Vanity awards

A vanity award is an award in which the recipient purchases the award and/or marketing services to give the false appearance of a legitimate honor. Pitches for Who's Who-type publications (see vanity press), biographies or nominations for awards or special memberships can have a catch to them in which the honoree is required to pay to win.

The vanity award phenomenon among book awards was noted in a Salon article by Laura Miller in 2009. Vanity book awards are characterized by dozens or hundreds of categories to ensure every applicant is a winner or finalist; high entry fees with additional fees for each specific category or other premium service such as trophies or prominent display on the award website; and promises of marketing.Self-published authors seeking promotion and recognition are commonly customers of vanity award services.

The following have been called vanity awards.

Other awards targeting self-published authors with high entry fees, with for-profit business models and numerous categories and promises of marketing include the Readers Favorite Awards,IndieReader Discovery Awards, the Indie Excellence Awards and The Forward Indies

The anthology scheme is when a writing contest is announced with the winners to be published in an anthology and a cash prize is awarded. There is usually no entry fee but in fact there is little selectivity and every entry is declared a finalist and offered publication, with a request for money. Furthermore, the anthology is often not sold to the public but only in limited runs to the contributors themselves. The International Library of Poetry known online as Poetry.com, was the main perpetrator of this scheme in the US poetry scene. Another version of the scheme is called "pay to play" in which the writer must pay to be included in the anthology.

The number of vanity awards for businesses is considerable, since 2008 the Better Business Bureau has been issuing warnings about schemes found across the country. "Phony vanity awards prey on small businesses who are trying to make their companies stand out in their industry."

For instance, The Best of Business Award by the Small Business Commerce Association is available for $57 to $157 depending if the applicant would like a plaque or a trophy. The Better Business Bureau reports the same scheme under multiple variants of a common name in multiple cities, targeting businesses in hundreds of categories, so "Peoria Award Program", "Memphis Award Program", and "Lafayette Awards Program" are the same operation. The solicitation, which claims to be an award from "Kelly McCartney, Award Committee", is a message in which only the year, town and line of business change:

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