Volunteers needed

Wanted: Nice bloggers who wish to give up any semblance of a personal life to help us select 2007 Cybils winners. We go through two rounds of judging, so we need lots of bodies.

Rules for volunteering are more persnickety than the rest of the contest, since there’s a mountain of books awaiting you and we need to know you're both willing and able.

Your reward -- some free books and global fame.

For starters, we need panelists to slog through the nominated titles in their category and cull out 5-8 of the best for our short lists. You’ll coordinate with the other panelists to figure out who’s read what, so that every nominated book gets at least one full read by somebody.

Then we'll need judges to read all the finalists and pick the winner. Note that we're lining up judges now, even though your task won't start until mid-January.

Now the global fame part: You’ll naturally want to blog about the books you’re reading; just don’t indicate how you intend to vote.

We’ll publish excerpts from judges’ reviews so readers can get a glimpse not only of some terrific books, but how the contest is coming along. And you get lots of linky love and extra hits.

Interested? Here’s who’s eligible:

1.You must be a kidlit or YA blogger. Sorry, but this is a contest by bloggers, and that seems pretty fundamental to us. By “blogger” we mean anyone over the age of 13 who contributes to a blog that is primarily about children’s or young adult literature. The blog must have been started by Sept. 1, 2007.

2. We intend to be subjective about who gets chosen. We're hoping for a mix of veterans from last year's contest and many newcomers; people who've been blogging for a while or who just started, and from a variety of professions, age groups, regions and flavors.

We’re not looking for Beautiful People to join our clique, but those with some depth of knowledge about a kidlit or YA genre and/or whose writing really wows us. Yep, we’ll be reading your blog to get a taste of your talents. That seems the fairest way, no?

To volunteer, contact Kelly at kidslitinfo (at) gmail (dot) com.

Comments

[brettdl]

Football widows, hah! Try Kidlit widowers.

Seriously, though, congratulations Anne and Kelly on getting everything up and running.

Let the games -- I mean contest -- begin.

[Sarah Miller]

This sounds like great fun, but I'm betting authors aren't eligible! ;)

[Anne]

Hey Sarah:

We have many authors! If you have a book out this year, we'd ask that you volunteer in a different category. We avoid any sort of conflict that way.

[Sherry Early]

Global fame sound good.

[Janelle]

Sounds like fun! Count me in. - Janelle

[Karen (mommy of three)]

What a great idea, I am emailing you now!

[Ruby Diamond]

Hmm, interesting. What kind of time commitment are we talking about?

[Anne]

Hey Ruby:

It depends on the category. Picture books -- even dozens of them -- won't take up as much time as a handful of YA or fantasy novels.

We expect over 100 nominations in those latter categories, but you'll divvy up the work between 7 people (and maybe 9 for fantasy).

Still, you can expect to read several books a week straight through the holidays. And of course there'll be a Yahoo or Google group for online discussions with other panelists.

For judges, there's obviously less of a time crunch because you're only reading a short list of 5-8 books.

I hope that helps clarify things. Feel free to contact Kelly H. or myself if you have any other questions -- any at all.