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True crime book awards
Recognition for true crime written with rigour, and with care for everyone whose life appears in it. Every book is read in full and measured against our published Standard of Excellence.
What this category recognizes
True crime is the only category where the people in the book are real, often still living, and did not choose to be written about. That shapes how it is assessed.
The category covers investigative accounts, cold cases, courtroom narratives, organised crime, wrongful conviction, and books written from inside the justice system by investigators, attorneys, and journalists. It is open to books about a single case and to books that use a case to examine something larger.
Recognition here requires more than a compelling story. It requires accuracy, sourcing a reader can check, and a demonstrable awareness that victims and their families are not narrative devices. A book that treats a real death as entertainment does not meet the standard however well it is written.
Memoir written by someone who survived a crime belongs in Memoir. Invented crime narrative belongs in Crime Fiction.
What the standard looks like in true crime
The ten pillars apply to every category. This is how each one is read when the book is a true crime book.
The Writing
Voice, Tone and Style
Restraint. The material supplies its own weight, and this pillar penalizes sensationalism, lurid detail deployed for effect, and a narrator whose fascination overtakes the subject. Excellence here is a voice that trusts the facts to carry the book.
Craft and Technical Execution
How evidence becomes narrative. The strongest true crime moves between documented fact, testimony, and reconstruction without blurring the three, and this pillar assesses whether the reader always knows which they are reading.
Structure and Organization
How the account is arranged. Whether chronological, investigative, or thematic, this pillar assesses whether the reader can follow a case with many names, dates, and threads without losing the line.
The Substance
Originality and Concept Strength
The approach rather than the case. Well-known cases remain open to books that bring new sources, a new angle, or a genuine reframing. Recounting an already well-documented case adds little.
Depth of Content and Insight
Whether the book examines rather than recounts. Excellence here means engaging with why the crime happened, how the system responded, and what it reveals, rather than only what occurred.
The Reader
Audience Impact and Purpose Fulfillment
Whether the book delivers what it promised without exploiting what it describes. This pillar assesses the handling of victims, families, and the accused, including whether living people are treated with due care and whether the book is clear about what remains unproven.
Emotional and Psychological Impact
Whether the human cost registers. The strongest true crime leaves a reader with a sense of the people involved rather than the mechanics of the case. Books where victims exist only as the occasion for a story weaken here.
Overall Impact and Distinction
What the reader carries away. Excellence here means a book that changes how a reader understands a case, a system, or a kind of crime, rather than one that satisfied a curiosity.
The Finished Book
Production Quality and Presentation
Trade-standard production, plus the apparatus the form requires: sourcing, a note on method, and any timelines, documents, or images the reader needs.
Category Relevance
Whether the book delivers what a reader picking up true crime expects: a real case, researched and sourced, told with narrative competence and factual discipline.
True Crime, Crime Fiction, or Memoir?
True Crime
A real case, investigated and sourced.
Tell: everything in it is claimed as fact.
Crime Fiction
Invented narrative built around crime.
Tell: the author made it up.
Memoir
The author’s own experience, including of surviving a crime.
Tell: the author was there, and the book is about their life.
Questions about entering a true crime book
Does my book need to be about a solved case?
No. Cold cases, unresolved investigations, and disputed convictions are all eligible. What matters is that the book is clear about what is established and what is not.
How do you assess books about living people?
Under Audience Impact and Purpose Fulfillment. The assessment considers whether living subjects, victims, and families are handled with due care, and whether unproven claims are presented as unproven.
Do I need to be a journalist or investigator?
No. Independent authors are assessed on the same ten pillars. What is assessed is the rigour of the work, not the credential behind it.
My book uses a case to examine a wider issue. Where does it go?
Here, if the case carries the book. If the case is illustration for an argument about society or policy, Culture and Society may fit better. You may enter both.
Related categories
Submit your true crime book
Entry is $79 for your first category. Your complete manuscript is read in full and measured against the ten pillars.