Cybils by the numbers

I post our numbers just about every year, and every year somebody gets mad at me. Apparently, I don't include enough disclaimers because I assume facts speak for themselves. So I have included some important reminders this time for the sake of clarity.

Total eligible books nominated: 1,289

Disclaimer: Yours wasn't eligible because a) it came out in the wrong year or b) you didn't write one.

Books read by at least one panelist: 1,284 or 99 percent.

Disclaimer: Yes, we read your book. It didn't make the short list because we don't like your looks.

Books read by at least 2 panelists: 1,262 or 98 percent.

Disclaimer: Yes, we read your book. I swear.

Unread books: 5

Disclaimer: Will you stop? It wasn't yours. Honestly.

Panelists with the most books read:

Rebecca Reid and Debbie Nance with 260 apiece.

Disclaimer: They're in fiction picture books, which are shorter than novels. Still more books than many people read in a lifetime.

Panelist with the most pages read:

Hallie Tibbets, with 48,665 pages read

Disclaimer: Page counts reflect the total pages in the book and not the point where Hallie got disgusted and tossed the darn thing across the room.  

Remember to check back tomorrow night after midnight my time (because I am the center of the universe, of course) for our finalists. That's 2:01 am Eastern and 11:01 pm Pacific.

See you then!

--Anne Levy, Cybils admin.

Comments

[Colby]

I know that this is kind of a joke, but I really LOVED some books that didn't make the shortlists.

[Anne]

Oh, I know, Colby. There are so many wonderful books and only so much room on the shortlists. Thanks so much for joining us this year!

[Sheila Ruth]

Yes, there were excellent books that didn't make the shortlist. I think we all had favorites that we just couldn't convince enough fellow panelists to support. The fact that a book didn't make the shortlist doesn't mean that we didn't love it. It means that in some cases we had to make extremely difficult choices.

Just to add to Anne's disclaimers: If you sent a book, we read it. The five unread books are books that were not available in any panelist's library, and we did not receive review copies. Panelists do everything they can to find books in the library, even using interlibrary loan, and in some cases driving across the state to a different library. But we don't feel that it's fair to ask panelists to spend their own money on books, and the Cybils doesn't have any kind of budget for buying books. Something to consider for future years: if you want your book to have a chance, and it's not widely available in libraries, please consider sending review copies (print or digital!)

To be fair, one other thing I wanted to add is that Hallie Tibbetts took the top spot for number of pages read away from Kelly Jensen at the 11th hour. For most of the round, Kelly Jensen dominated the top "pages read" spot on the leaderboard. Kelly ended with 48,474 pages read, which is only about 200 less than Hallie. So Kelly deserves kudos as well.

ALL of the panelists are amazing, wonderful people, who read like maniacs over the last three months, even if it meant setting aside other obligations.

[Susan Taylor Brown]

And some of us would have read even MORE pages had more books been nominated in our categories. :)

[Laurisa White Reyes]

Thanks for the chuckle this morning.

[Anne]

@Sheila: I imagine the discussion went something like this:

Kelly to Hallie: It is ON, girlfriend.
Hallie to Kelly: Oh yeah? Eat my ebooks!

Anyway, next year I think we should take bets on this. I wager a box of Trader Joe's chocolate-peppermint oreos that Kelly makes a comeback.

Thanks for all your hard work on this, Sheila, and for putting in all the correct, serious info on how we go about this. Take the rest of the year off!

[Ms. Yingling]

Man, I need to be in a division with more books next year! My students are going to be very disappointed in me even thought "It's not a contest to see who reads the most"! And thanks for the levity, Anne. some people really do get to too bent out of shape about things.

[Hallie]

I think we all had favorites that we just couldn't convince enough fellow panelists to support.

Exactly! If we provided individual lists--well, that would give too much away, but it would show that we appreciated many, many more books than could be on a shortlist.

So Kelly deserves kudos as well.

Yes! And there were a bunch of people who read tens of thousands of pages, who read nearly everything in their category, and so on. It's an amazing word count going past eyeballs in a very short time period.

(P.S. I bet Kelly could take me. I just happened to have some longer books to read at the bottom of my pile!)

[Jordyn]

Am SO excited for the shortlists to become public but as other panelists have said... we all (me included) had personal favorites that we just couldn't sway enough people on. As incredibly incredibly proud as I am of the YA fic list, my own "personal shortlist" would look a bit different.

[Grier Jewell]

Every one of us had to let go of books we felt passionately about, and the fact that some of us felt exquisite pain just goes to show that there's BIG LOVE for books in Cybils--and that's a good thing. We need to celebrate the finalists, though, and not take away from the fact that they made it through a grueling process. Cheers!

[Anne]

Hey, how about I compile a short list of books that didn't make your personal short lists? I could post them next week -- maybe just one or two suggestions from judges across the different genres. Or if you post about this on your own blogs, send me a link at anne at inlandempress dot com.

[Grier Jewell]

That would be awesome!

[Grier Jewell]

I'd like to post mine on my blog. (I don't think you'd get agreement from us as a group on one or two that didn't make it. There were some strong feelings. :-)

[Sheila Ruth]

I think a blog wrapup of links to panelist posts about personal favorites would be awesome! Great idea!

[kelly]

Hey now! Let me say: I REREAD five books and couldn't count those pages again, so really, really, really, I think I got you Hallie ;) BUT I'M NOT KEEPING TRACK OR ANYTHING.

[Madigan]

Say! I noticed you got rid of the 50 page rule -- was it because authors complained??

As a reader/reviewer, I always thought the 50 page rule was what made the Cybils a little more approachable/sane than some of the other big awards out there.

Inspired by you, I've been using the 50 page rule myself for a lot of books that I've picked up and tempted to not to finish. Interestingly, once I get to the 50 page mark, I'm usually willing to push on. It made me realize that some books are slow to start, but get better later! Conversely, when I don't finish a book that I've read 50 pages of, I feel I can put it down without guilt. Plus, the 50 page rule is easier to remember Nancy Pearl's complicated formula of number of pages, minus your age, plus something else, unless you're over a certain age? I can never remember how that one goes!

[Anne]

@Madigan: It turns out that most of our panelists used the 50-page rule anyway. We'd waived it because some of the panelists complained that they could tell a book was going to be awful just a few pages in. With YA and Fantasy nominations up to their eyeballs, panelists wanted to be able to move on quickly if a book clearly wasn't a short list contender. But nearly all books got a second opinion -- so nothing was simply dumped on one person's say-so.

I'm glad you use the 50-page rule. I stole it from Hollywood studios that have their interns and freelance readers sift through bestselling novels looking for ones that they feel would adapt well to the screen. If it didn't scream "blockbuster" by page 50, they set it aside.