The Golden Crown Literary Society seeks judges who enjoy reading. In some ways, it's just that simple. However, in order to ensure the quality and integrity of our awards program, it is imperative that we maintain minimum standards when it comes to selecting our judges.

We don't expect all of our judges to be professional - or even amateur - reviewers. It is not necessary for our judges to have advanced degrees in Creative Writing. It is not a requirement that judges be able to diagram complex sentences.

We'd love for judges to be people who love to read. We want judges who are able and willing to take the extra step of reading critically and with a purpose. You bring that to the table. We'll provide training and evaluation tools.

Our goal is to keep our qualification and eligibility criteria simple and straight-forward:

• Judges may be authors, editors, readers, librarians, booksellers, and/or other members of the literary community considered eligible by the Awards Administrators.


• Publishers, fulltime employees of a publisher (this does not include IRS 1099 contracted workers), and/or members of the Golden Crown Literary Society Board of Directors are not eligible to serve as judges.


• A potential judge does not have to be a member of GCLS in order to serve.


• A judge shall only judge in categories for which s/he is not nominated.


• A judge shall only judge in categories in which books by a partner or family members are not nominated.


• Judges should have at least a basic understanding of structure, storyline, plot, and other critical aspects that make a book successful. These and other aspects of good writing will be discussed during judges’ training.