National Indie Excellence Book Award

Tis the season for Indie Book Awards! First, the Golden Goose Awards, now The National Indie Excellence Book Awards... can you handle all of this indie book love?

NIEA was recently brought to my attention by Marissa, Senior Publicist of JKSCommunications, a literary publicity firm founded in 2000 that offers services such as book trailer production, press kits, and media packages to their clients. Find out more here.

Since her company is involved in the awards, I thought I would let her give you all the juicy details....

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Hello Next Best Book blog readers!

I had the pleasure of hearing Lori's comments at the Book Blogger Convention earlier this year. She stood up and -- so passionately -- discussed Indie books and their importance. I couldn't have agreed with her more. So when the literary publicity firm I work for, JKSCommunications, got behind the National Indie Excellence Book Awards, I just had to write Lori again.

Like Lori, and like you guys, JKSCommunications is constantly on the search for Indie greatness. With more than 800,000 books published every year in the U.S., it's not that easy to do. JKS alone gets requests every day from authors or publishers wanting book promotion. But we read every book before we agree to publicize it. We want to be a true fan of the author's work. We want to really believe in the book like they do.

And that's exactly why we also believe so much in the Indie Excellence awards. The professionalism of the way its run, and the caliber of books chosen as winners, proves why it's been so successful at helping catapult independent and small publishers' books into the national spotlight since they started in 2007. The awards honor the best books in over 100 categories, giving multiple opportunities for a book to win.

NIEA provides national media and industry exposure for all winners and finalists, and the Sponsor’s Choice Awards make NIEA even more special. JKSCommunications is one of the sponsors, offering a 7-stop Virtual Book Tour and electronic press kit development to one of the winners. We're beyond excited to work on this! There are so many other great prizes from NIEA's Sponsor's Choice Awards (selected from the winners and finalists in all contest categories), including:

*Planned Television Arts  customized media campaign
*Event Management Services print publicity campaign
*Radio TV Interview Report  3 free half-page ads
*Star Power Publicity System, choice of a 1-day live course or Webinar, two 15-minute Fast Start Group Consulting sessions, and the Jill Lublin Home Study System
*Alex Carroll copy of the deluxe Radio Publicity Millionaire Program
*Brilliant Mobile a Mobile Website and a QR2MOBI Code to promote your platform and more
*Dan Poynter’s Para Promotion Campaign book promotion package

Want to enter your superb Indie book? Wait no longer! NIEA is now accepting submissions for 2012. Entries must be postmarked by April 15, and the winners and finalists will be announced May 15. Please send one copy of your book per category entered. Books with publication dates of 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 are eligible. Books published anywhere in the world may be submitted, as long as they are in English and can be purchased on and offline in the United States. For more information, category listings and entry forms please check out the NIEA website: www.IndieExcellence.com.

Please feel free to write me at marissa@jkscommunications.com if you have any questions!

Thank you Lori for helping us spread the word about such a great opportunity for Indie authors!


Marissa DeCuir, senior publicist, joined JKSCommunications in 2008. She specializes in booking media appearances and tours for authors, as well as generating an online buzz for their books. A former newspaper reporter, DeCuir uses her knowledge and experience on that side of the communications field to successfully place clients’ publicity in print publications, virtual book tours and on radio shows and television news stations around the country.


She holds a bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication with an emphasis in Print Journalism from the Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University. DeCuir wrote stories and produced multimedia for local, regional and national newspapers before transferring her skills to public relations.