The Crossword Book Award Enters its 12th Year

MUMBAI, India - May 8, 2013 - PRLog -- May 8th, Mumbai: Crossword Bookstores opened the entries for the “Crossword Book Award 2013“ all the four categories of Indian Fiction, Non Fiction, Translation and Children’s Writing on www.crossword.in.

This year the Crossword Book Award 2013 will be following the financial year module and will be considering entries published in India from 1st January 2012 to 31st March 2013. This year we will be considering 15 months for the entry process and from next year onwards entries from April 2013 to March 2014 will be considered.

The Crossword Book Award has now completed more than a decade of rewarding the best works in Indian literature across categories. Like every year, publishers have nominated eligible authors for awards which will be sent to an eminent panel of judges consisting of literary critics and noted authors. The judges evaluate these entries and a shortlist of 5 books in each category will be drawn during the Shortlisting ceremony, scheduled in September in New Delhi. The final awards ceremony will be held in the October, 2013 in Mumbai, where winning authors will get a citation, Book award trophy as well as a cash prize.

About the Awards

The Crossword Book Award is the only Indian award that recognizes and rewards good writing and also actively promotes Indian authors and their books. Last year the Award received 329 valid entries in the above mentioned categories which keep growing every year thus making the awards representative of the best of contemporary Indian literature.

When the book awards were launched in 1998, there was one cash prize of Rs. 2 lakhs for the best original work of fiction in English by an Indian author, and it was won by Allan Sealy for The Everest Hotel. In 1999, a new category was added Indian Language Fiction Translation into English and the cash prize was increased to 3 lakhs in each category. In 2005, two more award categories were added English Non-Fiction, as well as the Popular Award. In 2009 award for Indian Childrens writing was introduced thus making it the only Indian literary award that rewards authors across 5 different categories.

Each award carries a cash prize of Rs. 3 lakhs, a trophy and a citation. In the case of The Economist Crossword Translation Award, the author and the translator share the prize money equally. The Popular award has a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh & the trophy.

The Crossword ‘Popular Award ‘offers readers an opportunity to vote for their favourite book from the list of best-selling books published last year. These books are independent of the shortlisted books across the other categories and are purely selected based on their sales volume across all Crossword Bookstores in the previous year.


Jury Details: -

Judges in the past have included eminent authors and personalities like Kiran Nagarkar, Vikram Chandra, Dilip Chitre, Paul Zacharia, Mukul Kesavan, Anita Roy, Shoma Chaudhury, Rama Bijapurkar, Meenakshi Mukherjee, Urvashi Butalia, Sukanta Chaudhuri, Geeta Doctor, Harsh Sethi, Mukund Padmanabhan, Dilip Kumar, Nilanjana S Roy, Kai Friese and Malashri Lal.

About Crossword:
Crossword, with Eighty two, across Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bhopal, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kota, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Nagpur, Nasik, Pune, Siliguri, Udaipur, Vapi, Vadodara,Vijayawada, Cohin and Raipur. It is India’s fastest growing chain of bookstores & has pioneered the lifestyle bookstore concept in India. Crossword was ranked the 6th most admired retailer in India by Business world for the year 2006; it was the only book retailer in the top 10. Crossword won the Reid & Taylor Award for Best Retailer of the year – Leisure & Specialty at the India Retail Summit 2005 & 2007& 2009. It also won the Star Retailer Award for the Best Lifestyle Retailer in Books & Music in 2011. Crossword won the Retailer of the Year Award - Leisure (Books, Music and Gifts Category) at the Images Retail Awards 2005 & 2007& 2009. Crossword won the Debutant E tailer of the year - books - at India eRetail Awards 2012. Crossword received the Federation of Indian Publishers Award for excellence in Publishing for the year 2004 on 18th June 2005 at the hands of Shri Arjun Singh, Minister of Human Resource Development. In 2013 Crossword also won The ET Retail Award for Marketing for ‘Crossword Popular Award’.Crossword Bookstores Ltd. is a wholly owned subsidiary Company of Shopper’s Stop Ltd – India’s leading department store chain. The Holding Company inter-alia also acts as a Master Franchisee of the Company.