Edgar Nominee Day = Best Award RA Tool Day!

Long time readers will know that I love the Edgar Awards because this award, its archival site, its breadth of categories, and the fact that "crime fiction" is the most popular type of book sought out at American Public Libraries, all of it taken together make this award the absolute best award to use as a tool to help readers.

I went into more detail on my Edgar love and why it is such a great tool to serve readers in this 2015 post which also links to my popular and more general "Using Awards Lists As a RA Tool" post. Please click through for my detailed discussion of this. Read them and then come on back. I'll wait.

But it is important that I am posting this on the day the nominees are announced, and not on the day for the winners. Every single one of these titles that received a nomination should be on every single public library shelf in America-- no excuses. Seriously, if you don't have enough money to add them, find some money. You should have them already anyway, but just in case.

These are titles for everyone looking for crime fiction, and some days it feels like that is everyone who walks in our doors.

This is an awards long list you can trust without knowing anything more than it was nominated. They have a fantastic and respected track record. That's why it is such a great awards tool because you can pull up these titles, check your shelves, and hand them out freely.

And, that goes for the backlist too. Speaking of, you can easily access every nominee ever, here.

I speak these words from experience. For my had core "crime" readers, I have used the Edgar archives to find "new to them" titles and series and have handed them over with little more book talking than reading the plot summary and adding, "it was nominated for the Edgar." I've had more takers than I can remember and never a complaint after the fact.

I even have a favorite category of Edgars when it comes to helping readers. As I wrote here:

Finally, the Edgars have a category that in and of itself has saved my butt numerous times as I help people who enjoy the books of Mary Higgins Clark but have read all of her novels. Clark writes in a particular style of intense suspense but without graphic violence. She is hard to find satisfying matches for. Each year the Mary Higgins Clark Award honors the best works of fiction of the past year that most closely resemble the novels of Clark. This list of all of the nominees is THE BEST RESOURCE out there to help with Clark readalikes.

So use this award now, but remember to apply these skills to all awards lists, especially genre award lists.