The Southern Book Prize, Week 1

The Southern Book Prize ballot had a strong out-of-the-box launch this week, approaching just shy of 1000 submitted ballots in its first seven days.

Votes have been cast in all eleven states in SIBA's territory, with North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee currently leading in number of ballots cast.

What is clear from the early results is that there is a close relationship between many of the authors of SBP finalist books, and their local bookstores. When readers cast their ballots they have to include the name of their favorite local bookstore. So far, the stores with the highest number of ballots cast are:

• Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Carmichael's Bookstore, and A Reader's Corner Bookstore -- all in Kentucky, the home state of Silas House, author of Lark Ascending
• Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee, and incidentally the hometown bookstore of Mary Laura Philpott, author of Bomb Shelter
• Park Road Books in Charlotte, North Carolina, who claims Judy Goldman, author of Child, as one of their local authors.
  

It is early days yet, the SBP Ballot will stay open until February 1st, 2023, giving SIBA bookstores the whole winter to engage their customers about some of their favorite books.

SIBA has created a "Toolkit" of useful materials to help stores promote the ballot and encourage their customers to vote for their favorites:

Edelweiss Collections: Fiction | Nonfiction | Children & YA

Flyers (PDF): Fiction | Nonfiction | Children & YA
Full-color, perfect for displays of 2022 bookseller favorites

SBP Shelf Talker (PDF)

Other SBP Assets (logos, author photos, pdfs, links)

SBP on SBR:
Finalists reviews on The Southern Bookseller Review
The SBP Ballot

Code to embed the ballot on bookstore, author, and publisher websites