We're excited to share what's new for our 2025 Page Turner Awards!
Our 2025 Awards will open on the 24th of February and by selective invitation the week before. Ensure you are subscribed to our 2025 Award mailing list to be notified as soon as we go live.
Here's what you will see:
New Optional Extras
Our critiques were very popular last year, and you can see some comments from writers who found their critique extremely valuable.
Thanks for this Writing Critique. Very detailed, actionable and well-structured. Your comments on more sensory details to bring the setting to life and showing more of Will’s inner world particularly resonates with me ~ GD Harper
And read how Jay Jones feels...
Thank you very much for your critique on my first pages. It is truly helpful. I like the fact that you have indicated very specific areas I could work on to improve my writing, and not simply given me a vague and generic critique ~ Jay Jones
And Brenda Davies was wowed by her critique!
Thank you so much for my critique report - it's fantastic. I've never had such detailed suggestions and comments, and I'm extremely grateful. I'm working on my edits now, and it's so useful to be shown the right direction to improve my MS.
So, we put our editorial team head's together and decided to help writers even further. First, with new optional extras for more critiques and to help writers with dynamic suggestions for outlining their stories in the plotting stages. We are really excited to bring this to you with our Optional Extras, which can be ordered with your submission package or at any time after you have submitted your entry.
To take the idea up a level, we now also have packages where you can get a foot in the door very early in the submission process by ordering a PLUS or ULTIMATE package, which gives you a critique on your 10-page submission (Plus) and also an edit (Ultimate). And for authors with published books, your Plus or Ultimate Package can include promoting your book to our Book Luver reader audience.
Jump down to our New Submission Packages to find out more.
Early Judging
When you have completed your submission, there will be a select button marked "My Submission is ready for early judging" - this will send your submission straight to a private online page where our judges will be notified to come along and judge your submission.
Early judging will allow a 'breather' for the backlog of submissions towards the end of the awards and any late submissions when we close this year's award season at the end of June. It will allow the judges to take their time to judge from the moment submissions are completed.
More than likely, this will only be submissions of completed novels in the Book Award as writers for the Writing Award and screenwriter for the Screenplay Award may want to continue to edit their submission until the awards close, which is allowed. They may also want to take one of our new award packages for a critique and editing. See more on this below.
Please note: Once you select 'Early Judging' you cannot make any changes to your submission, as the judges will already start judging it.
For books already published, this isn't an issue, but submissions for the Writing Award and Screenplay Award do not select 'Early Judging' if you intend to make any changes.
Please also note that early submissions will automatically be shown to judges first. This is also new for this year. In previous years, we have shown judges your submissions in random order. This year, judges will see the submissions in order of first entered, first judged. This has no effect on your overall score, but it does mean early submissions get the benefit of early judging comments - see more below.
Benefits of Early Judging
- Novelists can use any positive comments from the judges' to promote their books or in their 'praise for this book' section in the front of the book.
- Writers can use great comments when sending out query letters to literary agents and publishers. Praise for their writing could ensure the literary agent or publisher brings your query submission to the top of their slush pile and start conversations.
- Screenwriters can also use any constructive praise for their screenplay when contacting an entertainment manager or producer to pitch their film script.
- See our Perfect Your Pitch Boot Camp for advice when you are pitching your script.
New Awards
We're delighted to share our new Award categories. You can't select these categories because every submission will automatically be eligible for these awards.
Last year we saw very high scores for our three judging elements, namely: Storytelling Potential, Quality of Writing and Compelling Characters.
So this year, we will award one writer in each Award, i.e. Book Award, Writing Award, Screenplay Award, as the winner for each of these awards.
- Storyteller Award - for the writers who achieve the highest score for storytelling potential.
- Wordsmith Award - for the writers who achieve the highest Writing Quality scores
- Character Architect Award - for the writers who reach the highest score for their submission's compelling character
New Award Submission Packages
We're always listening to our writers who enter our awards and after many requests, we are now including some enhanced and advanced packages.
The new submission packages allow:
- Writers and screenwriters to enhance their submission with a critique and edit.
- For any authors who have already published their book and don't need the critique and edit, we are including a newsletter insertion per submission to our 125K Book Luver subscribers and an author profile, so the readers can follow your other books.
- For any author taking a Platinum Plus or a Platinum Ultimate, you will receive an exclusive solus mailer, so only your books will be included with no other books. Also, your 10 books will be sent as an exclusive solus mailer with your author profile, so readers can find out more about you and follow you.
See full details for our new submission packages - which is aimed at helping writers and screenwriters to enhance their submission with a critique and edit, and for authors with published books, we want to help authors to promote their books to new readers through our Book Luver mailing list.
