2019 Swoony Awards Changes and Questionnaire!

The Swoony Awards are a Reader’s Choice Award recognizing excellence in clean, secular, wholesome romance. We wanted a way to show our appreciation to these amazing authors who write the kind of books that we love. It’s also a great way to find new books, new authors and it's a good go-to when you're looking for something fun to read.

After several discussions, we have decided to make some changes to the Swoony Awards starting this year. What's changed? I'm glad you asked!

The first thing that will be changing is the voting. To make it easier for everyone, we'll be using our Goodreads list for NOMINATIONS ONLY and our Google form for VOTING. Voting will begin December 15, 2019 and end December 31, 2019. You will be able to vote for up to 3 books per category. There will be a total of 28 categories you can vote for. When voting, please make sure to include the title of the book as well as the author. If the author is left off, then the vote will be removed.

The second thing that will be changing is the published dates. Eligible books will need to be released from January to December of each year. Since we didn't want to leave out books that were published in Decemeber 2018, the date range for the 2019 Swoony Awards will be December 1, 2018 to December 31, 2019.

Below is the full list of eligibility requirements. As in previous years, if the book does not meet the qualifications then it will be removed from the list.

Eligibility:

-ONLY books PUBLISHED December 1, 2018 – December 31, 2019 are eligible.
-Books must be published OR have arc reviews before being nominated. Since the award is based on readers having actually read and enjoyed the book(s) they are voting for, the book has to have been published or arcs read in order to receive nominations.
-Intimacy: No sex, no/low closed door/fade-to-black, no/low innuendo, nothing crude or crass. G-PG13.
-Language: None/mild (No F words or other explicit language), nothing overly crude.
-Violence: Mild/low.
-Page Count: 100 pages or higher, anthologies are okay. No short stories. No collections.
-Age: Only Young Adult, New Adult and Adult. NO children’s or middle grade.
-Religious: NO Christian fiction, some *very mild* religious elements may be allowed.

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We thought with the announcement of these changes we would give you, the voters and authors, a chance to have your voice heard. We've created a Google form that you can fill out giving us your thoughts and suggestions. Click here to go straight to the form.

We promise to keep an open mind and discuss everything that comes in. You will have until January 11th to fill out the form. Once we have discussed all of the suggestions that come in, we'll do an OFFICIAL POST letting everyone know the final changes to the Swoony Awards!

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us and we'll be more than happy to help!