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The Quill Awards Announce Nominees
Reed Business Information (RBI) and NBC TV have named the five nominees in each of 19 categories for the first Quill Awards, a new national book award that honors excellence in book publishing and includes consumers in the voting process. In January 2005, RBI and NBC Universal Television Stations announced that they had joined forces to seed and support the Quills launch and awards. The first Quill Awards will be announced on October 11 at a star-studded ceremony hosted by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, with special appearances by Jon Stewart, Robert Klein, and others. Produced by Al Roker Productions, Inc., the one-hour Quill Awards television special, hosted by Al Roker and WNBC’s Jane Hanson, will be carried on the 14 NBC Universal Owned and Operated Television Stations on Saturday, October 22, 2005.Gerry Byrne, former Publisher of Variety and Daily Variety, designed the program and will supervise The Quill Awards and serve as Chairman of The Quills Literacy Foundation. “We are thrilled with the excellent work of the Nominating Board, which has provided us with a powerful list of outstanding nominees in all nineteen categories” said Byrne, adding, “Now, we look forward to the stage that sets The Quills apart among book awards—turning the voting process over to consumers, who will make the final decisions on the award recipients.”
The nominations for The Quill Award categories were made by an extensive national panel of approximately 6,000 booksellers and librarians selected from RBI’s Publishers Weekly subscriber base. Each month, this panel created a shortlist for the individual award categories. Opening the awards process to include the reading public, winners will be determined by consumer voting online at www.quillsvote.com, which will begin on August 15 and continue through September 15, 2005. Readers can cast their ballots for their favorites among the nominees shortlisted for each category, and choose from the finalists in all genres for the “Book of the Year.” NBC Universal’s stations group will create the backbone of the online consumer voting system, which will be featured on all of the station’s websites in the weeks leading up to the awards ceremony. Booksellers will carry a Quills brochure for customers to take home, listing the nominees and instructions for voting online at www.quillsvote.com. In addition, Borders Books & Music® will allow customers to vote at dedicated kiosks in their stores across the country.
The recipient of the first Life Achievement Quill will be announced shortly. This award, guided by the Quills Executive Council, will be presented each year to an individual who has contributed significantly to support literacy in the United States.
The Quill Awards event will benefit the not-for-profit Quills Literacy Foundation. As part of its mission, the foundation’s Executive Council will evaluate existing literacy programs and direct funding to support a variety of qualified literacy-based initiatives. The new awards program and its nominating criteria have met with some skepticism from arts critics such as Adam Kirsch at The New York Sun. See the Sun article.
The Quills Nominating Board, comprised of approximately 6,000 invited booksellers and librarians, established the consumer short list from those English language books published in North America and marketed to the United States between August 1, 2004 through July 31, 2005 that meet one of the following criteria:
Consumers will vote on the 5 nominees selected by the Nominating Board in each of the 19 categories and for Book of the Year from all nominees in all categories. Voting will take place from August 15 - September 15 at www.quillsvote.com and in Borders stores across the country.
Click here to see the top 5 nominees in each category.