‘Be anything but boring’

Any book is a miracle
by Cathalynn Labonté-Smith

*

Any book that gets written is a miracle. Any great book that gets written and published is cause for an award.

Think of all the books that live in our heads that never become books or only make it to a few chapters on paper before they’re abandoned due to life’s interruptions. That makes it all the more exciting when a completed, edited, published book takes its place on bookshelves both physical and digital and has your name on it.

Why Book Contests Are Important

How can a great book make itself stand out among the over two million published each year globally, as estimated by UNESCO? Book contests are one important way an author can promote their book. Why? Because it gets their book in front of the eyes of judges who have influence and if their book appears on the long-list, short-list or wins it increases interest and thereby sales of the book.

Also, according to a past winner in our contest, Cynthia Sharp, for her book of poetry, Ordinary Light, it’s much easier to get libraries to order your book if you’ve won a contest. Once your book gets into libraries, you can apply for the Public Lending Right (PLR) whereby the Canada Council for the Arts distributes payment to you on a yearly basis as compensation for free public access to your book(s) in Canadian public libraries. Payments through the PLR program range from fifty to forty-five hundred dollars per year.

How to Enter Book Contests

How do you go about entering book contests once you have your book published? If your book is traditionally published, your publisher will do most of the work of entering your book into contests for you as many of the contests are limited to publishers only. However, when my book Rescue Me: Behind the Scenes of Search and Rescue was released I looked for book contests to enter directly as well.

There were few book contests to enter at least not for a nonfiction, traditionally-published book. That’s when I came up with the idea for the Book Awards for BC Authors contest hosted by our Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society. That was four years ago and it’s been such an enriching experience for those involved from the judges to those who attend the reveal event, and especially to the book authors who visit our fairytale community on the Coast when their book makes the short-list.

I envisioned a contest that was not only accessible to traditional, self-published, and hybrid books, but also one that gave merit to books published by authors from under-represented groups, such as those who identified as diverse, such as writers who are LGBTQ+, and those who are differently abled, Indigenous, as well as from the isolated, small population of the Sunshine Coast.

I’m still celebrating my award from your organization. It was a great thrill at my age. I’m 83 today with a lot of living behind me.        —Virginia Dansereau, Author, I Know That Woman

How to Win a Book Contest

Be anything but boring.

Great writing will get you far in a book contest, but a small part of a book contest that’s different than a literary magazine contest is the production. In a lit mag contest, the judges are looking for raw, unpublished talent and for entrants who can follow basic rules, like max word count and leaving off their name for anonymous adjudication. Not following the rules will get you disqualified in large competitions.

In a book contest, the author’s name and the book title is on the cover and every page, so there’s no mystery as to who the writer is. Especially, if digital copies are used in some cases. But judges are readers first and know that a respected author can’t rest on their previous book(s), and plenty of undiscovered authors can rival an established one. 

There are elements an author doesn’t have control over when their book is published by a traditional publisher or a self-publishing service, like the cover, design, and finished quality of a print book. It’s more a team effort, unless you’re publishing your own book doing all the work yourself and killing it, in which case you deserve a trophy, medal, a street name, and a letter from the King.

If you’re publishing your own book, you have more control over the finished book; however, remember that you’re competing with professionals. If a judge can spot a self-published book from a stack, that’s not going to win you any points. If you’re a DIYer, stay away from quirky covers and goofy fonts that will detract from the writing. Hire professionals to do your cover, book design, and editing if you plan to market and sell your book.

Having a big budget doesn’t mean you will end up with an award-worthy book. I’ve seen books by self-publishing doulas with impeccable binding and impressive, glossy covers, yet a heavy-handed editor made the writing passionless—I just knew in my gut that the original draft had sparkle and probably a lot of grammar and spelling errors.

A book contest isn’t a race with cameras at a finish line to replay and stopwatches to synch, instead we use carefully curated metrics, our lifetime of experience as readers, writers, editors, and educators. We have judges select books they want to judge to give every book the best possible outcome.

It’s always difficult to choose the ultimate winners because every year we get many wonderful reads and lose sleep over choosing the winners among the many brilliant entries.  However, by the end of the contest we know who the standouts are.

*

The SCWES Book Awards for BC Authors opened February 1^st and closes May 31^st. This year we have an early bird entry fee of $40, if you enter on or before March 1^st. We accept poetry, novel, creative nonfiction, and children’s books with special awards for diverse, Indigenous, and Sunshine Coast authors.

*

Just announced winners of the SCWES’ Not An Island Seniors Literary Contest 2026

NON-FICTION:

First Place: Christmas, 1987, Edeana Malcolm, Victoria

Second Place: My Adventure in East Berlin, Dr. Paula Shadle, Sechelt

Tie for Third Place: Codbait, H.J. Wheeler, Powell River & I’m Going Anyway, Donald Ross, Comox.

POETRY:

First place: Child by Elizabeth Carriere, Gambier Island

Second place: Old sun of winter solstice night by Cheree Graves Bacchus, West Vancouver

Third place: Firm pink tissues by Anne Hopkinson, Victoria  

Honourable Mentions: Currency of Tax Free Luxuries from Growing Flowers and Zucchinis, Norma Kerby, Terrace

My Freezer Is Full of Soup, Lynette McMechan, Lake Country

FICTION:

First Place: Holy Week by Catherine McNeil, Gibsons

Second Place: Safe at Home by Barbara Smith, Sidney 

Tie for Third Place:  Bring in the Clown by Erik Talvila, Coquitlam

Quickly by David Kipling, Gibsons 

*

Cathalynn Cindy Labonté-Smith currently lives in Gibsons (and North Vancouver) where she founded the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society, including the annual Art & Words Festival, the Book Awards for BC Authors, and a literary map. Her previous book, Rescue Me: Behind the Scenes of Search and Rescue (Caitlin Press), was a bestseller in BC. She has a new book, I’m Not A Mormon (Anymore), to be released in Winter 2026, available for preorder from Caitlin Press or Amazon.ca. [Editor’s Note: Cathalynn Labonté-Smith recently reviewed books by Sheila Anne Wray, Susan Aglukark, PP Wong, Rob Fillo and PJ Reece, interviewed Bob McDonald, and profiled the Sunshine Coast Tale Trail for The British Columbia Review.]

*

The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster