New Achievement Unlocked: Award-Winning Author
Becoming an author has been one of the most amazing things I have ever done. But after a few books and a few years, the novelty of the accomplishment begins to wear off. When I reached #1 Bestseller for A Girl Called Ruthless I felt like the pinnacle of success. But then time went on and the warm feelings I felt toward that accomplishment began to fade as well. Selling a lot of books doesn’t mean your book is necessarily good. When I got nominated for the 2021 Reader’s Choice Award, I was elated. Now all that was left to do was win, and boy that wasn’t easy.
With these types of awards, you have to get people to vote for you to win. Although I knew that not all 600+ people that voted for me had read Ruthless - well at least I don’t think so - the fact that I have that many people to support me as an author is out of this world insane.
When I first was in the competition I was feeling pretty confident, I was rising higher and higher up the ranks to first place and I felt like I could actually win. All the students in my class were so excited for me. They told their friends and families to vote for me, wore buttons, and even created posters to stick around the school. When I finally reached that #1 place I was so excited.
The issue with these voting competitions is that some people can “buy votes.” This is when they pay someone who has a server that generates different IP addresses and emails instantly so that it looked like a bunch of people are voting from different places. These are usually pretty easy to spot - if someone doesn’t have a lot of following and their vote are way more than the number in their network, or if someone raises in points dramatically in a short period of time. The last three days of the competition somebody did just that. I knew right away when this person raised 500 votes (exactly) in only three hours. I was immediately deflated.
The company has some literature on their website about how they ensure that all the votes are legitimate before declaring a winner. This gave me a bit of hope, but I knew it would be hard to gauge if this person really won the votes. I reached out to the company when I noticed the 500 votes gained -and again when I had surpassed their number with legitimate votes over a few days and then they immediately gained 150 votes (exactly) in a few minutes. The company told me they would investigate and I crossed my fingers. I told myself that if this was a competition where someone could win by buying votes, it wasn’t one I wanted to win anyway.
Finally, the day rolled around when the winners were announced. When I went on to the winner webpage to see that I had won first place, well I screamed and jumped up and down right in the middle of my classroom. My students were so happy for me and I couldn’t believe that I was officially an award-winning author.
Now I am thankful for the bit of struggle, worry, and anticipation that this whole thing took. It makes me feel like this was all an accomplishment I had a part of and that there is nothing I set my mind to that I can’t accomplish.
Special thanks to all the amazing people that took time to vote for me. You are the real stars of this journey!
