FBC will have the pleasure to participate in the SPFBO for the seventh time. This time we'll have four judges involved in choosing our SPFBO champion. We're happy to welcome two new judges this year :) Here’s a bit of information on all of us:

Lukasz Przywoski is an avid fiction reader from Poland. Apart from being keen on reading and inhabiting imaginary worlds, his biggest passion is the science of movement and movement in multiple forms. Life without sport and books wouldn't be worth living.

While fantasy is his favorite genre, he tends to read pretty broadly and is always eager to try new things. Favorite authors: Terry Pratchett, Jim Butcher, Mark Lawrence, Craig Schaefer, Seth Skorkowsky, Matt Suddain and many others.. He's also active on r/fantasy as barb4ry1.

Łukasz can be found over here on Goodreads.

Mihir Wanchoo: Born and raised in Mumbai, India. Mihir is an avid book collector and longtime reader of fantasy, thrillers and Indian mythology with additional interests in historical fiction and urban fantasy.

Favorite writers include John Connolly, David Gemmell, Rachel Aaron, Rob J. Hayes, Mark Lawrence, Craig Schaefer, Richard Nell, James Clemens and a few others.

With additional interests in cricket and football (the actual kind). Mihir lives in the Pacific North West and is ever looking forward to discovering new authors and old books. Mihir can be contacted directly at Goodreads.

As always Mark Lawrence has our eternal gratitude for commitment towards running this contest and being the patron saint for self-published authors everywhere. All ten judges have had their lots allotted to them and these are the titles (and FBC team members reading them) from which the FBC finalist will most likely arise:

We divided our batch into four smaller ones. Here's the list of our books and judges who'll read them:

We've divided our titles into four batches. Each one of us will try to pick a semi-finalist from their mini-batch. We will discuss the entries and read titles from each person’s lot. We hope to finish with 4-5 semi-finalists. Each judge will read all semi-finalists and we'll pick our finalist based on the following criteria: 

Having four team members involved in reading each semi-finalist will counter any bias we may have.

We will try to post our thoughts on each book but that might not always be possible. We will ideally go through batches of 7-8 books and announce a semi-finalist each time. However, that might not always be possible as we might not like any book in a particular batch.

Our semi-finalists will be getting proper reviews and we will be offering each author an interview to go along with the review. 

We strive to make sure that our reviews reflect how we feel about the books that we read and enjoy. Please don’t feel slighted if your book isn’t selected. It doesn’t mean that it was a crappy book but simply that it didn’t match our tastes and hence it wasn’t put forward. The books that we love might not always be the ones that you like and vice versa. Keep in mind that we will do our best to select the book that we feel is the best of our lot (irrespective of the sub-genre it inhabits within fantasy).

We're thrilled to discover new books and titles! That said, we would like to share a few thoughts.

Covers matter. They sell your books. Try to make them as visually appealing as possible. Cover art is expensive, true, but it's worth looking for artists building their portfolio or using professional book templates when money is the issue. We had a few books in our batch that definitely needed some help in their cover art game. We want readers to notice your books and having tacky cover art is a simple way to ensure that potential readers move on without even opening your book.

Having your book’s metadata in the proper places is a boon. SPFBO's biggest strength lies in giving a free spotlight to books. Make sure that you don’t deprive yourself of this by not listing your book on GR or listing it with an old cover or no metadata. This can confuse potential readers & again makes them lose interest

We are also posting our top 3 covers among all the wonderful ones in our group. For determining the top 3, we rated all our books with a max score of 50 (10 from each judge, plus our SPFBO 6 judge, Adam) and it’s our great pleasure to present our top 3:

1. Gunmetal Gods by Zamil Akhtar. Cover by Miblart.

2. To Dream and Die as a Taniwha Girl by Benedict Patrick. Cover design by Jenny Zemanek.

3. Windborn by Alex S. Bradshaw Cover Illustration - Raph Herrera Lomotan. Cover design - STK Creations.