budgets and means indie publishers have. So to me, the SSBA sounded like a great opportunity to showcase these books, in particular by partnering with book reviewers and other bookish influencers to promote the nominated and winning books.

Why did you choose to focus on speculative fiction and independent/small press authors? How have your individual experiences shaped these awards?

L. N.:

Honestly, while I have huge ambitions to help every small/indie press writer out there, I needed to figure out how I could pull off these awards without inundating Millie and myself with a ridiculous amount of work. We are writers ourselves, and we have other obligations in addition to that, so we had to be practical about this approach.

As a writer and reader of speculative fiction, the genres of fantasy, science fiction, and horror are what I know best, so it made sense to start there. While there are speculative fiction awards out there (like the Hugo, World Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, etc.) small and indie press authors are competing—if they even qualify in the first place—with Big 5 published books. As we’ve already discussed, the Big 5 often wield their influence to great advantage, and their connections surely don’t hurt when their authors are being considered for awards. I’m not saying these publishers are doing anything unfair—their writers are creating wonderful books and deserve to be considered and included—but small and independent publishers are shouting at the top of their lungs just to be noticed, which can make it difficult for their authors to become eligible for these awards in the first place.

We also decided to focus on the adult age category, novels/novellas, and works of fiction published in a single year. This was a purely practical move. This is our first year, so we’re still building up the award and our volunteer team. It would be unfair to flood our readers with too many books right at the start. As the awards grow, we hope to expand to short story collections and other age categories.

Millie:

What’s the publisher of the last sci-fi/fantasy novella that you loved? Chances are high you will answer Tor. I have nothing against Tor (I read lots of their books) but Big 5 books are saturating the speculative fiction awards and market. Again, I don’t want them to get less attention. They deserve it. I simply want to give more attention to the great books published by smaller presses in the genres I know.

Like L.N. explained, we aimed at opening the SSBA to other genres and audiences, but we needed to start with a reasonable, manageable goal and workload. As the SSBA becomes more popular and we recruit more readers, we will be able to expend. Or maybe not! This year will allow us to see what’s doable, and if there is room for more, we will definitely do more. If not, then it is okay too. We don’t want to overwhelm ourselves and our readers. We are all volunteers here, with busy lives, and while we would love to do more, we will only do so if this is realistic.

I anticipate opening to YA and/or a couple of other genres in the future, but we shall see!

What kind of impact do you hope this award will have on speculative fiction authors and the indie publishing community?

L. N.:

We hope it will bring attention to them, first and foremost. We want our authors and presses to gain brand recognition. When you say Penguin Randomhouse or Macmillian, Stephen King or Margaret Atwood, people know who you’re talking about. It may be a wild dream, but we want that level of recognition for our small and indie presses and their authors as well.

Also, we want readers to be able to find our authors, and we want to do the work of finding the best books for readers to start with. You may have a single chance to win a reader over to small or indie presses. We want to hand them excellent examples for each genre so that we can get them hooked and draw them into the fabulous small/indie scene. In the meantime, if readers check out the awards, they’ll be exposed to all the nominees, which will make them at least aware of other potential options. Not all of our small/indie press authors can get their foot in the door at brick-and-mortar stores, so this type of exposure can aid a writer who’s trying to connect with a broader audience.

Millie:

Similarly to L.N., my main goal is to bring attention to small press authors and the best of their books. Readers, and even writers, often think binarily when it comes to books: either you are published by a Big 5 publisher and your book is in a book store, you have a literary agent, and the whole package with it, or you self-publish and sell your books on Amazon only. Small presses are like the forgotten middle child of publishing. Not traditional enough, not indie enough, nobody knows where they fit, and don’t know their books.

I hope the SSBA will help readers who are curious to read different types of books find their next read, and help writers realize they have more option that they thought when it comes to the publishing industry.

Can you share some of the challenges you’ve faced in setting up the awards and how you’ve overcome them?

L. N.:

Since we are so new, there haven’t been too many things that have come up.

One small issue is that we had to disqualify four books because they fell outside the established rules: one had too high a word count, two were published in 2023 instead of 2024, and one was YA. I hated disqualifying those titles because they looked downright awesome. I wish nothing but the best for those authors. However, to be fair to everyone involved, we had to adhere to the established rules. Since the SSBA launched in October of this year, everyone is still learning and getting used to the parameters for the competition.

If we can find a way to expand, we might be able to include titles that we currently can’t accept. That’s why we are grateful to you, Kriti, and your blog readers. We know if enough people hear about us and get involved, we will be able to help more writers as a result.

Millie:

Publishers not following our nomination guidelines (you know, those people so adamant about writers following their submission guidelines 😉) and nominating books outside of our rules. In one case, we decided to change the rule and open nominations to novellas, which I believe was the right call. Small presses are, unlike Big 5 publishers, willing to publish shorter works by emerging authors, so not accepting novellas would have reduced the number of eligible works too drastically. In this case, I’m glad the publishers made a mistake, because we ended up accepting more books. In other cases, such as audience or published year, we have to stick to our rules and disqualify the nominated books. It is unfortunate but we have learned from this and improved our nomination form to ensure publishers are reminded of the rules when submitting.

What makes the Small Spec Book Awards unique compared to other book awards?

L. N.:

The SSBA is different for a number of reasons.

A good example is that we don’t charge an entry fee. I really dislike anything that takes money away from writers. It’s becoming too much of a pay-to-play industry as is, and this reality excludes some of our creators, no matter how talented or deserving they may be. That’s not okay with me, which is why the SSBA won’t collect fees from the many to give a monetary prize to the few.

Instead, we are bringing much needed attention to our authors. That’s where our wonderful influencers, like you, come in! SSBA influencers are out there doing the legwork, shouting about our authors and their books. They are a key part of this award, and we are thankful that they are willing to bridge the gap between authors and readers. We hope this attention will grow an author’s audience and they’ll be able to sell more books (which would mean money flows to the writer, not away from them).

We already talked about how our award focuses on small and independent press authors, when so many others do not, and we also strive to be as clear and as transparent as possible about everything we do.

Millie:

Another difference I like is that the SSBA is not a popularity contest. All the nominated books will be read and assessed by our readers following specific criteria. We aren’t the only award following this model, but a lot of other book awards truly feel like popularity contests, since the winner is the book that gets the most votes from fans or readers or members of an organization, and the voters will naturally vote for the books they bought, read, and loved, which is determined by their own tastes. The Goodreads Choice Awards is a good example. This prize recognizes the most popular books, not the best books. Of course, “best” is subjective, but this is also why we are doing our best to recruit as many readers as we can. Not only it will reduce the burden on each reader, but it will also ensure the books are assessed as fairly as possible. And each book will be assessed by the same number of people.

As founders, do you have favorite speculative fiction books or authors that inspired your journey?

L. N.:

Yes, of course. When I was a child, I loved spending hours in the library, picking out books. I wanted to read fantasy books most often, but I started to delve into science fiction and horror soon after and never looked back.

Over the years, I have been influenced by a great deal of speculative writers: Octavia Butler, Jeff VanderMeer, Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Jenna Glass, Sammantha Shannon, Sarah J. Maas, N.K. Jemisin, Victor LaValle, Cinda Williams Chima, Sue Burke, Naomi Novik, Katherine Arden, Cat Winters, Suzanne Collins, Haruki Murakami, Kevin Brockmeier, Kelly Link, and Aldous Huxley. That’s not even all of them.

Books that impacted me as a reader: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, The Cure for Dreaming by Cat Winters, Kindred by Octavia Butler, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, The Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima, Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas, The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden, Uprooted by Naomi Novik, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The Tiger and the Wolf by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Semiosis by Sue Burke, and The Changeling by Victor LaValle.

Books (and stories) that impacted me as a writer: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, The Women’s War by Jenna Glass, The Priory of the Orange Tree by Sammantha Shannon, The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, “The Ceiling” by Kevin Brockmeier and “Stone Animals” by Kelly Link.

I’ve also been impacted by small and independent press books such as The Taiga Syndrome by Cristina Rivera Garza and Palaces by Simon Jacobs.

Of course, this is not a comprehensive list.

Millie:

Where do I start? Well, let’s start by the beginning. When I was a kid, I spent way too much time at the library borrowing fantasy books as well as all the Goosebumps books I could find. My favorite Goosebumps book is Calling All Creeps! because of its unexpected twisted ending. Some honorable mentions include It Came from Beneath the Sink! and How to Kill a Monster.

During my teenage years, I delved more into fantasy with His Dark Materials (still one of my favorite series of all time), Harry Potter (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the first book I read in English, because I didn’t want to wait for the French translation), The Lord of the Rings, and Ewilan’s Quest.

In parallel, I was a literature major in high school, so I got exposed to a lot of literary fiction and classics that had a strong influence on me. The first that comes to mind is Charles Perrault’s Tales. He’s the reason I write some many fairy tale retellings now, and why the first one I wrote is a retelling of Donkey Skin. Some other books that had a big influence on me, cementing my desire to write, include The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, and Silk by Alessandro Barrico. The first two books that made me want to read more thrillers are Every Dead Thing by John Connolly (I’m a huge fan of his Charlie Parker series!) and The Beast Within by Emile Zola. Yes, Zola wrote thrillers too!

More recently, authors I love reading and who often influence my writing one way or another are N. K. Jemisin, Sue Burke, Tade Thompson, Aliette de Bodard, Rozenn Illiano, Christelle Dabos, Martha Wells, Alix E. Harrow, T. Kingfisher, John Scalzi, Charlie N. Holmberg, and many others I am forgetting for sure. It took me also a while to catch up with some classic authors in speculative genres. I only started reading Ursula K. Le Guin a few years ago and got blown away by The Left Hand of Darkness and The Tombs of Atuan. The latter has been a huge inspiration for the next novel I plan to write.

What has been the most rewarding part of launching this initiative so far?

L. N.:

The outpouring of enthusiasm and support for the SSBA and our mission is definitely the most rewarding part at the moment.

There are quite a few small and independent presses publishing speculative fiction that are thrilled to have an award that celebrates their books and their authors, when so many other awards simply overlook them. I’m always happy to see a publisher or nominated author express their excitement on social media. This is especially rewarding if an author didn’t know they were going to be nominated and was surprised by the announcement.

It’s not just the publishers and authors who are excited though. Certain members of the #SmallPitch community have stepped up as volunteers, and they’ve also been spreading the word about the SSBA far and wide. We’ve had a number of influencers volunteer, eager to help our authors succeed and gain the attention of readers. We’ve also gained some excellent volunteers from the broader reading and writing communities across social media platforms. Some of these individuals send us kind and encouraging messages, and I can’t tell you how much this means to me. Their support is making this dream work. I am so grateful.

Millie:

Discovering so many authors and books! I’ve been involved in the indie press community for a while, but I can’t possibly know everyone and every book, so I’ve enjoyed seeing all the nominations coming through, many for books I hadn’t heard of.

What are the next milestones in the awards in the coming months? What are you most excited about?

L. N.:

The deadline for nominations on January 31, 2025 is our next milestone. Since this is our first year, we’ve given publishers a longer submission window, but next year it will be shorter (the month of January). After nominations close, our readers get a chance to read the nominated books and start making tough decisions about who they’ll recommend as semi-finalists. We’ll announce the semi-finalists September 1 and our finalists and winners on December 1. I can’t wait for our readers’ reactions. I am also super excited about watching the hype build around these authors and their books as the competition goes on.

Millie:

I’m excited to have the final list of nominated books on January 31st! Many publishers haven’t nominated books yet, so I’m eager to see what other books will join the competition by the end of the month.

Are there any specific trends in speculative fiction that you are seeing in the nominations so far?

L. N.:

I’m not sure about trends, but I am seeing more satire than I expected. Not that I was really expecting much of anything in particular. There has always been an astronomical range of creativity and humor that speculative fiction can provide. It’s fun to see what these presses are publishing and putting out there for us to discover.

Millie:

When it comes to indie presses, I see a lot of shorter works. Not just novellas, but also shorter novels. It sounds like we’re moving away from the cliché that a fantasy novel must be a door stopper. Of course, our own cap of 120,000 words plays a role, but I see a lot of books with lower word counts than before. Weird fiction and blends of sci-fi and fantasy are also on the rise.

How can readers and book bloggers support the awards or get involved?

L. N.:

Volunteers can help us in two ways:

As a reader
AND/OR
As an influencer

We are hoping for as many readers as possible. Our main requirements are that you’re committed to reading for the entire awards process, that you have a love of and familiarity with speculative fiction, and that you’re an adult (18+). Please read the competition rules for additional details.

Influencers and book enthusiasts promoting speculative novels/novellas on their blog, social media pages, or video/podcast channels are cordially invited to help our small and independent authors by spotlighting our winners. Whether you’d like to interview our authors, review their books, or promote the Small Spec Book Awards in general, all ideas are welcome.

As a volunteer for one or both roles, we hope you will find great reward in reading fantastic small and independent press books. You can also take satisfaction in knowing that you’re helping authors published with small and independent presses, who often don’t get the opportunities or recognition that Big 5 authors enjoy.

Interested in helping our authors? Fill out this form to volunteer as a reader. Fill out this form to volunteer as an influencer.

Millie:

To add to what L.N. described, if you cannot volunteer, one thing you can do is spread the word about the award and the participating authors and publishers. Let people know those great books exist, those publishers exist, read some of the nominated books that resonate with you (you don’t have to wait until we announce the winners!) and recommend them to your friends.

Many readers and influencers, including myself, sometimes find it challenging to balance award-related reading with personal reading. What would you say to those who want to participate but are hesitant about the time commitment required?

L. N.:

First of all, thank you for even considering helping us. In a busy world where we all have a million things to do, your interest means a lot!

If you do want to be a reader but are unsure about the time commitment, then let me say a few things to reassure you.

Two things to note right away: the submissions cap and the upper word count limit. We created these two parameters as a safeguard to prevent overtaxing our volunteer readers. The submissions cap is a limit for nominations, which is 100 books per genre and 300 books total (although, readers won’t be reading all of these books, as I’ll explain below). The upper word count limit for novels is 120,000, which reflects some industry standards for length.

When you sign up as a volunteer, we specifically ask which genres you are willing to read. We do this because we intend to assign you a particular genre. That immediately cuts down on the amount of books you will be reading. We then have at least three readers per book in the semi-final round, but we distribute the titles across all the readers for the genre, so that cuts down on the amount of books you’ll have to read as well. In addition to this, in the semi-final round, volunteers can stop reading a title after a certain amount of pages if they are certain they will not recommend it for the final round (not ideal, but still an option).

In the final round, volunteers will read all of the finalists, but we don’t expect volunteers to re-read something they’ve already read, so that will cut down on the time a volunteer needs to commit to reading and judging books.

Finally, we spread the entire awards process over the course of a year to give volunteers plenty of time to read. We want you to enjoy these books. We don’t want to make it feel like work.

Millie:

Having more readers joining also means reducing the number of books each reader has to read. So if you are hesitating, don’t, and sign up!

Is there anything else you would like to add?

L. N.:

Publishers, if you intend to nominate books, please note that the deadline is coming soon (January 31)! You can find the link to nominate books here.

Also, publishers, please make sure you submit an e-copy of any nominated books. Our volunteer readers need them to consider your books for the semi-final and final rounds! You can send them to our email address (smallspecbookawards at gmail). Please do this before the January 31st deadline to remain in the competition.

Finally, thanks to the authors who are working hard to create these lovely things that we call books. I hope the SSBA can spread awareness about your titles and bring more enthusiastic readers your way.

Millie:

I want to give a special shout-out to our volunteers, both readers and influencers. We couldn’t do it without you. I hope you are as excited as I am for the competition to begin! And if you haven’t joined yet, it’s not too late. You still have until the end of the month to raise your hand and read excellent books.