Previous Finalists

Comments from Authors/Publishers

The Wishing Shelf Book Awards is one of the best contests an indie or small press author can enter, especially if you write children’s or young adult books. In my case, the publisher made no effort to promote my book to teen readers, and all the reviews I managed to get were from adults. In the Wishing Shelf Awards, the books are given to the target audience to read and judge - in my case real teenagers. I can’t express how important their feedback was to me because I wrote the book and its sequels with teens in mind, but prior to entering this contest only had minimal feedback from two or three. The detailed comments on all aspects of my book in the words of teens themselves was immensely gratifying and instructive to me as a writer of YA fiction. So thank you, Wishing Shelf Awards, for putting my book into the hands of its target audience. I wholeheartedly recommend this competition.

Michael J Bowler, author of Children of the Knight

I happened upon the Wishing Shelf Awards by chance while I was researching other, more well-known, award programs. I am glad I did. For independent writers like myself, awards are indispensable. Not just because of the (inherently slim) chances of actually winning, but primarily because of the additional benefits like networking, affordable promotion and informed feedback. And that’s where the Wishing Shelf leads the pack. Only very few (and much more expensive) award programs provide a review of a submitted book and then only by a single professional critic. The beauty of the WSA is that reviews are done by volunteer readers (note the plural), which adds credibility and variety to the combined reviews. Moreover, from the review itself I could tell that these readers had actually read the entire book, something I doubted when I read the reviews from other award programs. Two additional benefits of the WSA are a complimentary Catchy Quote, for you to use as you like, and comments on Amazon.co.uk and Goodreads. None of the other award programs offer anything like it. Even though I was not a winner, I will certainly participate in the WSA again when I publish my next novel.

Kind regards, Laurens van Veen