Books editor Matt Reynolds: The Christianity Today Book Awards are open to anyone. If you’ve written a book, with or without the aid of a traditional publisher, you can nominate it in one or more of our awards categories. Each year, lots of independent authors take advantage of this opportunity. But the sad truth is that their chances of winning aren’t very high, at least if past precedent is any guide. Virtually all our award winners come courtesy of major evangelical publishers such as Zondervan, InterVarsity Press, and Baker, with a handful sprinkled in from secular mainstays like Simon & Schuster or Oxford University Press.

By and large, that trend continues with this year’s crop of honorees. And for better or worse, I suspect it will continue in the years to come. But a few independently published titles did manage to elbow their way into the winners’ circle. In categories filled with flashier author names, that’s no mean feat.

I don’t want to overstate the significance of this outcome, which might not be replicated anytime soon. Traditional publishers can marshal resources and expertise unavailable to most solo authors, even those who avail themselves of companies and technologies that facilitate the work of self-publishing. Still, I hope writers of all backgrounds will take encouragement from the fact that “platform” isn’t destiny. Name recognition and sales figures notwithstanding, your efforts matter to God. Which means they matter to CT too.