How Do The Whitneys Work?

Overview

In the realm of awards programs for artistic works, there are three basic types: juried awards, industry awards, and populist awards.

• A juried awards program has a relatively small panel of experts who judge the eligible works and determine a winner. Examples of juried awards include the Pulitzer Prize, the Newbery Medal, and the AML awards.
• An industry award generally has a wider group of voters who choose one of their peers as the winner. Examples of this are the Academy Awards and the Nebula Awards.
• A populist award has a large voting base with little or no requirements placed on the voters. Examples of populist awards programs are the People's Choice Awards or the Hugo Awards.

All of these systems have pros and cons, and each can be prestigious and coveted. In an attempt to get as balanced and non-biased results as possible, The Whitney Awards uses a piece from all of these systems. Our nomination process is very populist--any reader can nominate novels. Our selection of finalists is juried. And our method of choosing the winners uses an industry model. Our hope is that this system will produce the best overall results, and that the chosen winners truly live up to the prophecy of Elder Orson F. Whitney when he declared that "we will build up a literature whose top shall reach heaven."

Nomination Process

Any reader can nominate a book for the Whitney Awards. There are only three basic eligibility requirements: that the author is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that the novel is at least 50,000 words long (20,000 for Youth Fiction), and that the novel was released during the awards year.

Nominations are made through the Whitney Awards website, and a reader needs only to list their contact information, as well as the novel's title, author and publisher.

Once a novel receives five reader nominations, it becomes an official nominee.

Judging Process

In each of the six genre categories (Romance, Mystery/Suspense, Youth, Speculative, Historical, and General) there is a group of five judges. These judges are selected because of their knowledge and expertise, not only in their category but also in the market and in the craft of writing. (A full list of the 2008 judges can be found here.)

Each judge reads all of the nominated novels. They are not given specific criteria to judge the novels. Instead, they are told they can use whatever criteria they would like to determine which book is most deserving of the Whitney Award, as long as they consistently apply those criteria to all.

Once all of the novels have been read, the judges vote independently using a basic preference-voting ballot. Essentially, all of the books are compared head-to-head, and the judges choose which is most deserving of the Whitney Award. The reason that we use this system is that it not only provides a ranked list of finalists, but that ranking is also weighted.

The top five novels in each category become the category finalists.

The judges also answer four more questions on the ballot, listing the books that they deem worthy and unworthy of the two overall awards (Best Novel of the Year, and Best Novel by a New Author). The final selection of those overall awards looks first at the number of times a judge marked a novel as worthy of the award, then at the number of judges who marked the novel as not worthy of the award, and then finally at the novel's weighted score (which is based on the percent of possible votes the novel received).

For an in-depth explanation of this system, take a look at these documents which were sent to the judges in preparation for voting: Sample Ballot and Explanation of the Voting System

Whitney Academy Voting

The Whitney Academy is comprised of industry professionals, including authors, publishers, distributors, retailers, critics, bloggers and others. While the academy was fairly limited last year, we have loosened the guidelines this year to allow more interested parties onto the academy.

The Academy votes via electronic ballot, ranking each of the five finalists in each category. (The reason that we use a ranked ballot, rather than a strictly popular vote, is because each individual novel can only win one award. If the book with the most votes in a category has already won another award, then the second-place book will receive the award, and a ranked ballot gives a much more accurate representation of the second place winner.)

Once the Academy has voted, the winners are announced at the Whitney Awards Gala.

Lifetime Achievement Awards

The Lifetime Achievement Award is selected by a majority vote of the committee. The committee welcomes input from anyone, and after discussion they vote on the winners.

The Lifetime Achievement Awards do not have any strict guidelines or criteria, and can be awarded based on such things as market influence, a prolific career, extraordinary contribution to a genre, etc.

Feedback

The Whitney Awards Committee always strives to improve the awards. After the 2007 Gala, surveys were sent to all Gala attendees and Academy members. In response to their comments, changes were instituted for the 2008 awards.

We continue to welcome your feedback. If you have any comments or concerns, please email them to admin@whitneyawards.com.

All material on this site, including all graphics and text, are copyrighted by the Whitney Awards, 2007-present.