By Siobhan O’Leary

A new prize slated to be awarded at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair is certainly reflective of the publishing times in which we live. Der neue Buchpreis (dnbp) — The New Book Prize for Publishing Innovation — will be bestowed on self-published German-language authors in the categories of fiction, non-fiction, science and book design. A total of €20,000 euros in prize-winnings will be awarded by an online community and a jury of industry experts, including literary agent Petra Eggers and author Cora Stephan. The prize was launched by the Tagesspiegel, the self-publishing platform epubli and die ZEIT online.

Authors can enter the competition by publishing their work free of charge on www.epubli.de and unlocking it for consideration in a particular category. A first round of winners — the top 5 in each category — will be chosen by online voters from July 27th to September 7th. The jury will then select a winner in each category from those titles. Winners will be announced on Thursday, October 13th, at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Epubli is a digital startup and subsidiary of the Holtzbrinck Group. It is an online self-publishing and print-on-demand platform that allows users to create a book, print it and bind it in the format and print run size of their choosing. The author receives a predetermined royalty for each book sold.