NBF Announces Changes in the National Book Awards Review and Selection Process - National Book Awards, The National Book Foundation

NBF Announces Changes in the National Book Awards Review and Selection Process - National Book Awards, The National Book Foundation

Two big changes:

1. One change in the process will increase the number of honored books by selecting a “Long-List” of ten titles in each of the four genres, to be announced five weeks before the Finalists Announcement. In 2013, the Long-Lists will be announced on September 12th (forty titles), the Finalists on October 15th (twenty titles) and the National Book Award Winners on November 20th (four titles.)

2. Judges comprising the four panels—Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature—will no longer be limited to writers, but now may also include other experts in the field including literary critics, librarians, and booksellers. The number of judges in each panel will remain at five.

I think I like these changes. Number one, certainly, is good. Number two, I'm thinking could be good, or could be very much not good, depending on how "they" go about selecting the panel. But of course, that's always been the case.