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The Top Book List

How We Verify Awards

Last updated

An award list is only useful if it is right. Every award result on this site, whether a win, an honor, a finalist place or a spot on a shortlist or longlist, is tied to a source and checked by a person before it appears.

Sources we accept

In order of preference:

  1. The award's own website, or the announcement page of the organization that administers it.
  2. A press release from that organization.
  3. A report of the announcement in a major newspaper or book-trade publication, when the first two are not available. This mostly applies to older years.

Sources we do not rely on

We do not accept these as the only source for a result: Wikipedia and other open encyclopedias, bookseller pages, publisher marketing, or lists compiled by other websites. They can point us in the right direction, but each result still has to be confirmed against a source from the list above.

How a result gets onto the site

  1. An editor records the book, the award, the category, the year and the standing, along with a link to the source.
  2. The result stays hidden from the public site until an editor has opened the source and confirmed that it says what the record says.
  3. Once verified, the result appears on the book's page and on the page for that award and year, where the source is linked.

About award years

The year shown is the year the award itself uses. Many awards are announced early in the year for books published the year before, so a "2024" medal usually honors a book published in 2023.

Checks we run

We regularly look for records that cannot be right: a result dated after an award was discontinued, a result dated before the book was published, two winners in a category that names one, or an adult book recorded in a children's category. Anything flagged is reviewed by an editor.

Report an error

If you find a mistake, use the "Report an error" link on the page, or the contact page with the topic "Correction". Tell us which page and, if you can, where the correct information is published. We will check it and fix the page.