Aconite Cafe

Nomination Rules: (Last Updated: 1.01.22)

1. Do not nominate your own book, or a book you have not read.
2. All nominations must be:
   – Indie (self) published during the previous year.
   – A Novella or Novel. (60+ Amazon listed page count.)
   – Cozy Mystery 
   – Published in English.
   – Submitted in the following format: Title by Author. Any other format will be disqualified.
   – 20 Reviews on Amazon, with a rating of at least 4.0
3. The top 10 books will advance to the Finals.
   1. Each author will only be allowed ONE book to advance to the next round.
   2. To advance a book MUST have a minimum of 5 nominations.
4. A person can only nominate:
   – a book once.
   – 3 books total.
   – Note: emails ending in .gov, .edu, .org are invalid. 
   – 18 years or older to participate.
5. By nominating you are subscribing to the Cozy Mystery Tribe Newsletter.
6. Nominations will be validated after they have closed, and books that do not meet the above qualifications will be removed.
7. During the nomination round, making it to the current standings chart doesn’t verify that the book has met all qualifications.

Finalist Rules

1. Do not vote your own book, or a book you have not read.
2. A person can only vote for one book, one time.
   1. Note: emails ending in .gov, .edu, .org & businesses are invalid. 
      
   2. 18 years or older to participate.
3. By voting you are subscribing to the Cozy Mystery Tribe Newsletter.

We reserve the right to disqualify any participate for any reason we see fit.

Rule Breakers Beware:

1. If you are caught breaking the rules the author / book / email could be permanently banned from participating in the awards. 
2. Duplicate votes can result in the voiding of all vote for that person.

Indie / Self published books are books that are published by a person. The person may have a company name that is their personal publishing house. 

For all intent & purposes, the author is also the publishing company. The book is in no way connected to a traditional publishing house. They are the person pushing the publish button on the sales platform, and running the marketing for their published works.

Coop publishing houses – Where a group of authors have joined forces under one publishing house, but each author is responsible for their own marketing and publishing. I.E. Everyone is putting in equal work, do qualify.

Vanity Presses – Where an authors pays a publishing house to publish their book. It usually involve the author handing over the manuscript and letting the press do the leg work, do not qualify. 

Small Presses – Where the author hands over the manuscript to a publisher who is in most cases also an author offering to publish other authors. The publisher handles editing, formatting, publishing and marketing the book, do not qualify.

This will be judged on case by case bases, and we reserve the right to accept or deny houses as we see fit.

By published, we mean the book is available for sale at a retailer such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, etc.

If you find that your nomination isn’t listed, various things could be wrong. 

1. It was not published in the correct year.
2. It is not indie or it is not cozy mystery.
3. Your nomination didn’t list a Book Title & Author. Both must be listed for the nomination to be valid, just listing the author name, or series title doesn’t count. It must be spelled correctly.
4. The author (or email) has been banned from the awards or our site.

We hold rights to void any nomination that does not fit with our definition of Cozy Mystery & would not fit with what our audience reads. Our choices are not made for personal taste, but to make sure that the author is going to get the most out of being in front of our readers. 

Cozy Mystery: “Cozy mysteries, also referred to as “cozies”, are a subgenre of crime fiction in which sex and violence occur off stage, the detective is an amateur sleuth, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community. “

After each round the votes are counted then cleared. Every book will start with a clean slate at the beginning of each round of voting.

With using Google Forms, every entry is time stamped, in the even that multiple books only have the same number of votes we will defer to the time stamp of the nomination/vote and order them as such.

There will be no tie breaking round, as the time stamp will be used to break any tie.

Please contact us and let us know what the mistake is, title the email MISTAKE – *insert Nominations or Finals* In the body, let us know the specific mistake. 

Such as:

• Spelling
• Links
• Sub-Genre placement
• Needs to be removed because it does not qualify.

Blurb, website, etc. wording:

• Nomination Round:
  • “Nominated for 2021 Indie Cozy Mystery Book of the Year – Cozy Mystery Tribe Awards”
• Finals:
  • “Finalist for 2021 Indie Cozy Mystery Book of the Year – Cozy Mystery Tribe Awards”
• Winner:
  • “2021 Indie Cozy Mystery Book of the Year – Cozy Mystery Tribe Awards”

All authors that make it to the finals will receive a Spotlight Interview post on the website. If you haven’t heard from us, we are probably trying to get in touch with you so please reach out!