Previous Finalists

Newsletter

Hi everybody,

CONGRATULATIONS to the FINALISTS and WINNERS of the Best Book COVER Award!

Lots of our readers, young and old, got together for the day, and looked through all the covers entered. From them, they picked (what they felt) were the very best.

You will find the finalists and winners listed on the our website.    If you are a finalist or winner,  contact us with the title of the book , and we'll send you a wonderful CERTIFICATE.

Also, if you wish to purchase a finalist and/or winner medal, let us know.  And, if you do, we'll need your  FULL POSTAL ADDRESS . They cost £39 (which is the exact cost of producing them) plus postage. We don't make any profit whatsoever. They look AMAZING! Big, heavy, gold-plated and perfect for booksignings and, of course, marketing - and presented in a very smart, felt box.

You will find the downloadable WINNER and FINALIST logos HERE. Be sure to inform the reader on the back of the book or in the info in the front of the book that the award is for the COVER ONLY. We don't want to upset anybody! 

We always see the Best Book COVER Award as just a fun thing we do every year. Also, it allows us to celebrate the work of illustrators and the entry fee is sent to Blind Children UK who work with CustomEyes to produce large font books for children with sight problems. So, even if you are not a finalist or winner, you still did your bit to help this wonderful charity.

Don't forget, the 'proper' awards are open until 31st December 2026. We will then be announcing the FINALISTS on 1st March 2027 and the WINNERS a month later.

All the best,

Edward - and The Wishing Shelf Gang

After our recent newsletter went out, a lot of authors (over 100, in fact) got in touch about one particular challenge: writing blurbs.

The general consensus? Writing a blurb is a bl**dy nightmare.

So, we spoke to 30 of our readers, and they’ve agreed to help us create a simple, reader-focused blurb service for authors.

Here’s how it works:

If you have a book that’s currently on sale but isn’t selling as well as you’d hoped, send us:

• the book title

• the sales link

• your intended readership (for example: men over 50, female YA readers, crime fans, etc.)

We’ll then send the book link to a group of suitable volunteer readers and ask them:

1. What’s not working about the current blurb?

2. How could it be improved?

Once we’ve gathered the feedback, one of our editors will rewrite the blurb with those reader insights in mind.

We’ll then send the revised version back to the same target readers for another round of feedback.

After a few final tweaks, we’ll send the completed blurb back to you.

The cost is just £40 ($54), purely to cover the editor’s time.

Because we’re a not-for-profit organisation, we’re able to offer this service at a very low cost.

And just to be clear: we will NOT be using AI. Every part of this process will be carried out by real readers and real editors.

So send us your book info to thewishingshelfawards@gmail.com, and let’s see if we can help get those books selling a little better.

Today, I checked out AI for novel writing. Running a book award, and being a writer myself, I thought I'd better see what all the fuss was about. So I went on Squibler, put in a summary of the sci-fi 'first contact' novel I'm presently writing and pressed enter. Approx. 10 mins later, it came back with a 40,000 word novel based on my summary.

So, what did I think of it?

It was, in every way, soulless junk. Basically, a lot of techno jargon with no character development, no suspense, no - well, anything. Just garbage. I know I'm now supposed to edit it to 'make it my own', but it was so terrible, it would take longer to edit it than to write my own book.

But, in a way, that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was how it made me feel. I discovered, when you get AI to write your novel, there's no journey, no feeling of accomplishment. I just felt like a cheat. Yes, AI offered me a 'product' but even if the product had been good (which it wasn't), I would just feel like a scammer. How could I possibly put my name to a book written by a computer?Today, I was reminded of the fact that writing a book is not just about the finished product. It's about how you get there; the journey, the agony, the sleepless nights. Writing a novel using AI rips all of that away from you.

So I will happily go back to the 'hard way' of writing a novel as, to be perfectly honest, it is still the ONLY way to do it. That way, I might (just might) produce a book that (a) I'm proud of and (b) is actually worth reading.

Edward (Billy Bob Buttons / Hickory Crowl)