Photo of Bexis

Man, are we tickled. We just learned that The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law, written by the Herrmann half of your dynamic blogging duo, was a finalist in the competition for a Benjamin Franklin Award this year as an outstanding independently published book.

PMA, the Independent Book Publishers’ Association, presents Benjamin Franklin Awards each year to the previous year’s most outstanding independently published books. Publishers nominate hundreds of books in the competitions for each of the genres. Top practitioners in each category then judge the editorial and design merit of the nominated books. The judges select three books as finalists in each category, and one book receives the award. American Bar Association Publishing nominated The Curmudgeon’s Guide in the category of “Career,” and PMA’s judges selected the book as one of three finalists. For a complete list of finalists in all categories, visit the PMA website (http://www.pma-online.org/pubresources/benfrank2007_finalist.aspx).

The ceremony itself resembles the Academy Awards, although without the movie stars. For each category, someone from the PMA Board reads the finalists as a video plays showing the nominated books. The winner is then announced and comes up to accept the award and make a few short remarks.

“Author of the award-winning Curmudgeon’s Guide.” One of the two of us (we won’t say which) thinks those words sound mighty cool.