- July 2019. Harvey Havel, Pakistani-American novelist living in New Jersey. Published 16 books, all on Smashwords. Here’s a long interview I had with Havel and my book review of one of his novels.
- Dec 2019 Ken Kuhlken who writes genre-bending mysteries or thrillers that (according to his website) offer a vivid and panoramic vision of California as it transforms from a frontier to the most influential place on earth.
- March 2020 Zdravka Evtimova is a Bulgarian story writer (website & wiki page)
- December 2020 Frank Prem is an Australian poet (website)
- Feb 2021 Chris Wen Chao Li (author website) is a Taiwanese-born and Oxford-educated translator who wrote the iconoclastic and irreverent translation of Analects by Confucius. (Read my book review).
- March 2021 Paul Hina (author website and Twitter)is an Ohio author and poet who has been publishing lots of titles over the decade. (Read my book review of Other Shore) .
- July-Aug 2025 Diane Donovan (author website) is a prolific and reliable book reviewer for Midwest Book Review which does sponsored book reviews. Here is her chronological list of book reviews and an abbreviated version with her Pick of the Month for each month. The reviews and recommendations tend to be about random books, but that’s the fun of browsing through these reviews.
To read more information about each author, check out the Robert’s Roundup column for the month in question.
About this “Award”
So many indie authors deserve a second look that picking just one seems redundant and arbitrary. On the other hand, it’s good to spotlight one — and perhaps provide extra coverage of that author’s books over time.
Keep in mind that my monthly roundup column tends to be superficial; often I have not read even one book by the author in question. Nonetheless, based on superficial impressions, reading a chapter or two and price discounting, this author seems incredibly interesting to me that particular month. Maybe I haven’t read much by this author, but when I make my decision, I am eager to read works by this author — and think that you should be eager too!
You can’t nominate yourself or a favorite author for this (it’s purely my pick), but let me tell you about some criteria which go into making my decision:
- I have a slight preference for authors on Smashwords. Also, slight background for authors in Texas.
- I have a strong preference for authors whose books are low-priced.
- If you look at my book review guidelines, you will see that I like general/literary fiction, not series or well-defined genres.
- Having a blog or website or audio/video helps too.
- The more overlooked your books are, the better!
I find dozens of new authors a month; who can say which books actually will bowl me over until I actually read them? I will try to keep readers of this blog posted about whether my opinion has changed over time.