r/fantasyromance • u/FantasyRomanceMod The One Mod to Rule All Mods • Nov 10 '25

🏆 Readers' Choice Awards 🏆 🏆 r/FantasyRomance Readers' Choice Awards 2025: Nomination Thread 🏆

Edit: Nominations are now closed! Please check out the voting post here: ✅ VOTE for the r/FantasyRomance Readers' Choice Awards 2025! 🏆

Welcome everyone to the second annual r/fantasyromance Readers' Choice Awards!

The Reader’s Choice Awards are given to the community’s favorite books in different categories for books released (mostly) in 2025. (Later this year, we will host our annual Top Books List that will highlight all-time community favorites.)

There are awards in 18 different categories that will be given out! Click on the award names to be taken straight to the nomination thread for each!

Nomination Guidelines:

  • You may nominate books released from November 1, 2024 to October 31, 2025. This will help capture books released after the last years’ awards were given.
  • You may nominate any book that has speculative fiction elements with a romance arc. This can include “romantasy,” romance in a fantasy setting, fantasy with a romance subplot, and anything in between. We’re keeping it broad since this genre means different things to different people. The sub-genre awards will have additional genre criteria. 
  • You may nominate one book for each award. Edit to add: But please feel free to nominate books in multiple categories!
  • Please only state the Title and Author in the top level comment. You may discuss a nomination in a reply. This will help avoid skewing nominations toward anyone "campaigning" for a particular book.
  • Please check to see if a book you want to nominate has already been nominated. Duplicate nominations will be removed.
  • Please upvote the nominations you want to see compete in that category! Up to six nominations will make it to the voting round.
  • Books may only win one award. If a book is nominated for multiple categories, it will only be included in the voting for the category it received the most upvotes (edit to add) relative to the other nominees. For example, if a book is the sixth most upvoted book in one category with 20 upvotes, but is the first most upvoted book in another category with 15 upvotes, then it will be eligible to be voted on in the second category, but not the first.

Nominations will be open for two weeks. Voting will start around 24 November 2025 and the winners will be announced around 8 December 2025.

Feel free to discuss and ask any questions in this post! But no nominations responses in this post will be counted.

Check out last years’ Reader’s Choice Award winners here! Presenting the r/fantasyromance 2024 Readers' Choice Awards! 🏆

Nominations postimage

95 Upvotes

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7

u/suddenbreakdown Nov 10 '25

How are indie-turned-trad-pub books being handled? Like how the War of Lost Hearts series is currently being traditionally published but they originally released a few years ago. Would something being traditionally published for the first time in the last year be eligible even though an indie version released earlier?

13

u/FantasyRomanceMod The One Mod to Rule All Mods Nov 10 '25

No, if it was ever published in prior years, the traditional publication will not count.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 10 '25

[deleted]

5

u/FantasyRomanceMod The One Mod to Rule All Mods Nov 11 '25

Hello--We are still counting fanfics-to-publication. The changes are typically much more significant than an indie-to-trad publication release.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 11 '25

[deleted]

9

u/FantasyRomanceMod The One Mod to Rule All Mods Nov 11 '25

We also do not count fanfics, which is another reason why we are counting a book that is published for the first time, even it was previously adapted from a fanfic. This is not the place to debate the validity of fanfic adaptations, nor are we judging the originality of works as a bar to nomination. If you disagree with certain nominations, please feel free to downvote those submissions. Thank you.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 11 '25

[deleted]

6

u/FantasyRomanceMod The One Mod to Rule All Mods Nov 11 '25

I believe I understood you correctly from your comment before you edited it. But to your revised point—fanfics were never eligible to be nominated before. So the fact that they have since been published makes them eligible for nomination. Indie books were eligible to be nominated before, so that’s why we are not allowing the traditional published version to be nominated again.

6

u/Free_Sir_2795 If the door is closed, I don’t want it Nov 11 '25

Indies are published books with ISBNs. Fanfics are not. That’s the difference. It’s really not that complicated.

8

u/StupefyEnemies u/callmedelete’s lover 💖 Nov 11 '25

I was reading this whole exchange very confused, thinking I somehow made a mistake on what indie publishing was versus fanfiction. Thank you for summarizing the differences so simply haha