GWA Awards entry fee

**J* L* <h*@yahoo.com>**

The reason the fee for the entering the GWA awards program went up was that they wanted to professionalize it -- bring in professional judges with excellent reputations. That costs money. You have to fly in at least two judges for each category, put them up in a hotel near DC for at least two nights, feed them six meals, etc. 

  Unless the rules have changed since I was involved, the judges receive no honorariiums at all. They work long hours -- and very hard -- for two days to make the awards the best they can.

  Other organizations have different ways of doing their awards programs -- and GWA has requested info from many of them, to see if there's a better way. Some organizations absorb most of the cost of the program, but generally they receive far fewer entries than GWA (and/or have higher membership dues). 

  Why gather the judges instead of sending the entries to them? The cost of shipping entries to judges off-site is prohibitive -- and the logistics for several hundred entries mind-boggling..(And where would a volunteer judge store 75 or more books -- and how would he or she return them?) 

  I think that GWA is also providing professional PR for the top winners of the awards and there have been mentions in Publisher's Weekly, for instance. To me, this benefits all garden communicators by giving us visibility.

  Judy Lowe

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