Just a quick update and intro to our first-round judging for the 5th annual SPSFC. For more team updates, check out our team page here.

We’ve split our allotment of 25 books into two groups, one of 13 and one of 12. We split our four judges into two pairs and assigned one pair of judges to each group of books. We’ve been reading the first parts of each book, usually at least 20-25%, and recording brief notes and reactions, including indicating if we think the book would make a good quarterfinalist.

One pair of judges is almost done with their group, and the other pair is at 9/12 books read for each of them. Each judge is free to read outside their group and add more feedback, and our quickest reader has actually read the openings to 17 of the 25 books. We’ll do more crossing over to sample the other group’s top contenders and to build more feedback for all books, especially books that might have split reactions from the original two judges.

Once we have all of the books read and commented on, we’ll consult and pick our quarterfinalists. There’s no fixed number, but we’ll probably select 5-6 quarterfinalists for complete reads. At that point, we’ll get each book read in full by at least two judges to place them for the semifinals. We can pick only two semifinalists from our group.

Obviously, the opinions of only four judges is highly subjective. If your book ends up cut by us, that in no way means that we didn’t like it or that it’s a bad book – it just means that there were other books that appealed to these four humans more. It’s the nature of these competitions to be subjective, and we know it’s stressful and difficult to endure cuts – our four judges have lots and lots of contest entries between them, most of which ended in being cut, so we’re sensitive to how much it hurts.

My personal philosophy for the early round is not to try to list what we didn’t like about each book we cut, but instead to send them off with a plug for what we liked and for what kind of reader we think would enjoy the story. That’s what our cuts will look like. If you are an author in our group and want more info or feedback, I’m happy to correspond by email.

The SPSFC is unusual in indie book competitions in that it allows re-entry of the same book, and we encourage any entrant that we don’t pick to enter again in a future year, where you may encounter judges who are a better match for what you’re writing.