Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nautilus Book Awards

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Missvain (talk) 22:40, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nautilus Book Awards

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Fails WP:GNG. I looked for additional sources and found only local newspaper articles and press releases about particular winners. Cheers, gnu 57 13:49, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. gnu 57 13:49, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Awards-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 16:00, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt whether it can be said to fail the WP:GNG The Nautilus awards are favorably referred to at Belmont University's website https://news.belmont.edu/whitehouse-awarded-nautilus-award-for-afoot-and-lighthearted/ and Belmont has a fairly good ranking among universities https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/belmont-university-3479/overall-rankings Also, the awards are favorably referred to also by Springer https://www.springer.com/about+springer/media/pressreleases?SGWID=0-11002-2-1419946-0 and Springer is a respected publisher (est. 1950) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springer_Publishing And not least, the world's greatest publisher, Penguin Random House, refers to the Nautilus Awards when they promote their books, something the clearly wouldn't do if they did not consider them worthwhile: https://global.penguinrandomhouse.com/announcements/our-2016-nautilus-book-award-winners/ Cheers Cosimo d'Medici (talk) 00:11, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, ✗plicit 13:59, 27 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. To elaborate on my last point from above, that Penguin Random House, the world's biggest publisher, has actively used the Nautilus Awards for promoting their books: https://global.penguinrandomhouse.com/announcements/our-2016-nautilus-book-award-winners/ Probably they did so for financial reasons, but still, had they felt the awards to be naught they wouldn't have made a list of 'their own' Nautilus Winners and displayed it on their website. And given that Penguin Random House easily is the world leader in book-publishing, that argument carries great weight. That said, the article definitely needs improvement, but, in my opinion, clearly not deletion Cosimo d'Medici (talk) 17:07, 27 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. For transparency's sake, Genericusername57 approached me in the past to ask about whether this award would be considered either notable or a vanity award. You can read my comments about that here. The basic gist is that the award has many of the hallmarks that the SFWA highlighted in their "Is this a vanity award?" article. However that said, whether or not this is a vanity award isn't really the important part, it's whether or not this has been covered in independent and reliable sources. The association with notable publishers doesn't really help give notability via association, as notability is WP:NOTINHERITED and TBH, most publishers and agents will encourage submission to various awards in order to increase sales. It doesn't matter what the award is, the fact is that having an award, any award, on a book cover helps sales. It's part of why vanity awards tend to have staying power, TBH. So the fact that this award has an association with a notable publisher doesn't really mean anything, nor does whether or not it's a vanity award. Neither of those will establish notability. (I'm not knocking what people have to do to get their book noticed - it's a tough market - but this association doesn't mean an award is notable.)

Now as far as coverage goes, there's very, very little out there. The coverage is either primary or it's local interest pieces. By primary I mean that they're stuff like press releases, publishers listing that their book won the award, the awards website, or the author making mention about the award on their site. Now with the local interest pieces, the issue with those is that these are typically done in the vein of "look at what someone in our area did, isn't that neat" and in some cases, are done because they were approached by the author or their publicist. Now while self-published sources are almost always unusable as sources, it's also fairly telling that the blogosphere isn't talking about this award either. There's also no sign of independent, secondary RS doing typical coverage such as listing the award winners, something that is fairly normal for notable awards. The fact that this doesn't seem to exist (outside of PR Web type deals) is pretty telling, particularly when you consider the dearth of other sourcing. To be frank, the only people that seem to be interested in covering this award are local papers and/or people/organizations with a strong COI since they stand to profit from mentioning that their product won an award.

At best this is a non-notable, relatively obscure legitimate award. At worst it's a non-notable, relatively obscure vanity award. Either way, it just doesn't pass notability guidelines at this point in time. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 13:06, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Another evidence towards it being a NN award is that when it comes to the Kingsolver win for Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, there's almost nothing out there about the award win. There is some primary coverage from her alma mater, but really not much else. (Of note, I also searched using Newspapers.com and the general search terms of "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" and "Nautilus Award".) She may not be as wildly big a name as say, Stephen King or Toni Morrison, but she's someone who would be more likely to get non-primary, non-local coverage in the news. There's not really a whisper out there about this award when it comes to non-primary or non-local sourcing. Also of note is that the official website for the book doesn't even mention this award (performing a search using "site:animalvegetablemiracle.com Nautilus"), giving more credence to this being a non-notable award if even the recipient doesn't think to include it on the website promoting the book. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 18:13, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair, I also looked for the Chopra book as well. I saw that it was mentioned on PBS, however I noted that the page was written a bit like a press blurb. Sure enough, a search brought up the same text on multiple different sites. This means that it almost certainly wasn't PBS that wrote the content, rather it was most likely something written by a publicist that would have a vested interest in making Chopra look as good as possible (not that he needs it given how well known he is, mind you). So what we need are things not written by a publicist or other primary source. A search only brought up this mention in a press release or other primary sources. The lack of independent, secondary sourcing here is also fairly telling given that Chopra is even more of a well-known person than Kingsolver and there's still almost no buzz about this other than some weak coverage using press releases. Also like Kingsolver, I looked this up on Newspapers.com, using the search terms "Book of Secrets", "Chopra" and "Nautilus". For two notable authors, there was a very noticeable lack of coverage, which I see as further evidence towards the award being non-notable. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 18:32, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

~~Keep~~. The website of the highly notable, world famous zen-master Thích Nhất Hạnh - a friend of Martin Luther King and an interviewee of Oprah Winfrey - presents Thay's book (Thích Nhất Hạnh is usually referred to by his nickname Thay) The Art of Living as being a Nautilus winner: https://plumvillage.org/articles/the-art-of-living-has-won-gold-for-the-nautilus-award/ For the notability of Thích Nhất Hạnh, check the Wikipedia article about him. So when his official website in Plum Village - Thích Nhất Hạnh both founded the Plum Village monastry and has lived there for the most of his life, but due to ill-health he is presently in Vietnam - proudly, so it clearly seems, refers to his book as a Nautilus winner as a notable thing, it should not be disregarded.

Also, the world's greatest online forum of readers, Goodreads, presents a list of the Nautilus winners on their website, e.g. here: https://www.goodreads.com/award/show/2014-nautilus-book-award. And NB Goodreads does not list every literary awards but only some of those they take to be notable. So by including the Nautilus awards in this esteemed company, Goodreads obviously consider them to be notable.

One ought not to look away from things that substatiate notability to be able to say: see, there is no notability... :) Cosimo d'Medici (talk) 19:29, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Here are sources I found about the Nautilus Book Awards. There is enough to meet Wikipedia:Verifiability and possibly Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline:
1. Jewett, Lorraine (2017-05-29). "Nevada City chiropractor sees book earn recognition". The Union. Archived from the original on 2021-05-02. Retrieved 2021-05-02 – via Newspapers.com.
  The article notes: "Mayfield’s work was a natural for the Nautilus Book Awards, which celebrate and recognize authors who address emerging themes and trends such as spiritual growth, conscious living, high-level wellness, and positive social change. Authors submit their entries in one of 40 categories. Each book is reviewed and finalists are forwarded to a panel of six judges, which selects gold and silver medal winners." The article further notes, "Nautilus Book award winners are honored annually at Book Expo America, the largest book trade show in North America and the second largest in the world."
2. "Taos News columnist wins book award". Taos News. 2018-05-24. Archived from the original on 2021-05-02. Retrieved 2021-05-02 – via Newspapers.com.
  The article notes that Ellen Wood, a Taos News columnist, won her second Nautilus Book Award. The article notes, "In its 20th year, this international competition honors books that grow and expand the vision: to recognize and celebrate books for a better world."
3. "Columnist wins Gold Nautilus Book Award". Taos News. 2011-06-02. Archived from the original on 2021-05-02. Retrieved 2021-05-02 – via Newspapers.com.
  The article notes that Ellen Wood, a local author and a Taos News columnist, received a Gold Nautilus Book Award. Other people who received a Gold Nautilus Book Award are Deepak Chopra, Carolyn Myss, Eckhart Tolle, and Marianne Williamson. The awards were held in New York City in 2011. The article discusses what the awards are given for and how the winners are chosen.
Cunard (talk) 11:32, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Cunard: One of these is "local guy wins this award" and both of the other two are a newspaper reporting that one of its employees won this award. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 00:56, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Missvain (talk) 20:57, 6 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

~~Keep~~.

Just some relevant and notable sources, found easily and quicly:

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), one of the world's most notable universities: UCLA in their presentation of their writing programs, employ the Nautilus awards - obviously as a badge of honor - for one of their Spotlight books, Susannah Rodriguez Drissi’s “Until We’re Fish”: https://wp.ucla.edu/category/wp/spotlight/

The BBC, notable main stream media: BBC uses 'Nautilus Book Award Winners' as heading for programs about some famous recipients of the award: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/topics/Nautilus_Book_Award_winners

The Huffington Post, notable main stream media, evt. see the Wikipedia article about the paper/blog: Several regular contributors to HuffPost refer to their Nautilus in their CVs. Among others, Jeffrey Small https://www.huffpost.com/author/jeffrey-small Mark Nepo: https://www.huffpost.com/author/mark-nepo Ali Eteraz https://www.huffpost.com/author/ali-eteraz Dean Sluyter https://www.huffpost.com/author/dean-sluyter Press the 'Show full bio' button where the Nautilus reference does not appear at first glance

The New Yorker: Sarah Stillman, PhD in philosophy from Oxford, one of the world's top 5 universities, is staff writer at The New Yorker, one of the world's most notable literary newspapers. Stillmann quotes her Nautilus award (Soul Searching: A Girl’s Guide to Finding Herself, Simon & Schuster, 2000, 2012) in her CV: https://english.yale.edu/sites/default/files/stillman_sarah_-_cv18.pdf A person of her literary stature would obviously not have referred to the Nautilus award in her CV unless she thought it notable.

All the mentioned sources are mainstream and most notable, and they all behave as they regard the Nautilus Awards to be notable as well. For me this makes the article, as such, a clear Keep. It ought of course to be improved upon, however. Cheers Cosimo d'Medici (talk) 08:40, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Overvotes struck. You are only permitted to vote once per discussion. Based on your conduct to this point, I am blocking your further participation in this discussion. BD2412 T 01:58, 15 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: I'm relisting this one more time to allow more experienced and/or non-involved editors to comment.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Missvain (talk) 00:56, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Simply fails WP:GNG. What these awards rely on is that the people they give awards to talk about it. Literally none of the references to famous people or notable organizations talking about awards they've won helps satisfy notability here. What we need is independent coverage of the awards themselves from people who haven't already won one and have no connection to the awards. The absence thereof is why it fails GNG. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 00:56, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Rhododendrites's analysis of the sources I found. I did a detailed search for sources and those were the only ones that had nontrivial coverage of Nautilus Book Awards. There is insufficient independent coverage in reliable sources to establish notability per Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline. Cunard (talk) 08:12, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Coverage is limited to recipients of awards, rather than independent sources on the awards themselves Dexxtrall (talk) 22:14, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Not finding any evidence this award is significant, it has generated no media or scholarly coverage, and seems to have next to zero recognition outside PR efforts of those who received it and try to use it to pad their resume/promote their work. Heck, the article doesn't even say clearly who gives out the award. Nor is that info provided on the award's official pages: [1]. Seems like some form of a scam, or if it is not, it is so poorly conceived and executed that there is no noticeable difference anyway. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:26, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.