Moby Awards 2010 & 2011
2010 was the first year for the Moby Awards for the best and worst book trailers.
This was their website.
Content is from the site's 2010 - 2011 archived pages as well as other outside sources.
Please join us Thursday, June 2nd at Powerhouse Arena, 8-10pm, for the second annual Moby Awards.
We’ll be handing out the gold sperm whales to the winners, screening our favorite great/horrible book trailers and handing out a few lifetime achievement and “special” awards.
The event is open to the public. Formal wear suggested. Beer and wine will be served.
PowerHouse Arena is located at
37 Main Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
FINALISTS
We’ll see you at the Award Ceremony on
Thursday, June 2nd at powerHouse Arena
Book Trailer As Stand Alone Art Object:
-Autobiography of Jenny X – Lisa Dierbeck
-How Did You Get This Number? – Sloane Crosley
-Wild Child – TC Boyle
-The Orange Eat Creeps – Grace Krilanovich
-The Instructions – Adam Levin
-The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating – Elizabeth Bailey
Best Big House:
- Where Good Ideas Come From –Steven Johnson
-Packing for Mars – Mary Roach
-Room – Emma Donoghue
-Blood’s a Rover – James Ellroy
-Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter – Seth Grahame-Smith
Worst Big House:
-Savages – Don Winslow
-Kapitoil – Teddy Wayne
-Revolution – Jennifer Donnelly
-Stuntman! – Hal Needham
-Wild Fire – Nelson DeMille
-When Did I Get Like This? – Amy Wilson
Best Small House:
-At the Tea Party – edited by Laura Flanders
- Night of the Living Trekkies – Kevin David Anderson & Sam Stall
-The Orange Eat Creeps – Grace Krilanovich
-Tree of Codes – Jonathan Safran Foer
- The Instructions – Adam Levin
Worst Small /No House:
-Pirates: The Midnight Passage – James R. Hannibal
-Bloodroot – Larry Arrowood
-If I Should Die Before I Wake – LaRhonda Ferguson
-Chimera – Rob Thurman
-Healers Apprentice – Melanie Dickerson
Worst Performance by an Author
-Erik Stinson – The Stinson Effect
-Jonathan Franzen – Freedom
-Brandon R. Benjamin – Atlantis
-Stuart Ross – Buying Cigarettes for the Dog (could be best performance, hard to tell)
-Carolyn Evans – 40 Beads
Most Celebtastic Performance:
- Jay-Z - Decoded
-James Franco - Super Sad True Love Story
-Denis Leary - Suck on This Year
-Jeff Garlin -My Footprint / Empty the Sun
-Bradley Cooper - Wild Fire (look real hard for it)
What Are We Doing To Our Children? (good or bad, you decide)
-The Hidden Alphabet – Laura Vaccaro Seeger
-Poop Happened – Sarah Albee
-Shark vs Train - Chris Barton & Tom Lichtenheld
-It’s A Book – Lane Smith
-Little Chicken’s Big Day – Katie Davis
2010 PRESS RELEASES
300 readers and writers RSVP’d for Melville House’s first annual Moby Awards in Manhattan last night. The winners walked away with a gold-painted plastic whale.
A motley crew of presenters and judges (including this GalleyCat editor) joined the festivities. Among the many highlights, author John Wray hugged himself after Zach Galifinakis won the Best Cameo in a Book Trailer award for the Lowboy video embedded above for Lowboy.
Watch the other winners below…
Best Low Budget/Indie Book Trailer: I am in the Air Right Now by Kathryn Regina
Best Big Budget/Big House Book Trailer:
Going West by Maurice Gee
NZ Book Council - Going West
Best Performance by in Author: Dennis Cass in Head Case
Least Likely Trailer to Sell the Book: Sounds of Murder by Patricia Rockwell
The awards also included a few “honorary” awards from Melville House…
Best Foreign Film Book Trailer:
Etcetera and Otherwise: a Lurid Odyssey, by Sean Stanley, illustrated by Kristi-ly Green
Bloodiest Book Trailer of the Year:
Killer by Dave Zeltserman
Most Annoying Music: New Year’s At the Pier by April Halprin Wayland
Biggest Waste of Conglomerate Money:
Level 26 by Anthony Zuiker
- Wall Street Journal MAY 21, 2010, 3:15 PM ET
Moby Awards: Judging a Book By Its Trailer
At the first annual Moby Awards, Indie publisher Dennis Johnson bequeathed gold spray painted gray whales to each of the five book trailer category winners. Moby Dick, the venerable sperm whale, was Johnson’s inspiration for the blog MobyLives, which sponsored the event. Unfortunately for Johnson, Toys”R”Us was completely sold out of rubber sperm whales, so gray whales would have to do. When an online jewelry retailer suggested a more valuable trophy, the publisher briefly considered offering sterling silver rings instead of the gold whales, but the idea was voted down by the organizers, many of whom actually loved the tackiness of the rubber icons. But the sterling silver rings retailer persisted and came back with a sterling silver whale ring and some alternative sterling silver rings with elegant whale designs. He even created a unique sterling silver rings display where he could showcase the whale rings in a way that impressed the sponsors enough to reconsider. Unfortunately, tacky won out, and the rubber whales became destiny's child.
“This is an idea that got out of hand,” Johnson said in his opening comments to the audience Thursday night, a group of 100 or so book trailer enthusiasts at The Griffin in New York City. Book trailers, a moderately new web-based method for publishers and authors to advertise their novels and titles, are best described exactly as they sound – a movie-like trailer for a piece of literary work.
The five categories were Best Cameo in a Book Trailer, Best Author Appearance, Best Big Budget Book Trailer, Best Low Budget Book Trailer and Book Trailer Least Likely to Actually Sell the Book. The nomination and submission process was open to all book trailer makers. Over the course of the open call nomination process, which included any trailer that was produced between April 2009 and April 2010, Johnson and the Melville House received over 250 submissions – or 12 hours of video trailers.
“This is meant to be a spoof,” Johnson frankly admitted. “Look at the book business, it’s looking more and more to Hollywood. First authors had agents, now they need to be young, beautiful and know how to act. Trailers are an exhibit inside the book, you can take from it.”
Brooklyn novelist John Wray began the ceremony by presenting Best Cameo in a Book Trailer to…himself. His video of Zack Galifinakis and himself sitting on a couch in Lowboy took the whale, and Wray promptly hugged himself and literally jumped up and down with joy.
“It’s sort of like a moderate rush of euphoria,” the novelist said after the ceremony, sitting in a beige booth, “because it’s a real award, one actually that looks like something I would have wanted on my night table as a little boy.” The Lowboy trailer took a single hour to shoot, two days and $180 to produce.
Throughout the evening, the tone of the event was playful shot through with sarcasm, and casual despite the required formal attire. Johnson proudly attested to tying his own bowtie, which glowed under the yellow persimmon light of the chandelier and reflected off the mirrored ceiling.
The next award was presented by Megan Halpern, the architect of the event, for Best Author Appearance. Dennis Cass won for Head Case (Book Launch 2.0), and Halpern pulled out her cell phone and called Cass onstage to congratulate him. Via phone, Cass exclaimed “I do it all for people like you.”
The Best Big Budget Trailer whale went to Maurice Gee for Going West, a New Zealand Book Council effort. Johnson said he doubted anyone from the country was in town for the event, so he would mail the whale to them.
“Trailers are like TV ads for books,” said the British Colin Robinson, the co-publisher of OR Books, one of the judges in the academy, and a presenter. “Unless you are a big author, there’s no promotion. But if you have a friend with a camera and a script, you can make a little video and level the playing field.”
Carolyn Kellogg of the Los Angeles Times’ Jacket Copy announced via pre-recorded video sent from California that Kathryn Regina won in the Best Low Budget category for I am in the Air Right Now, a 1:27 illustrated video with her voice narrating over the trailer.
Regina’s whereabouts were unclear, so Johnson and Halpern quickly moved on.
The final award was a self-nominated category, Book Trailer Least Likely to Actually Sell the Book, which Patricia Rockwell took for Sounds of Murder. The trailer was so awful that Halpern may have subconsciously forgot to place it on the DVD of award winning trailers.
Circle of Seven Productions, a sponsor of the night’s events, began using the term “book trailer” in 2002, when the Kentucky-based production company created their first trailer. CEO Sheila Clover English swiftly trademarked the term in 2003.
In closing, Johnson assured the crowd that a second annual Moby Awards was definitely in the works, and that next year, not only would the whales be of the sperm species, but they would be mounted too.
The winners:
Best Cameo in a Book Trailer:
Zach Galifinakis in Lowboy
Best Performance by in Author:
Dennis Cass in Head Case
Best Big Budget/Big House Book Trailer:
Going West by Maurice Gee
Best Low Budget/Indie Book Trailer:
I am in the Air Right Now by Kathryn Regina
Least Likely Trailer to Sell the Book:
Sounds of Murder by Patricia Rockwell
Melville House presents Moby Awards for best and worst book trailers
April 27, 2010|By Amy Guth | Chicago Tribune reporter
Book trailers, short videos to promote forthcoming books just as the film industry has produced for years to promote feature films, have received mixed reviews. Some love them and embrace the multi-media approach to book promotion while others hate them and feel that the written word is in great peril when video must be involved. But the legitimacy of book trailers has taken a large step forward, as Independent publisher Melville House has announced the inaugural Moby Awards for best and worst book trailers:
Melville House is excited to announce the first annual Moby Awards for the year’s best and worst book trailers, to be handed out in a formal, red carpet ceremony at THE GRIFFIN (50 Gansevoort Street in New York City’s Meatpacking District) on Thursday, May 20, 2010. Awards will be presented for book trailers that were produced between April 2009 and April 2010, whether by authors, editors, big houses, or little indies. The event is open to all publishing and media professionals, authors, and their guests. Indie publisher Dennis Loy Johnson, founder of the venerable book blog MobyLives, will be the host, and acclaimed novelist John Wray, and other surprise celebrity guests, will open the envelopes to read out the winners and present them with their trophies.
Jacket Copy
BOOKS, AUTHORS AND ALL THINGS BOOKISH
Is this the best book trailer of the year or not?
LOs Angeles Times / April 28, 2010
Two months ago, the corner of the Internet devoted to books went crazy for actor Zach Galifianakis' appearance in a book trailer for John Wray's "Lowboy." Slumped on a red couch and drinking beer, Galifianakis pretended to be Wray. Wray sat on the other end of the couch, pretending to be a bright-eyed, Charlie Rose version of Galifianakis. As far as book trailers go, it had more Hollywood sheen ("The Hangover"!) and was softer-sell than most.
But was it the best book trailer of the year?
That may be determined at Melville House's first-ever Moby Awards. The independent publisher has decided that the strange and spotty field of book trailers needs some measure of success. Or is it failure? The awards, dedicated to the year's best and worst book trailers, will be presented in New York in May.
Judges for the awards will be OR Books publisher Colin Robinson, Slate's Troy Patterson, Jason Boog from GalleyCat, Megan Halpern from Melville House and me.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
2011
Please join us Thursday, June 2nd at Powerhouse Arena, 8-10pm, for the second annual Moby Awards.
We’ll be handing out the gold sperm whales to the winners, screening our favorite great/horrible book trailers and handing out a few lifetime achievement and “special” awards.
The event is open to the public. Formal wear suggested. Beer and wine will be served.
PowerHouse Arena is located at
37 Main Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
The outstanding panel of judges:
Stephanie Anderson – WORD Bookstore Brooklyn, Store Manager
Jason Boog – GalleyCat/eBookNewser, Editor
Patrick Brown – GoodReads, Community Manager
Blake Butler – HTML Giant, Founder and Editor
Michele Filgate – McNally Jackson, Events Coordinator
Amy Hertz – Huffington Post, Literary Editor
Andy Hunter – Electric Literature, Founder and Editor
Dennis Johnson – Melville House, Publisher
C. Max Magee – The Millions, Founder and Editor
Kathleen Massara – Flavorpill, Literary Editor
Laura Miller – Salon, Senior Writer/Book Critic
Troy Patterson – Slate, Television Critic
2011 Moby Awards
Moby Lifetime Achievement Award
Ron Charles wins Moby Lifetime Achievement Award for The Totally Hip Video Book Review
Congratulations to all the 2011 winners. And many thanks to our panel of judges.
Lifetime Achievement Award:
-Ron Charles – Acceptance Speech
Grand Jury/We’re Giving You This Award Because Otherwise You’d Win Too Many Other Awards:
-Super Sad True Love Story – Gary Shteyngart
Book Trailer As Stand Alone Art Object:
-How Did You Get This Number? – Sloane Crosley
Best Big House:
-Packing for Mars – Mary Roach
Worst Big House:
-Savages – Don Winslow
Best Small House:
-Tree of Codes – Jonathan Safran Foer
Worst Small / No House:
-Pirates: The Midnight Passage – James R. Hannibal
Worst Performance by an Author:
-Jonathan Franzen – Freedom
Most Celebtastic Performance:
-James Franco - Super Sad True Love Story
What Are We Doing To Our Children?:
-It’s A Book – Lane Smith
General Technical Excellence and Courageous Pursuit of Gloriousness:
-Electric Literature
Most Monkey Sex:
-Bonobo Handshake – Vanessa Woods
Worst Soundtrack:
-GhostGirl
Most Angelic Angel Falling to Earth:
-Torment – Lauren Kate
Most Conflicted: (we published the book but the trailer is sooo good!)
T Cooper – Beaufort Diaries
2011 PRESS RELEASES
Best & Worst Book Trailers of the Year
GalleyCat
By Jason Boog on Jun. 3, 2011
A crew of book trailer fans gathered at the Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn last night for the second annual Moby Awards.
This GalleyCat editor helped judge the annual prizes, celebrating the best and worst book trailers of the year. Follow this link to watch all the finalists. We’ve listed all the winners below…
Lifetime Achievement Award: Ron Charles (acceptance speech embedded above). When asked about rumors of his retirement, Charles told GalleyCat: “Like any over-the-hill rock star, I know that the best way to reignite interest in my flagging career is to call it quits. I’m hopeful that this last episode will be the first in a long line of last episodes.”
Best Big House: Packing for Mars – Mary Roach
Worst Big House: Savages – Don Winslow
Grand Jury/We’re Giving You This Award Because Otherwise You’d Win Too Many Other Awards: Super Sad True Love Story – Gary Shteyngart
Book Trailer As Stand Alone Art Object: How Did You Get This Number? – Sloane Crosley
Best Small House: Tree of Codes – Jonathan Safran Foer
Worst Small / No House: Pirates: The Midnight Passage – James R. Hannibal
Worst Performance by an Author: Jonathan Franzen – Freedom
Most Celebtastic Performance: James Franco – Super Sad True Love Story
What Are We Doing To Our Children?: It’s A Book – Lane Smith
General Technical Excellence and Courageous Pursuit of Gloriousness: Electric Literature
Most Monkey Sex: Bonobo Handshake – Vanessa Woods
Worst Soundtrack: GhostGirl
Most Angelic Angel Falling to Earth: Torment – Lauren Kate
More Background On MobyAwards.com
MobyAwards.com served as the official online home for one of the most unusual, creative, and culturally significant celebrations in the world of publishing: The Moby Awards, a short-lived but influential event series that honored both the best and the worst book trailers produced each year. Active primarily around 2010 and 2011, the site documented a unique moment in publishing history when book marketing was rapidly shifting into digital formats, and publishers, authors, and independent creators were experimenting with video trailers as a way to promote new titles.
What made the Moby Awards stand out was not just their focus on book trailers, but their blend of humor, earnest celebration, cultural commentary, and deep engagement with both industry insiders and the broader literary community. The awards were hosted at high-profile New York City venues, featured judges from prominent literary outlets, and attracted significant media coverage both for their originality and their irreverent spirit.
This article provides a full, self-contained overview of MobyAwards.com and the awards it represented, drawing from archived materials, publicly available press coverage, and contemporary commentary to paint a complete picture of the site, the events, the people involved, and the cultural moment they captured.
Origins of the Moby Awards
A Response to a Changing Publishing Landscape
By the late 2000s, the book world was undergoing a dramatic shift. As digital marketing and social media began to reshape how books were discovered and promoted, publishers and authors increasingly experimented with book trailers—short videos meant to introduce a book’s topic, tone, or visual identity in the same way film trailers do for movies.
Book trailers varied tremendously in style and quality. Some resembled cinematic mini-movies; others were author-produced DIY pieces; still others were humorous, avant-garde, or intentionally strange. The industry had no common standard for evaluating them, and readers often responded with a mix of enthusiasm, amusement, and criticism.
The Moby Awards emerged from this environment as a playful but meaningful attempt to celebrate the growing world of book-trailer creation.
Melville House and the MobyLives Connection
The awards were closely tied to the independent publisher Melville House, known for its innovative approaches to book marketing and for its influential literary blog MobyLives. Dennis Loy Johnson, co-founder of Melville House, was one of the key figures behind the idea. The goal was to spotlight creativity while also poking fun at the sometimes awkward intersection of publishing and Hollywood-style promotion.
The awards’ name, “Moby,” humorously echoes Melville’s Moby-Dick, referencing both the whale and the publisher’s longstanding love for literary history.
About MobyAwards.com
Purpose of the Website
MobyAwards.com functioned as the centralized hub for all information related to the awards. It included:
- Finalists and winners for each year
- Video descriptions of nominated trailers
- Categories and criteria
- Event announcements
- Judges and special guests
- Press releases
- Ceremony details and instructions
- Highlight reels from prior ceremonies
The website served as both an information center and a digital archive for the two years the awards were active, preserving the details of a brief but memorable cultural event.
Design and Tone
The site maintained a tone consistent with Melville House’s literary identity—witty, slightly irreverent, humorous, and deeply engaged with book culture. The design showcased nominees prominently, highlighted quirky categories, and evoked the feel of a hybrid between a serious literary award and a satirical cultural happening.
The First Moby Awards (2010)
Venue and Atmosphere
The inaugural Moby Awards were held in May 2010 at a Manhattan venue known as The Griffin, in the city’s Meatpacking District. Attendees included authors, editors, media professionals, filmmakers, and book lovers. Although the event encouraged formal attire, the tone was playful, and the décor blended the elegance of a traditional awards ceremony with the tongue-in-cheek character of the event.
The trophies themselves—a series of gold-painted plastic whales—became part of the event’s mythology. The organizers intentionally embraced their kitschy charm in keeping with the awards’ humorous personality.
Categories and Awards
The first year featured the following categories:
- Best Big Budget/Big House Book Trailer
- Best Low Budget/Indie Book Trailer
- Best Cameo in a Book Trailer
- Best Author Appearance
- Least Likely Trailer to Sell the Book
Each category reflected a different facet of book-trailer artistry. The inclusion of awards for “Worst” trailers or those unlikely to sell books highlighted the event’s satirical side, creating a relaxed and approachable atmosphere.
Notable Winners of 2010
Highlights from the first ceremony included:
- The Best Big Budget award going to Going West, an animated and visually stunning production.
- The Best Indie/Low Budget award honoring the creativity of a small-scale animated poetry video.
- Comedian Zach Galifianakis winning Best Cameo for appearing in a humorous, deadpan book trailer for a literary novel.
- Dennis Cass receiving the Best Author Appearance award for his inventive and self-aware trailer.
- A thriller trailer receiving the Least Likely to Sell the Book award for entertaining excess.
Media coverage noted the event’s humorous speeches, casual vibe, and embrace of absurdity.
The Second Moby Awards (2011)
Growth and Momentum
The success of the inaugural Moby Awards prompted a second ceremony in June 2011 at Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn. Participation widened, judging panels expanded, and the awards received increased media attention.
Judging Panel
The 2011 panel included editors, critics, bookstore managers, and digital-literature professionals from:
- Literary blogs
- Book-industry trade publications
- Bookstores
- Publishing news outlets
- Cultural criticism platforms
This diverse panel helped legitimize the awards while preserving their humor.
Expanded Award Categories
The second year introduced a wide array of serious and comedic categories:
- Lifetime Achievement Award
- Grand Jury Prize
- Best Big House Trailer
- Best Small House Trailer
- Worst Big House Trailer
- Worst Small or No House Trailer
- Most Celebtastic Performance
- Most Angelic Angel Falling to Earth
- Worst Performance by an Author
- General Technical Excellence
- Most Monkey Sex (intentionally absurd)
- Worst Soundtrack
- What Are We Doing to Our Children?
The categories captured the awards’ blend of insight and irreverence.
Audience and Cultural Impact
The Book-Loving Community
The awards drew interest from:
- Authors
- Publishers
- Book bloggers
- Booksellers
- Filmmakers
- Readers fascinated by innovative book marketing
Fans appreciated the balance of artistic celebration and comedic critique.
Media Coverage
Major publications and literary blogs covered the Moby Awards extensively, praising their originality and insight into digital book promotion.
Influence on Book Marketing
Although short-lived, the awards:
- Legitimized book trailers
- Encouraged creativity
- Established shared evaluative language
- Fostered community
Their influence continued even after the awards concluded.
Why the Moby Awards Ended
The likely reasons include:
- The labor and logistics of live events
- Rapid evolution of digital marketing
- Shifts in Melville House priorities
- Growing volume of video content
Despite their brief run, the awards left a lasting mark.
Cultural Significance
A Time Capsule of Early Digital Publishing
The awards captured:
- Emerging digital-marketing techniques
- Early viral video culture
- Literature–film collaboration
Bridging Literature and Video
The Moby Awards validated multimedia storytelling in publishing.
Community Building
They united publishers, authors, artists, critics, and readers in a shared creative space.
While MobyAwards.com is no longer active, the legacy of the Moby Awards remains important within the broader history of digital publishing. The awards showcased creativity, celebrated innovation, laughed at industry excess, and helped define what a book trailer could be. They also captured a vivid snapshot of a literary world learning to adapt to changing technology and expanding media landscapes.
The Moby Awards remain a beloved, quirky moment in publishing history—one in which the industry came together not just to promote books, but to celebrate the artistry, humor, ambition, and sometimes glorious failure of video storytelling in the literary world.