Fairness, integrity & honesty
The UKYABA endeavours to be as transparent as possible about how we work to demonstrate that the Awards are based on the principles of fairness, integrity and honesty. We listen to all feedback and do our best, year on year, to keep things fresh and exciting, celebrating different people and working to ensure there isn’t just one route to success. Popularity and follower-counts are important elements of brilliant blogs and vlogs, but we’ve diversified our procedures for the different categories to ensure that they aren’t the only things that count across the Awards as a whole. We also change up the categories to recognise different contributions and forms of excellence. We’ve even appointed an indepedent observer with access to all the nominations, votes and judging discussions to provide an extra level of scrutiny (see the Meet the Team tab).
Update May 2020: Out of respect for the voters, judges and the UKYABA Team, winners may choose not to accept an Award, but may not opt to share the Award or transfer it to another party. Any attempt to interfere with the integrity of the process in this or associated ways will render the winner ineligible in this and subsequent years. In the unlikely event a winner refuses an Award, or is rendered ineligible for any reason, the UKYABA team will select a new winner from among the shortlist with input from the Chair of the Judging panel (and the rest of the panel if still available).
Anyone acting in serious contravention of the integrity of the Awards may be rendered ineligible to participate in any/all aspects of the Awards either temporarily or permanently (e.g. acting unilaterally against the results at any stage, trying to manipulate the voting process, etc.). The decision of the UKYABA team will be final.
July 2020 update: Anyone involving or associating YAShot or UKYABA with potential legal action will be rendered ineligible to participate in any/all aspects of the Awards either temporarily or permanently (e.g. uttering defamatory or libellous statements at events or in tweets associated with, mentioning and/or referencing YAShot or UKYABA). The decision of the UKYABA team will be final.
Rules
In each category, there is an open nominations round (except for the Publisher’s Choice Award, which is publishers only). To reach the longlist in most cases we’ll apply the pre-set criteria to all nominator+nominee pairs, checking all the rules and category-specific criteria are met, then we’ll apply the procedures outlined in the rules to reduce to a ten-person longlist. We’ll then follow category-specific procedures (see Categories) to reach a 4-person shortlist and also to select the winner.
One nomination, longlist vote and shortlist vote per category per person.
When we say ‘bloggers’ here and elsewhere, we’re including vloggers, bookstagrammers and people creating high-quality, regular, YA/MG-focused content in the UK across all public platforms. We use ‘blogger’ and ‘vlogger’ in the widest possible sense.
Bloggers may only be shortlisted in one category: the category selected will be whichever has the highest vote share (adjusted by weighing and number of votes). If the choice is between a judges-shortlisting or a voted-shortlisting, the voted-shortlisting will be chosen.
Bloggers cannot win the same category in consecutive years. This is to encourage recognition of the range of brilliant people working across UKYA. If someone is nominated in a category/a very similar category to that won the previous year, then the nomination will be switched to the most appropriate other category to ensure no one’s contribution is ignored.
Nominators must be based in the UK. They may be traditionally-published authors, publishers, book-bloggers or -vloggers who blog/vlog about YA/MG and have posted at least once in the previous 12 months about YA/MG, readers of YA/MG who can show engagement in YA/MG within the previous 12 months (e.g. recent Amazon reviews, GoodReads account, social media account with posts on YA and MG), or librarians/teachers/others who have professional experience working with YA/MG books voting/nominating from an official school/library/other email address. Nominations can also be submitted by a librarian/teacher/other relevant professional from an official email address on behalf of a reader. We want to spread the net as wide as possible while still ONLY engaging people in nominating and voting who are legitimately interested in UKYA and MG and so can assess the contribution of our amazing bloggers and vloggers.
Nominees must be based in the UK. They must have a blog/vlog or other bookish-platform where they post primarily and regularly about YA/MG. They must have done at least 4 YA/MG posts in the previous 12 months. Those on hiatus during the nominations and/or voting/judging period, are not eligible to be considered for an Award in this cycle.
Nominees must fit the category criteria. If nominees don’t fit the category they’ve been nominated in but clearly fit a different category, the nomination will be transferred (see especially Best Newcomer and Best Established).
Bloggers/vloggers cannot nominate or vote for themselves.
In the Publishers’ Choice category, if a blogger has lots of votes but only from one publisher, then we will attach a weighting adjustment for those who have fewer votes but across a greater range of publishers. If necessary, we will weight in relation to publisher size too. This is to ensure that those who have broader recognition in the industry are appropriately recognised. The Judging Panel will provide additional votes in any year where it’s unclear who has the broadest recognition.
Longlists will not include more than 10 bloggers/vloggers. Author and publisher noms/votes will be given a 2:1 weighing where necessary as a tie-breaker for categories where there are too many potential longlistees, especially where most have only 1 nomination. We will also take into consideration how active the bloggers/vloggers nominated have been in the past 6 months. If that still doesn’t break the tie, then the number of noms and votes will be used. If necessary at this point, the judges will compile a 10-person longlist based on applying the category criteria.
Shortlists will comprise 4 bloggers/vloggers. Author and publisher noms/votes will be given a 2:1 weighing where necessary as a tie-breaker. We will also take into consideration how active the bloggers/vloggers have been in the past 6 months. If that still doesn’t break the tie, then the number of noms and votes will be used. If necessary at this point, the judges will compile a 4-person shortlist based on applying the category criteria.
The same principles will apply where there is a tie-breaker over the winner.
If you have a question about the awards you can email us at ukyaba@gmail.com using Subject: UKYABA Question
UKYABA 