Today sees the start of the fourth Self Published Fantasy Blog Off (#SPFBO).  The competition involves 300 self published books, distributed between 10 blogs.  Each blog will eventually choose 1 finalist leaving 10 finalists for the second phase.  Each blog will then read and score the finalists which will hopefully result in one book with the highest score winning the competition.  More details can be found here and if you scroll down you can see the list of books and how they’ve been distributed.

I’ve taken part as a judge in the past 3 competitions but this year I might shake my format up a little.  Previously I’ve divided my books into six batches of 5 books and then chosen 1 book from each batch – this has then given me six semi finalists to choose between.  In the past I’ve usually aimed to read at least 20% of the book in order to give the title a fair chance.

Now, I’m not going for a complete change because if it’s not broke then why fix it.  This year is already slightly different.  Phase 1 is now reduced from six months to five so I’ll be randomly choosing six books to check out each month.  In previous years I’ve highlighted the books I’m due to read at the start of each month and provided the background and links, etc.  This year, as I’ll be reading through six entries each month I’m going to divide that post into two – one at the beginning of the month with 3 books highlighted and one mid way with the other three (this is purely to reduce the size of the post to be honest so that all the books get a decent spot. At the end of each month I will post the results in terms of which books are going forward or not.

The main change is that I’m aiming to be a bit more flexible in terms of choosing my semi finalists.  If out of my six books I really like two or more then I’m going to carry more than one forward.  I’m also aiming to read at least 30% of each book or more than that if I feel compelled to do so.  Ultimately, I’m probably making it harder to choose a finalist but we’ll see.  I just want to keep my options open and not have too rigid a format.  By the same token, I might not carry any books forward from a batch if I don’t feel they can compete with the ones that I’ve already carried forward (although I think that is highly unlikely to happen).

All the books that I read fully will receive a full review and the others will be given mini reviews (similar to the past three years).

If any of the authors from my list would like to pay a visit to my blog then you’re more than welcome either for an interview, a guest post or for a cover highlight or reveal.  I’m open to suggestions.  I already have a few interviews lined up which will be published in the next couple of weeks.

I’d like to wish all the authors from the competition the best of luck.  This is tough, ‘there can be only one’ winner but regardless of whether your book wins or not I sincerely hope that you all take something positive away from the competition (this is an interesting article that you might want to check out on that very topic).  There’s a great book community out there and hopefully this competition will provide an ideal place to meet and talk to other authors and bloggers and result in a fantastic feeling of not only belonging but being supported by that network.

A huge thanks to all the authors who have entered and good luck to everyone involved.