Purple Dragonfly Book Award

MaryLennox

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Does anyone know if this is a legit book award? It's called the Purple Dragonfly Book Award and is part of Story Monsters. It is for children's books. It's one of those things that you have to pay money to enter and then if you win you can add a fancy sticker/emblem to your book's cover. It just seems like there are a lot of these popping up and most of them seem pretty sketchy. They look and sound professional, but I don't know if it is normal to have to pay money to enter something like this and if it'd even be worthwhile if no one has even heard of the award. Maybe casual readers would be intrigued if the book has an award on the cover??

https://www.dragonflybookawards.com/purple-dragonfly
 
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mrsmig

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Wow, this looks sketchy in the extreme. A first, second and honorable mention winner in each of 54 categories? That's 162 winners. And a cost of $60 per entry per category? That's just under $10k in revenue for the award sponsor - and that's only counting the entrants who actually win.

This is not a legitimate contest - it's a revenue stream for the contest sponsor, disguised as an award. Plus the winners get only a limited number of seals to put on their books (1st place gets 25, 2nd place gets five and Honorable Mention gets three) - although you're free to order more, at a cost of $29 a pop.

There are so many of these bogus awards out there, where essentially anyone who can pay the entry fee is a winner. I think they're shameful - for the author trying to purchase credibility for their book, and especially for the contest sponsor who's happy to bilk novice authors and naive readers alike.

ETA: Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware wrote a great piece about this very issue: Awards Profiteers: How Writers Can Recognize and Avoid Them
 
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MaryLennox

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This is essentially what I was thinking - especially when I looked further and saw how many award winners there are and that the fancy stickers for the books have to be PURCHASED. Ugh. It makes me angry how many of these exist and how many authors flaunt it as a real award and call themselves "award winning authors" in all of their bios...

Wow, this looks sketchy in the extreme. A first, second and honorable mention winner in each of 54 categories? That's 162 winners. And a cost of $60 per entry per category? That's just under $10k in revenue for the award sponsor - and that's only counting the entrants who actually win.

This is not a legitimate contest - it's a revenue stream for the contest sponsor, disguised as an award. Plus the winners get only a limited number of seals to put on their books (1st place gets 25, 2nd place gets five and Honorable Mention gets three) - although you're free to order more, at a cost of $29 a pop.

There are so many of these bogus awards out there, where essentially anyone who can pay the entry fee is a winner. I think they're shameful - for the author trying to purchase credibility for their book, and especially for the contest sponsor who's happy to bilk novice authors and naive readers alike.