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Spirituality book awards
Recognition for books about the inner life, written from inside any tradition or outside all of them. Every book is read in full and measured against our published Standard of Excellence.
What this category recognizes
Spirituality is the category for books about meaning that are not bound to a single religion. It exists because a great deal of serious writing about the interior life does not belong in a category defined by doctrine, and would be poorly served by one.
This category covers consciousness and awareness, meditation and contemplative practice, the search for purpose, mysticism, energy work, the relationship between the self and something larger, and spiritual experience recounted and examined. It is open to authors writing from within a religious tradition where the subject is inner experience rather than doctrine, and to authors writing from no tradition at all.
The distinguishing feature of strong entries is specificity. Spirituality is the category most vulnerable to language that sounds profound and means very little, and the assessment is unusually attentive to whether a book says something a reader can actually hold.
Books teaching doctrine, scripture, or religious practice belong in Faith and Religion. Books structured as daily readings belong in Devotional. Books offering encouragement rather than exploring the interior belong in Inspirational.
What the standard looks like in spirituality
The ten pillars apply to every category. This is how each one is read when the book is a spirituality book.
The Writing
Voice, Tone and Style
Whether the author is present as a person rather than as a voice of authority. This pillar rewards writing that admits uncertainty and penalizes the elevated register the category frequently borrows, where every sentence is delivered as revelation.
Craft and Technical Execution
Precision about the imprecise. The difficulty here is writing clearly about experience that resists description, and this pillar assesses whether the author reaches for concrete language or retreats into abstraction.
Structure and Organization
Whether the book leads somewhere. Spiritual writing is prone to circling, and this pillar assesses whether the arrangement builds understanding or simply returns to the same insight in different words.
The Substance
Originality and Concept Strength
Whether the book contributes. This category carries an unusual amount of inherited language and recycled framing, and this pillar assesses whether the author brings genuine thought rather than a rearrangement of familiar ideas.
Depth of Content and Insight
How far the book goes into its own subject. Excellence here means engaging with difficulty, doubt, and the places where the framework does not hold, rather than presenting a resolved account of something unresolved.
The Reader
Audience Impact and Purpose Fulfillment
Whether the book serves the reader it was written for. A book for someone at the beginning of a practice and a book for someone twenty years in have different obligations, and this pillar assesses whether the book knows which it is.
Emotional and Psychological Impact
Whether something lands. The strongest spiritual writing produces recognition rather than agreement: a reader encountering their own experience described accurately, often for the first time. This pillar assesses whether that happens or whether the book merely asserts.
Overall Impact and Distinction
What survives the reading. Excellence here means a book a reader returns to, or a framing that changes how they understand their own life, rather than a pleasant hour.
The Finished Book
Production Quality and Presentation
Trade-standard editing, typesetting, and cover work. Where the book includes practices, meditations, or exercises, whether they are formatted to be used rather than skimmed.
Category Relevance
Whether the book’s subject is genuinely the interior life. Books whose real subject is doctrine, method, or encouragement are assessed against the categories that fit them.
Spirituality, Faith and Religion, Devotional, Inspirational, or Faith-Based Fiction?
Five adjacent categories. This is how they sort.
Spirituality
Inner life and meaning, not bound to one tradition.
Tell: the subject is the interior, and no doctrine is assumed.
Faith and Religion
Theology, doctrine, practice, and religious history.
Tell: it teaches, and it assumes or explains a tradition.
Devotional
Read in pieces rather than through. Daily readings, reflections, prayers.
Tell: nobody reads it cover to cover in one sitting.
Inspirational
Encouragement and hope, for any reader.
Tell: the reader finishes steadier, not taught.
Faith-Based Fiction
A story shaped by faith or belief.
Tell: the author made it up.
You may enter up to five categories, and each is evaluated independently.
Questions about entering a spirituality book
My book is written from a Christian perspective. Does it belong here or in Faith and Religion?
Here, if the subject is inner experience and the book does not require the reader to share the tradition. Faith and Religion, if it teaches doctrine, scripture, or practice.
Is this category open to all traditions?
Yes, and to none. Books written from Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, indigenous, syncretic, and secular perspectives are all assessed against the same ten pillars, read through what each book is trying to do.
My book is mostly my own story. Should it go in Memoir?
If the life is the book, Memoir. If the life is used to examine something about meaning or practice, here. Many authors enter both.
Does my book need to include practices or exercises?
No. Books of reflection and enquiry are assessed on the same standard as books offering method.
Related categories
Submit your spirituality book
Entry is $79 for your first category. Your complete manuscript is read in full and measured against the ten pillars.