Pamela Jo
Full Member
- Oct 26, 2021
I enjoyed learning how the Bath competition works. Children actually read a lot of the entries and chose.
Now that The Bath Children’s Novel Award 2023 has closed to entries, here’s what happens in the run up to the longlist.
First reads are about matchmaking. We begin by considering each book’s readership then teaming manuscripts with the readers who are most likely to enjoy and vote for them. We work with a diverse international team of freelance readers with wide-ranging tastes, including editors, genre experts, library workers, Bath Novel Awards winning and listed authors and Junior Judges.
In the later longlisting rounds, readers vote for the extracts and synopses that swept them away. Throughout the prize submissions are read blind, and all votes are cast privately. The question readers vote YES or NO to for novels is: do this extract and synopsis make you want to read the full? For full picture book texts the question is: would you enjoy re-reading this story aloud multiple times with a child?
We like to cast our net as wide it takes so will longlist every book the readers’ votes suggest could win. Some years a small number of books dominate the readers’ votes with a relatively compact list; in other years the votes are more widely spread resulting in a longer list. In 2021 and 2022 our Children’s longlists were 19 and 21 titles strong respectively.
All readers also have the option to award one ‘golden vote’. These are reserved for a standout entry that a reader can’t stop thinking about, the novel manuscript they would especially love to read in full or the picture book they would love to re-read. Books which attract one or more golden votes are automatically longlisted alongside the entries which attracted the highest number of ‘regular’ YES votes.
If you’d like to see some of the readers’ voting comments, we will be tweeting extracts from their YES votes the evening before the longlist is announced. Tweets will be posted @bathnovelaward on X from 19:00 GMT on December 19th and will be searchable (or mutable) with the tag #BCNA2023. Due to the volume of votes, tweets will be a representative selection of the regular YES comments, plus all the golden votes.
Here are some examples of YES vote tweets:
Voting comment for the extract and synopsis of Orphan of the Tide by Struan Murray, winner of 2017’s Bath Children’s Novel Award and published by Puffin in 2020.
Voting comment for the extract and synopsis of The Sky Over Rebecca by Matthew Fox,winner of 2019’s Bath Children’s Novel Award and published by Hachette in 2022.
The Bath Children’s Novel Award longlist announcement, including total entry numbers, will be posted on our website at 19:00 GMT on December 20th and we will email all entrants a prompt once the announcement is up.
The writers of the longlisted titles will then be invited to submit their full manuscripts by 23:59 GMT on December 23rd 2023 for the shortlist judging stages. We do not notify listed entrants before the longlist announcement so make sure your manuscript is ready for the Junior Judges to read over the Christmas break.
Best of luck to all, we can’t wait to read your work.
The Bath Novel Awards team
Now open for adult novel submissions
Now that The Bath Children’s Novel Award 2023 has closed to entries, here’s what happens in the run up to the longlist.
First reads are about matchmaking. We begin by considering each book’s readership then teaming manuscripts with the readers who are most likely to enjoy and vote for them. We work with a diverse international team of freelance readers with wide-ranging tastes, including editors, genre experts, library workers, Bath Novel Awards winning and listed authors and Junior Judges.
In the later longlisting rounds, readers vote for the extracts and synopses that swept them away. Throughout the prize submissions are read blind, and all votes are cast privately. The question readers vote YES or NO to for novels is: do this extract and synopsis make you want to read the full? For full picture book texts the question is: would you enjoy re-reading this story aloud multiple times with a child?
We like to cast our net as wide it takes so will longlist every book the readers’ votes suggest could win. Some years a small number of books dominate the readers’ votes with a relatively compact list; in other years the votes are more widely spread resulting in a longer list. In 2021 and 2022 our Children’s longlists were 19 and 21 titles strong respectively.
All readers also have the option to award one ‘golden vote’. These are reserved for a standout entry that a reader can’t stop thinking about, the novel manuscript they would especially love to read in full or the picture book they would love to re-read. Books which attract one or more golden votes are automatically longlisted alongside the entries which attracted the highest number of ‘regular’ YES votes.
If you’d like to see some of the readers’ voting comments, we will be tweeting extracts from their YES votes the evening before the longlist is announced. Tweets will be posted @bathnovelaward on X from 19:00 GMT on December 19th and will be searchable (or mutable) with the tag #BCNA2023. Due to the volume of votes, tweets will be a representative selection of the regular YES comments, plus all the golden votes.
Here are some examples of YES vote tweets:
Voting comment for the extract and synopsis of Orphan of the Tide by Struan Murray, winner of 2017’s Bath Children’s Novel Award and published by Puffin in 2020.
Voting comment for the extract and synopsis of The Sky Over Rebecca by Matthew Fox,winner of 2019’s Bath Children’s Novel Award and published by Hachette in 2022.
The Bath Children’s Novel Award longlist announcement, including total entry numbers, will be posted on our website at 19:00 GMT on December 20th and we will email all entrants a prompt once the announcement is up.
The writers of the longlisted titles will then be invited to submit their full manuscripts by 23:59 GMT on December 23rd 2023 for the shortlist judging stages. We do not notify listed entrants before the longlist announcement so make sure your manuscript is ready for the Junior Judges to read over the Christmas break.
Best of luck to all, we can’t wait to read your work.
The Bath Novel Awards team
Now open for adult novel submissions