Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Independent Publisher Book Award (2nd nomination)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. J04n(talk page) 04:23, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Independent Publisher Book Award
AfDs for this article: 
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Per previous nomination: "Tagged as unreferenced since 2007, re notability since 2009, seemingly nobody can find any sources to address this. The bulk of ghits seem to be from the body which awards it or sources asssociated with recipients. I haven't found any clearly independent and reliable indication of its notability." Also, per reply to re-creator of article: "Sorry, I think the reasoning for the deletion still very much stands. Almost all sources are closely tied to the award, a large number from the very body which awards it. Probably the only truly independent RS which mentions it is in a brief biographical blurb about a contributor to the Huffington Post, the article itself making no discussion of the award." Mutt Lunker (talk) 22:37, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Strong keep Delete - .The previous nomination had no sources, with two primary sources as external links. While there are some primary sources in this article now, the preponderance are in fact independent of the subject. The very fact that it is independent publishers that are being recognized by the award is a testament to their independence. The sanctioning body for the award has won an award of recognition their self, from an independent organization. The award is called "the largest book awards contest in the world", and this is brought to bear by at least two independent sources. More sources are available. Frankly I find it hard to believe there is even a question. Really! &mdash;My76Strat (talk) 23:02, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Can you elaborate re "The sanctioning body for the award has won an award of recognition their self, from an independent organization" please? One of the sources for it being "the largest book awards contest in the world" is a press release from an author who has won one of their awards, so hardly independent and unbiased. I'm also rather bewildered by the logic of "The very fact that it is independent publishers that are being recognized by the award is a testament to their independence." - their independence is from large corporate publishers, not as sources regarding an award for their type of publisher (which happens to be independent ones). Quite the contrary, it makes them more likely to be an interested party in talking up the awards. Mutt Lunker (talk)
 * The publishers are either independent of the source, or they are affiliated. The people are either lying in their publications, or you are inventing reasons why it is more likely that a conspiracy exists. So a book wins an award and that book publisher chooses to re-print the cover showing the award won. What publisher doesn't? I just recently finished writing 90% of the book stubs for the Edna Staebler Award, which I have no doubt that you would find non-notable. When writing those 50 odd book stubs, I came across the IPPY several times. That is why I mentioned to the deleting admin that if the award was know as an IPPY I found it hard to believe it would be non-notable. As far as the award won by IndependentPublisher.com. It's in the awards section. Obviously the people are interested in the award, or I doubt they would compete for it, and if their the liars you make them out to be, they ought to just slap Ophra's name on their books and say she gave their book the nod. &mdash;My76Strat (talk) 00:11, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Do not twist my words. I talk about whether the sources are independent and/or interested parties. That's a very different matter from accusing them of lying and conspiracies, matters which you alone have contemplated. The award may well be notable but basing the article largely or solely on material by the body responsible for the award and by those who, as recipients, have a perfectly understandable vested interest in reflecting it as significant, does not adequately establish this notability. Mutt Lunker (talk) 01:00, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:15, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Your words manifest twisted. How about you don't synthesize wp:gng. "Significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" does not include "and/or interested parties". I think it's best to leave that part out of the equation. I challenge you to show me one article about a book award that you feel is notable that doesn't have references in it from some source that received the award. Like I said earlier, I just finished a pretty extensive writing endeavor which involved the exact concept of books and their association with literary awards. It is presumptuous of you to suggest these thousands of independent authors who compete for this award, and then reprint the covers of their books to display the award, if they happen to win, are not contributing to the notability of the award the are collectively seeking. Or that when a publisher, that is independent of the subject, publishes a news release like this, that it doesn't qualify under the wp:gng. &mdash;My76Strat (talk) 04:36, 28 February 2013 (UTC)


 * "It is presumptuous of you" to attribute to me things I have neither said nor implied. You are setting up Aunt Sallys. I have no problem with articles including amongst their references some from interested parties. If however the only references that can be found are from interested parties, that should ring alarm bells. It seems odd that if this subject is notable that there is such a dearth of coverage outside of those awarding or receiving. Mutt Lunker (talk) 13:04, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

preliminary comment It's obvious that the organization and its awards are intended for the purpose of promotion; the key indications are that authors as well as publishers may submit a book, and that about 200 awards a year are given. . That does not mean the awards are meaningless at their top level, nor that they might not be notable--even advertising and even promotional campaigns can be notable, though for obvious reasons we have a pretty high bar in that subject area, especially with regard to the independence of the sourcing. (A case could be made that we have some sort of an obligation to be sure not to remove articles about notable publicity campaigns that actually highlight items of no merit, to serve as a warning--but this may not be NPOV) It's also obvious that the article was written in a very promotional style, indeed,  some of the contents appears to be promoting two extremely not notable books -- I've just removed them--they were added by My76Stat in what looks like an attempt to add every finable link, one of them was actually written by the author of the book itself in the Huffington Post. I don't think 76Strat would have added that reference if he had read it. (And I'm in the process of checking every book and author linked to for notability & other problems), References to awards being made for a particular books are only useful   for the purpose of showing notability if they show that independent RSs have thought the fact the book received the award was worthy of writing about, and I do not see a single one that does that--judging by the uniform wording, they are mostly press releases apparently prepared by the awarding body for the authors to send to places that might use them, such as their home town or college papers. , and they are actually references to reviews of the book in a RS that verify that the award was considered important  & can at best. The evidence I am looking for is first, whether the books receiving the top awards are actually notable by any reasonable standard, and whether reliable review sources even mention this award in their reviews. This may take me a few days to check, so I'd avoid doing anything precipitous.  DGG ( talk ) 01:08, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I've found one possible informal evidence of notability. The books must be entered by the author or publisher. Several major university presses, including the Yale University Press, are entering many of their books; Even the best publishers seek (and need} publicity. but I assume   assume ones such as Yale use some judgment when deciding where to look for it. (More cynically, I wonder if the University category of acceptable publishers --the other categories are totally independent publishers--whatever they actually mean by that, or corporate entities publishing fewer than 50 books a year) was added in order to get some respectable books in the list of awards.)   DGG ( talk ) 01:18, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I've now checked their list of awards. It makes no sense whatsoever. The Gold prize winners range all the way from one book that won a National Book Award but about which we scandalously do not have an article (Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon, down to many self published books that have no copies in a library whatsoever. Some of their prize books aren't even in WorldCat, The award is meaningless, and I think the publishers submitting their titles don't realize what they are doing. But, again, that doesn't say it isn't notable. There is still the possibility of sources  DGG ( talk ) 04:14, 1 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete IMHO there are no independent sources in the article. "Interested parties" are not independent sources - and I believe that is the usual reading around here of WP:RS.  The one source that might be considered reliable is "Writer's Market" but their 150 words or so seem to just quote a press release.  Another possibility is the award for the awarders, but is that award itself from a reliable source/organization?  In any case that award does nothing except give the awardee's name and weblink.  I'll also note that the argument for KEEP is getting pretty aggressive, please tone it down.  Smallbones( smalltalk ) 01:22, 1 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete Wikipedia is not a platform for promoters to enhance their promotion. Stuartyeates (talk) 22:54, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete. I have no true objections with someone wanting to userfy this until the point comes that the award receives direct coverage of the award itself rather than brief mentions in articles about other subjects or people. The big issue here is that the award is almost always mentioned by someone who is directly involved with the award, usually the recipient or the publisher of the recipient. This gives a huge conflict of interest and makes all of these sources primary ones at best. Of the non-primary sources, the award is never directly discussed in-depth. It's always mentioned by way of "Book ABCD won the IPPY Award, which is given out yearly at such and such a place. Book ABCD covers the subject of blah-blah-blah-blah and is the author's first work, etc." While the article is happening because of the award, the award isn't really the subject and this isn't enough to show notability- especially since we have no way of knowing how much of this is from a press release, which is likely when you consider how very similar so many of these are. The award it won from the Association of Independent Authors doesn't hold much weight, but then most awards aren't enough to show overwhelming notability to the point where you'd keep on that basis alone. Even considering that factor, I'd go so far as to say that 90% of any awards in any category wouldn't be seen as even giving notability. What makes me think that this isn't really usable to show notability is that there's no actual coverage of the group receiving the award. This is a delete from my end, the same as my previous vote. I'd abstained, hoping that someone would be able to dig up usable sources, but what was added is the same that I'd found in the previous AfD discussion.Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   10:16, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.