October 2012 GraveTells Book Awards: See our (and your) top picks!

Congratulations to our October Book Award winners!

Below are the books and authors who have been selected for our monthly book awards, by the reviewers and the readers.  Enjoy!

Book of the Month

Reviewer Top Picks

Readers Choice Awards

To see all our reviews for October 2012, click here!
Congratulations to Gabrielle Bisset on being chosen as October 2012’s GraveTells Readers Choice Favorite Author! Read more about Sons of Navarus series author below, then check out Gabrielle’s guest spot here. More about Gabrielle… I’ve begun a new paranormal romance series called The Sons of Navarus series that begins with Blood Avenged. Anyone who read Vampire Dreams will remember Vasilije, Brandon’s sire. Blood Avenged is his story. The second book in the series, Blood Betrayed, was released in May 2012, and this fall 2012 the third book, Blood Spirit, was released. I’ve even reworked the original Vampire Dreams to be an official prequel to the series, Vampire Dreams Revamped. Since there are eight males in the Sons, I’ve got a good number of delicious heroes to write before it’s all over. I’m hard at work on the fourth book, Blood Prophecy, and since readers have asked for even more of the Sons, I’ve begun a series of free reads here at my website about the Sons of Navarus characters. The first two, Forbidden Fruit and The Deepest Cut, are available now. After that? Well, I’m in the planning stages of another trilogy, this time maybe novel length. But one thing’s for sure: no matter what the story is, it will involve gorgeous, Alpha male heroes, strong heroines, and steamy romance! Read more about Gabrielle and her published works on her website. Read our review of the first book in the sexy Sons of Navarus series, Blood Avenged, here! See the full results of this month’s Readers Choice voting here.

How do we choose the winners?

I’m sure you’re wondering how we make these decisions.  Here’s the skinny…

For Reviewer Top Pick (formerly Reviewer’s Choice), each GT reviewer that posted a review for the selection month gets a number of votes equalling their total reviews posted for that month.  They can spend those votes, in whatever split or block they want, on any book that earned a 4.0/5 or higher rating in its GT review.  The book(s) with a combination of the highest vote total and the highest number of reviewers who voted for it wins the honor and gets the nifty little silver ribbon on its book cover across our site.

For Book of the Month, the selection is a little more complicated and it is chosen solely by me.  As Executive Editor of the site, I take several factors into consideration, but most importantly, the book must have a minimum 4.5/5 rating and its review (if I haven’t personally read it) or story (if I have read it myself) needs to be memorable and have impact.  It’s largely based on “gut” feeling, so it’s hard to spell out the specific metric for you guys, but basically it’s an informed subjective decision that I make each month, and I don’t take that lightly.

Finally, the Readers Choice awards for Favorite Author and Favorite Story are chosen by you guys every month in our end-of-month public voting!  Thanks to everyone who participated this month and help spread the word to support your favorite authors and books!

Where can I get those cover badges for my site?

Want to display our awards on your site?  Whether you’re an author, publisher, fellow blogger, or enthusiastic reader, we’d be honored for you to share the GraveTells awards in your sidebar, post, or homepage!  Right-click the images above to save them locally and upload them to your own server, or you can link directly to them by right-clicking and selecting “copy image URL”.  If you need a specific type of image or more instructions, email me and I’d be happy to help!  =)