The Silver metal for Women’s Issues in the 2016 Independent Publisher Book Awards goes to Crossing Swords: Mary Baker Eddy vs. Victoria Claflin Woodhull and the Battle for the Soul of Marriage by Cindy Peyser Safronoff (This One Thing).
The IP Book Awards a.k.a “IPPY” winners are judged for “content, originality, design, and production quality, with emphasis on innovation and social relevance.” The mission of the contest is to “recognize the deserving but often unsung titles published by independent authors and publishers, and bring them to the attention of booksellers, buyers, librarians, and book lovers around the world.”
Women’s Issues award winners
In the category of Women’s Issues, two books tied for the gold metal: Prime Reflections on Time and Beauty, by Peter Freed and The Sisters are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America, by Tamara Winfrey Harris. Following Safronoff’s Crossing Swords silver metal award, political commentator and journalist Joanne Cronrath Bamberger of She Writes Press won bronze for her Amazon #1 bestseller Love Her, Love Her Not: The Hillary Paradox, an edited collection of essays on presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
2016 Award Ceremony
The award ceremony for the 2016 IPPYs will be in Chicago on May 10, 2016, in the Willis Tower, the tallest building in the Western hemisphere. The gala event will be held 1,353 feet above the ground at the panoramic Skydeck on the 99th floor.
The IPPY award
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Independent Publishers Book Awards. Established in 1996, the IP book awards, nicknamed the “IPPY,” was the first award established exclusively for independently published books. It was designed to bring recognition to deserving books that might otherwise be overlooked simply because of being published independently. Over 5,000 books were entered into the contest this year. Of those, 400 books were selected for awards in 81 national award categories, plus 24 regional and 10 e-book categories.
Crossing Swords: Mary Baker Eddy vs. Victoria Claflin Woodhull and the Battle for the Soul of Marriage by Cindy Peyser Safronoff (This One Thing, July 4, 2015) is available on Amazon, by special order through your favorite local bookstore (through Ingram), and at a growing list of public libraries.