Annette Lyon, writer, editor, cookbook author, Whitney Award Winner (2010), friend to newbies at conventions (that would be me), and Best of State winner (2013, 2007) is this year’s Whitney president. I have warm fuzzy feelings toward Annette in part because of how kind she was to me six years ago, the first year I read Whitney finalists. I didn’t know her well but she graciously helped me find and read the finalists I was missing–lending me several personal copies and making it possible to get all the reading done. She’s now doing that on a much larger scale–try tracking down copies for 400 Academy members.

But that’s not all she does as Whitney President. It’s far more involved. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to run such a large awards program, along with some personal thoughts from Annette on the importance of the Whitneys to her individually and to the LDS writing community as a whole:

Can you walk us through the process of how a book goes from being published to receiving a Whitney Award?

A book goes through three main phases:

(1) Nomination
During the year a book is published, it may be nominated by any reader who is over the age of 12 and who has no financial interest in the book. (In other words, the author, the author’s immediate family, publisher, etc. cannot nominate a book.)
After a book receives 5 reader nominations, it moves to the judging round.

(2) Judging
Each of 8 categories has 5 judges chosen by the president. After reading all of the nominees in their categories, the judges cast an online ballot, where they rank all of the books in their category from most deserving to least deserving. A Condorcet-style computer program crunches the rankings, and when the committee then opens the results, they learn who the finalists are–no more than 5 per category.

(3) Academy Voting
After the finalists are announced, the Whitney Awards voting academy gets busy reading. The academy consists of about 400 industry professionals–the majority are writers, but there there are also editors, publishers, professional reviewers, etc. Academy members can vote in one category or more, so long as they read every finalist in those categories.

To vote for Best Novel (adult categories), an academy member must read all 25 adult finalists. To vote for Best Youth Novel, all 15 finalists must be read. The same rule applies for voting for the Best Novel by a New Author award–all first novels must be read by anyone voting for that award. (Those titles are listed on the finalists page.)

Awards Gala
The final results are announced at the Whitney Awards gala, which is always held immediately after the annual Storymakers conference each spring. This year, it will be on Saturday, May 16, at 7PM at the Provo Marriott Hotel. Two other awards are given, with the recipients chosen by the committee and announced in advance of the gala: the Outstanding Achievement and Lifetime Achievement awards.

Can you give me some idea of your duties as Whitney president? All the things you coordinate, for instance?

It changes as they year goes on. The president’s tenure goes from mid-year to mid-year, with the baton passing after one president ties up loose ends following the gala. The first big job is getting a solid committee together, which is a lot harder than it probably sounds. The president and committee are ineligible to win a Whitney Award during their year serving, yet the vast majority of people who have the industry experience and passion for supporting the awards are actively publishing writers.So serving is not only a sacrifice of time, but of eligibility. It’s a lot to ask. You also have to consider people’s personal lives, work ethic, personalities, and on and on. The committee has up to 7 members, including the president, each person with specific jobs.

After the committee is in place, it’s time to get 40 category judges–5 in each of 8 categories. Serving as a judge is a massive time commitment. The president must find people willing and able to commit to the job as well as people who are discerning readers in specific genres. I tried very hard to get some new blood as judges this year, although I did use a lot of people who had judged before. Let’s just say that 40 is much harder to reach than it sounded like!

During all of that, I’m tracking reader nominations as they come in, using a massive spreadsheet. One committee member is assigned to contact an author as soon as their book is an official nominee to confirm its eligibility and category and to get other important information. After we get that back, another committee member gets the job to track down copies of the book (preferably electronic) from the publisher or author (in the cases of self-published books). I have three committee members whose jobs were to get judging copies.

The top complaint of judges is that they get too many books to read all at once at the end of the year. Unfortunately, that’s largely out of our hands. The rush at the end is in part because getting a nominated book to the judges takes time–although we worked remarkably efficiently. But there’s no way to speed things up if people aren’t nominating books early in the year. Come fall, dozens of books suddenly get their 5th nomination all at once. Plus, a lot of readers just assume that a big-name author’s new book already has the required nominations. Yet you’d be surprised to see how many big names don’t become official until November or even December, even ifi their books came out in January.

There’s also the issue that academy members tend to forget to nominate books in the first four or five months of the year because they’re reading finalists for voting. And then after casting their ballots, it’s easy to forget to nominate books that came out before that.

Another committee member is the judging coordinator. She work with all of the judges directly and got the books to them, whether that meant via email or shipping them. Plus she fielding questions or concerns from the judges, some of which were then discussed by the whole committee before making a decision.

Meanwhile, a final committee member is over all things technology–updating the website (she had a ton to do there this year) as well as managing all Whitney-related social media.

Even eight years into the program, SO many situations have cropped up that no president or committee has ever faced. Part of that is the nature of dealing with such a large machine with so many moving parts–and dealing with human beings. But part of it is also due to an industry in constant flux–and quite possibly in more flux now than it’s been in since Gutenberg.. Before making a lot of important decisions, I often discussed issues with my committee as well as with all of the past Whitney presidents, knowing that they would have insight I lacked.

We had a lot of crazy things to deal with last-minute, like a book that was officially released in December but had originally been given a January release date by its publisher. The books were printed with a 2015 copyright BEFORE the change in release dates. So we had to scramble a ton to verify when the book came out and that it was, in fact, eligible for the 2014 awards. So many unpredictable things like that show up suddenly.

It’s hard to list or quantify all I had to manage through the end of the calendar year, but it’s safe to say that I spent at least one and easily up to three or more hours a day on Whitney Awards-related work. It could be financial stuff, calling industry people, fielding emails, and on and on. Many days it feels like I have a hundred threads waiting to unravel, and I’m tying them off as fast as I can, often still in my pajamas.

After the nomination period closed, I had to manage updating ballots (lots of new issues and some headaches there too), then getting them to the judges, and handling techie issues with them. Opening the ballots as a committee was a highlight–learning who are the finalists was exciting and felt like a partial reaping of all our work.

But then our work began again in earnest with contacting publishers and authors to get e-copies of their books to provide to the voting academy (or to get permission to use the judging e-copy already provided). We’ve rounded up more finalist files than in any other year, which is awesome. I have to write to the academy regularly with updates–and each of those emails means dozens of incoming emails from academy members that I have to then field.

For finalist reading files, I have handle every single request myself because we’ve promised the publishers that no one but the president would handle the files; we are doing everything we can to keep the files only in the hands of those who will be both reading and voting.

I can never predict the next wrinkle. Like how Google shut down my email account twice in 24 hours because of “unusual traffic”–because I was sending so many attachments in a day. We had to rework the system to avoid that from happening again.

I spent at least three days updating the academy database–updating members’ email addresses, adding new members, and on and on. We’re in the process now contacting the Outstanding Achievement and Lifetime Achievement award winners, which will be made public soon.

Pretty then we’ll be planning the gala, selling ads for the program to help pay for its printing, getting the program designed, sending out ballots for the academy, ordering the final awards, settling on all of the final details of the gala with the hotel, and so on.

Somewhere in there, I need to figure out the actual program of events during the gala, such as who will present which awards, then write an awesome speech (no pressure–although I’ve been jotting down ideas for about eight months now), and then I have to find something awesome to wear to the gala. I imagine I’ll collapse the next day in an exhausted fog.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten a lot. Even though I’d served on the committee several times in the past, I didn’t grasp how much the president does behind the scenes. It’s been a great experience, and I’ve learned a ton. I’m also looking forward to having those three hours a day back so I can work on my own writing again!

What motivates you to take on a project like that? Why do you feel strongly enough about the Whitneys to dedicate that kind of time?

Part of my passion for the program came about during the very first gala in the spring of 2008, which honored books published in 2007. I was a finalist that year, and my table was in the center at the very back, where I had a perfect view of the whole room. I got to present an award and simply be a part of something that I could just feel in my bones was so much bigger than myself, so much bigger than that one night. I was literally witnessing history, and I felt honored to have been part of it. I broke down crying several times because I was so overcome. Some people thought I was crying because I didn’t win, which wasn’t remotely the case. I hadn’t expected to win anyway, and a good friend beat me in my category, so it was all good. I was sincerely overwhelmed at the magnitude of being part of something that would continue to grow and mean something special.

I’ve also felt strongly for a long time that honoring the best books by LDS writers is important. Part of that is the fact that industry has grown and improved, but so many people assume that the one LDS novel they read 25 years ago is a representation of the entire market as it stands today–and that’s not remotely the case. It’s also because I believe that when the bar is raised, people rise to the occasion. I know writers who actively work to get better and better, hoping to one day be a finalist and take home a Whitney Award of their own.

I’ve since read Orson F. Whitney’s talk about literature, and I find his words powerful and moving. I feel that the awards program named after him are a small part of how his prophecies will come to pass. We aren’t there yet, but we’re closer than we ever have been.

The LDS writing community is particularly strong and robust, and it keeps getting stronger. We’ve done some amazing things in both the local and national markets; it seems only right to acknowledge those writers and their accomplishments.

And finally, as Latter-day Saints, we’re taught that we’ve been given talents to be used. The Whitney Awards help encourage those people who have been given the gift of writing–the program encourages them to use that talent, whether they’re writing fiction specifically for an LDS audience or a different one. I believe it all helps build the kingdom in its own way.

To keep such an important program going, though, we need people willing to serve. This year, it’s my turn, and I was happy to do my share because I feel so strongly about the importance of keeping the program strong.

How do you feel the Whitneys have changed over the time you’ve been involved with them?

Probably the biggest changes have been a result of shifts in the industry and an increase in the number of novels published by LDS authors each year. The very first year, the committee members WERE the judges. They read every nominee and determined the finalists. That was intense, as you can imagine, but eight years ago, they still had far fewer books to deal with. Even so, it quickly became apparent that a change was needed, and that’s how the judging system was born.

The program has more categories today too. The first additions were General Fiction and Youth Fiction, and later, Youth Fiction was split into Youth Speculative and Youth General. About two years ago, as president, Heather Moore could tell that the Middle Grade market was booming and would continue to, which prompted a new category for it as well as a new overall award: Best Youth Novel.

That change helped ease the strain on those academy members wanting to vote for Best Novel. No longer did they have to read every single finalist to vote for a Best Novel award. They can now read the adult categories OR the youth categories and vote for either of the Best Novel awards. Of course, I love hearing that some people read and vote for both–that’s awesome! But having two awards certainly eases the burden of reading so many books in such a short period, and it increases the number of votes for the overall awards, which is important. Other minor rule clarifications and tweaks as the years have gone by have been mostly administrative. The new categories are the biggest changes.

People often ask why there isn’t a category for this or that other genre or market, and the answer is complicated. Every category must be able to hold its own for years to come–will enough books be published every year to warrant that category? If so, we need five more qualified judges every year. (A judge is ineligible for the category he or she judges, which shrinks the pool.) Then that would also mean five more finalists for academy members to read, making for fewer votes for the overall awards. Then we’d have more awards to purchase–and we operate on a shoestring budget as it is–and on and on. It becomes complicated.

One thing I’m proud of that has existed from the start is the fact that the Whitney Awards program is rare in that it has self-published books competing right next to books from small presses and large presses. The field is level; judges read most books in electronic format, s they don’t have any idea if a book is traditionally published or self-published. They vote purely on the quality of the work.

The vast majority of awards programs are only for traditionally published books. Some others are growing specifically for self-published ones, but I don’t know of any other program that combines them and treats them as equals. And the Whitneys honor a lot of self-published books. This year alone, one fourth of the finalists are self-published. That’s huge.

And, as a follow-up to that, how do you feel the Whitneys have changed LDS literature? And the LDS writing community?

Most writers are very much aware of the program and look at receiving Whitney as a great honor. Many strive to become a finalist or to win one day, and I believe that does exactly what Robison Wells set out to accomplish with the program: it encourages writers to up their game. The bar rises every year, and if you’re sitting back rather than working your tail off to improve your craft, you’ll be left in the dust. More and more excellent books come out from LDS writers each year, so many that a lot of really great books don’t become finalists–what an awesome problem to have!

What is being done to promote the Whitneys? How do you get the word out?

I can’t know everything that past committees and presidents have done, but there’s been a lot. For years, the Whitney paid for a booth at the LDS Booksellers Convention to help spread the word about the program. That’s how a lot of store owners first learned about it, and, of course, stores are an important way to spread the word to readers.

We’ve contacted stores directly as well–although with limited success. We’ve used fliers, posters, buttons, the works. Right now we’re focused on things like press releases (this year’s had some success, which was great), plus getting finalists and winners to use the official badges provided to them by posting the badges on their websites, using them as stickers for their books or as part of their book covers, and so on.

With new releases in e-book format, authors are encouraged to include a link at the back where readers can simply click to nominate the book. (Such links should be removed after the book’s eligibility year.)

This year we’ve made a concerted effort to expand our reach by using social media. Our Twitter following alone has grown by about 600% since July 2014. We’re also growing the Facebook and Pinterest pages and encourage the public to share updates to spread the word even further.

What have been your biggest challenges with your responsibilities this year?

The time commitment has been hardest for me personally. This position has pushed me to limits I didn’t know I had. If my committee hadn’t been so great, I would have been utterly lost months ago.

As far as actually running the program, things have been relatively smooth. You do get the occasional snarky, completely unhelpful, and inaccurate comment from someone along the lines of “you probably don’t know how the New York publishing industry works, but [fill in obvious piece of information that yes, we know].” And then there are people who complain about the process without understanding why the rules are in place as they are, and that chances are, that very situation has been examined from angles the complainer hasn’t even considered.

But those things really are in the minority. Most situations we’ve encountered have been resolved with the committee working together. And most of the writers and other industry people we’ve interacted with have been great–professional, polite, and eager to help. I know I’ll always hold a special place for those writers who go out of their way to express gratitude and appreciation for those running the program.

What makes you feel like it’s all worth it?

Just knowing that the program is so much bigger than just one year and just one president and committee is enough to make it worth it. As I said earlier, it’s an honor to be part of history in the making. I truly believe that the Whitney Awards will continue to thrive, and that the work my committee and I perform during our year of service will continue to strengthen the foundation upon which the program will grow.

In another twenty years, I’ll quite likely be thinking about what I’ll wear to the next gala, and I’ll be excited because of the excellent books and authors being honored. I can’t imagine the program doing anything but going up, and that’s because it’s got a solid 8-year foundation now. I truly believe that we’re getting help from the other side, and that Orson F. Whitney himself is pleased.

With the foundation in place, to quote Elder Whitney himself, “In God’s name and by his help we will build up a literature whose top shall touch heaven.”

And now, a Whitney success story: I was at a family reunion last year, and my cousin, who I don’t see very often, mentioned that he uses the Whitney nominee list as a source for good books to read. That makes me happy. It feels sometimes like the Whitneys get a lot of attention in the circle of LDS writers and reviewers, but not so much with the average reader. If someone like my cousin, who likes to read but isn’t otherwise invested, can go to the Whitney nominee list as a source for good books, it’s succeeding.

THAT is pure awesomeness! Thanks for letting me know!

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Thanks to Annette for taking the time to answer my questions! I am amazed by the many hours required to make this award happen, and grateful for the hard work of everyone involved.

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