If you write romance, fantasy, or any of seven other genres and haven’t heard of the Indie Author Project Annual Contest, you’re missing one of the more genuinely useful opportunities in the self-publishing world — one that doesn’t ask you to pay an entry fee, doesn’t care about your follower count, and puts your book in front of actual librarians instead of an algorithm.

Here’s what makes it different, and why you should have it on your calendar for next spring.

What it actually is

The Indie Author Project, run through BiblioBoard, is a library-partnered contest across nine genres: Mystery/Thriller, Romance, SciFi, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, General/Contemporary Fiction, Memoir, Young Adult, and — new this year — Children’s Picture Books. This year’s submission window ran April 1 through May 31, and it’s already closed. Winners get announced at the Indie Author Day reception in November, so if you entered, the wait is part of the process.

Why it’s worth your attention even if you missed it

Two things separate this from the hundreds of pay-to-enter award contests flooding indie author inboxes.

First, there’s no entry fee. You submit an ePUB (strongly encouraged over PDF) and a panel of actual librarians reads and judges your work. That’s it.

Second, the prizes have teeth. The first-place winner in each genre gets $2,500, with two runners-up in each genre earning $500 each. Winners also get a full-page spread in Library Journal, recognition at the Indie Author Day reception, and — this is the part that matters long after the ceremony — inclusion in the IAP Select collection, which puts your book in front of library patrons on platforms like BiblioBoard Library, The Palace Project, OverDrive, and Cloud Library, with royalty opportunities attached.

That last piece is the real prize. Award contests that just hand you a sticker for your cover are nice for credibility. A contest that gets your book into library circulation with ongoing royalties is a distribution channel most indie authors never think to pursue.

What to do now

If you write in one of the nine eligible genres, mark your calendar for April 1 of next year. In the meantime:

1. Get your book properly formatted as an ePUB. This contest — like most library and wide-distribution platforms — strongly prefers it over PDF, and it’s worth having a clean ePUB in your toolkit regardless of contest deadlines.
2. There’s no publication-date limit, so your backlist is eligible too. If you have an older title in Romance or Fantasy that’s still strong but never got its moment, this contest doesn’t care when it came out — only whether it’s good.
3. Watch for the winner announcement in November. Even if you don’t enter, seeing what wins in your genre each year is a genuinely useful way to read the room on what librarians — as opposed to Amazon’s algorithm — are responding to right now.

The publishing world spends a lot of energy chasing algorithmic visibility. This is one of the few paths that runs entirely outside of it — and it’s free.

Sources: Indie Author Project Annual Contest guidelines (indieauthorproject.librariesshare.com); Jacksonville Public Library; East Baton Rouge Parish Library Writers’ Hub

KL Adams is a literary blogger and fiction writer specializing in dark fantasy, vampire fiction, and paranormal romance. Follow on WordPress, Inkitt, and Wattpad for reviews, reading lists, and stories that haunt you long after the last page.

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