Tuesday 14 November 2017

SPFBO 2017 -- the finals!

300 contestants have been narrowed to 10 finalists.


The Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off finalists will be listed and scored on this page

The process of selection is now complete and is documented here.


Here's the scoreboard. The reviews, the books, and the blogs are all linked on this table. (click scores to get reviews)


* = Blogger chose this finalist
*= Blogger's top book.

Related Links

Esme has reviewed a vast number of the SPFBO 3 books on her blog, and scores the finalists thusly:

Where Loyalties Lie - 8.9
Crimson Queen - 8.8
Sufficiently Advanced Magic - 8.7
Chaos Trims My Beard - 8.5
Devil's Night Dawning - 8.5
Tiger Lily - 8.0
Jack Bloodfist - 7.8
The War Of Undoing - 7.7 
The Way Into Chaos - 7.5
Pilgrimage To Skara - 7.2

On The Nerd Book Review there are podcast interviews with a good number of SPFBO finalists.

Sonya M Black has a good number of interviews with SPFBO authors on her blog.

Blogger Jesse Teller has also interviewed a collection of SPFBO authors. 



Finalists from the past two years 
(red = 2015, black =2016, yellow=2017):
Blood Rush 7.75
Paternus 7.30
Fionn 7.20
Larcout 6.70
Priest 6.30
Outpost 5.95
Tiger Lily 5.45

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14 comments:

  1. Zero women selected to date despite so many quality submissions. What a disappointing initiative. In this day and age fantasy MUST be a shinning light for inclusive and diverse writers. This will make a great article for the Guardian. Greetings from Tokyo.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Five of the ten blogs selecting finalists are entirely run by women. Three have mixed panels, and only two are run entirely by men. They chose the books they they thought were best.

      Last year half the finalists were women.

      I'm sure all the contestants would welcome the added publicity of a Guardian article.

      Delete
    2. Oh wow a blinkered knee jerk response questioning the honesty and integrity of the SPFBO reviewers lacking in anything but entitled opinion.

      Other anonymous, women took the Nebula's in 2016. Perhaps you would care to post your comment regarding the lack of male finalists to their site?

      Delete
    3. I hate to break this to you, but K. Bird Lincoln is a woman. But by all means print that no women were chosen.

      Delete
    4. The dog whistling in that anonymous post is as clear as day. 100% a troll trying to be edgy.

      Delete
  2. This is the 21st Century. We should be looking at quality not gender. IMHO

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well done to all the finalists and three New Year's cheers for Mark and the bloggers. Let us not forget that they put as much effort into SPFBO as the authors, and for no reward other than to make the world a better place.

    ReplyDelete
  4. High praise to Kitty G's wonderful reviews, the only voice of reason of the lot. Want quality, watch Kitty articulate quality.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hey Mark! Thanks for listing my ratings! Funny thing is, those are my old scores. I got to 90 book in, and realized my spread of scores was only 5.9 - 8.9, and that didn't feel right. My rating system was new, so I went back and tweaked my scores for a new spread of 4.6 - 9.1


    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DZixTZzLymFhoso8fgdswQBb_F-YqiIKGpC3ukPakk8/edit?usp=sharing

    Finalist ratings are now:

    Where Loyalties Lie - 8.91
    Sufficiently Advanced Magic - 8.83
    Devil's Night Dawning - 8.58
    Chaos Trims My Beard - 8.5
    The Crimson Queen - 8.5
    Jack Bloodfist 7.8
    The War of the Undoing - 7.66
    Tiger Lily - 7.5
    Pilgrimage to Skara - 6.91
    The Way into Chaos - 6.8

    ReplyDelete
  6. When do you think we'll get the final tally Mark?

    ReplyDelete
  7. As in previous years, I did not want to wait til all the scores came in, so I used a weighted average rating based on how many scores were given by each reviewer, so that the scores of reviewers who had not reported scores on all were underweighted. In 2015, the intermediate weighted average score correctly predicted the final score (when all reviewer scores were complete); in 2016, there was not much difference except at the end of the list. This year, the top scorer is clear, but the order from 2-7 is different.

    ____________________Ave__Pos_Weighted_Pos
    Where Loyalties Lie_______8.00__1___7.98____1
    The Crimson Queen_______7.50__3___7.52____2
    Sufficiently Advanced Magic_7.67__2___7.11____3
    The Way Into Chaos_______6.33__6___6.31____4
    Devil's Night Dawning______6.56__4___6.16____5
    The War of Undoing_______6.30__7___5.91____6
    Jack Bloodfist___________6.56__4___5.85____7
    Chaos Trims My Beard_____6.00__8___5.45____8
    Tiger Lily______________5.33__9___4.80____9
    Pilgrimage to Skara_______4.35__10___3.97___10

    (again appologies for ___. I can't work out how to do tables on this blog. Markdown tables doesn't seem to work)

    ReplyDelete
  8. This blog is so interesting and impressive

    ReplyDelete
  9. Where Loyalties Lie is a great book and deserve ti be on the first place!

    ReplyDelete