2021 Bookish Jazz Awards: nominate your favorite YA & Adult books of the year!

(Last Updated On: December 16, 2021)

Welcome to the third annual Bookish Jazz Awards! 🎉 Established in 2019 as the Bookish Reader’s Choice Awards, the awards are designed to give readers their voice to determine the “best” reads of the year unlike the Goodreads awards. It’s our time as readers to celebrate all the amazing books published this year – both YA and Adult – across all genres!

Jump right to the nomination form!

The 2021 Bookish Jazz Award Season is now open and accepting YOUR nominations for the best books of the year! Nominations across genres for both YA and adult books will be accepted until December 14, 2021…. so what are you waiting for?

History of the Bookish Jazz Awards

The Bookish Jazz Awards (formerly Bookish Reader’s Choice Awards) was established in 2019 in reaction to the Goodreads Choice Award nominees not being representative of the book community’s most talked about favorites.

❓ Why the name change? The awards were rebranded to match the 1920s visual aesthetic of the awards in 2020! Have some Jazz music to set the mood.

While Reader Voracious doesn’t have the reach or cache of Goodreads, the Bookish Jazz Awards are where readers nominate and vote on their favorite reads across a number of categories. And every book that is nominated, makes it to semi-finals or the finals receive recognition.

2019 Inaugural Award Winners 2020 Winners

This year moving forward, we will shout out semi-finalists, finalists, and winners on social media in addition to providing the award banners – so be sure to follow @ReaderAwards on Twitter! (Last year a total of 395 books were nominated, so boosting all of the nominees individually on Twitter isn’t feasible, but we will make a list with Goodreads links available!)

Award Categories (Adult & YA)

Nomination Rules

1. Any book published between November 1, 2020 and November 30, 2021 are eligible for nomination. NEW!
2. You are able to nominate up to two books for each subcategory.
3. You do not need to nominate a book (or 2) for every category.
4. Every award category has two subcategories: Adult and Young Adult.
5. The nominations form closes at 23:59 on December 14, 2021.
6. Only nominations submitted via the form will be counted. The form collects an email address to ensure people only vote once, but email addresses will be deleted after nominations have been tallied.
   • If you want to receive updates for each voting round, please sign up for the mailing list!

Submit your nominations

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Nominator Giveaway (New!)

Because there are so many amazing books and there are 36 total nomination categories (you don’t have to nominate for each, though!), this year I’m excited to announce an Audiobook Giveaway for one nominator!

Once nominations close, I will randomly choose one person who submitted a nomination form and they will receive an audiobook of their choice from Libro.FM (any book available to you in your country)! So now there’s even more incentive to shout about your favorite books. Nominations have been extended through December 18, 2021.

Go forth and nominate, my dear friends! I can’t wait to see what books everyone loved this year, and give the authors a boost of recognition and appreciation in the process. If you do make a nominations post to explain your nominees and boost the awards, 1) I love you, and 2) please be sure to use #ReaderAwards2021 in the tags and on Twitter to make sure that I see it!

If you have any questions or issues, please let me know in the comments or reach out to me on Twitter @kalventure!

Other Book Awards

The Booksish Jazz Awards are not the only book award initiatives but are the first to cover both YA and adult across all publishing genres! Our goal with the awards is to be as inclusive as possible and give the readers their voice in every step if the process.

• Book Shimmy Awards hosted by Epic Reads celebrates YA books and the community at large!
• Reads Rainbow has organized the 2021 Reads Rainbow Awards for the third year in a row to recognize the LGBTQIAP+ books published this year. 
• Magical Reads organized the YA 2021 Releases Authors of Color Awards!

Stay Connected with the Bookish Jazz Awards!

We received feedback after the inaugural awards that many people missed out on voting rounds and want to be sure that doesn’t happen again. Join our community and celebrate your favorite books all year long!

Join the Jazzies Mailing List

You can join the Jazzies Mailing List to receive approximately five emails per year, ensuring you never miss out on the awards season ever again!

Join the Goodreads Group

The 2021 Reader Awards will be utilizing the Best of the Best Goodreads group to help streamline the voting process and make it easier for you to participate once the nominations round concludes! But don’t worry! We will still have the voting google forms available if you prefer but it is my hope Goodreads will make it easier for everyone.

Join the Best of the Best Goodreads Group here!

You can also participate in group discussions about your favorite books, receive reminders for deadlines, and get to know other readers. Plus, Sam @ Fictionally Sam and I have a lot of fun plans for the group in 2021, including readalongs next year for some of the 2020 Award winners as selected by the group members, so you don’t want to miss out!

Are you as excited as I am for the Jazzies season?! What are some of your favorite books of 2021?