Cybils short lists

It seems that the Postal Disservice USPS Xmas rush is causing problems with the delivery of books to be reviewed by the Cybils panelists. Hence, this announcement made yesterday:

Our organizers have debated this for weeks, hoping that a few more well-timed deliveries would erase any need for an extension. With only two weeks to go and many books still undelivered, we decided we wanted a fair awards more than a fast one.

There’ll now be two announcement dates:

On Jan. 1 we’ll still roll out the short lists for fiction picture books, poetry, fantasy and science fiction and middle grade novels.

That leaves non-fiction picture books, graphic novels, young adult novels, MG/YA non-fiction, which we plan to reveal on Jan. 7.

The contest will still finish up on Valentine’s Day, when we announce the winners. Yes, that means some judges get 6 fewer days, but most have given their okay on this.

This probably isn’t the best solution, but it’s the one that fits for this time out. We’ll again do a post mortem in March when you can kvetch about what didn’t work, and we’ll re-examine our nomination deadline and reading period, and even our outreach to publishers.