On the other hand, if you've just self-published a book on parrot keeping or your theories on how the world could be better run (a favorite topic of retired gentlemen), what can you do? If you weren't able to find a publisher who wanted it, you can also expect to be routinely disqualified for review in the general media and, above all, for prizes. Yet have no fear, you Cinderellas of the publishing game, because (to nab a line from someone else's promotional campaign) there's an app for that.

An e-mail press release for a book crossed my desk not long ago, prominently garnished with a large medallion proclaiming it a winner of "The National Best Books 2009 Awards." For a moment, I misread that as "National Book Award," and did a double take, which is surely what whoever came up with that name intended. Curiosity about the National Best Books 2009 Awards led me to the Web site for USA Book News, produced by an outfit called JPX Media, which claims offices in Los Angeles and New York.

USA Book News is essentially a roll of press releases, featuring reproductions of the covers of relatively new books, accompanied by their flap copy and links to author Web sites. It's a somewhat random mix of titles, ranging from the very high profile, such as Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol," to the solid mid-list, like a new biography of Clint Eastwood, all from established publishers. Any self-published author would be pleased to see his or her book in this respectable company, although the company itself would be oblivious to the fact. "I have never heard of this site, was not asked; nor was I informed that my book was listed there," Shel Israel, author of "Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods," replied to my e-mail inquiry. To the extent that any mention might help an author, he's pleased to be included, but "I have no evidence that this listing has helped me in sales."

Why bother to set up a Web site regurgitating cover art and promo copy that anybody can find on Amazon.com? The answer, of course, lies in the National Best Books 2009 Awards, a contest that features no fewer than "150 active categories," including three subcategories of "Animals/Pets" and 13 subcategories of business books. There's a prize for the best children's book on the theme of "Mind/Body/Spirit" and for the best history of media and entertainment. By all indications (JPX Media did not respond to phone calls requesting information), everyone who enters in any category winds up listed as a "finalist," and some categories are so specific ("Mythology & Folklore") that they have only one entry.

Best of all, as USABN's Web site freely promises, "the National Best Books Awards are the ONLY Awards Program in the nation that offers direct coverage to the book buying public for every entry." Like the Special Olympics, this is a competition that everybody wins. If you enter the 2010 contest by the end of this year, they'll even throw in a "six-month full-color listing on USABookNews.com," which is "valued at $1500.00!" despite the fact that none of the publishers whose books are listed there now seem to have paid for this service or even to be aware that it's been provided.

Every winner and finalist -- i.e., everyone who enters -- can purchase gold medal-style stickers announcing the fact, which can then be slapped on the cover of the book, making it look deceptively similar to books that have won legitimate prizes like the Newbery Medal. The fee for all this is $69 (about what you'd pay to nominate your book for the National Book Awards or the Pulitzer), though you do have to pay it for each category you wish to enter; if, say, you want to send in your children's book about Mind/Body/Spirit issues in the history of the media, you'd have to pay $138 to enter it in both categories.

That's still not much cash to shell out for a bogus award that will impress those friends and relatives who haven't heard of the National Book Awards in the first place and will perhaps even (briefly) deceive the few who have. Yet with 150 categories, the takings do add up. A press release for the National Best Books 2009 Awards claims "500 winners and finalists," which comes to the nonshabby sum of $34,500 (and that's before whatever markup they get on the stickers) -- not bad for the cost of setting up a basic Web site with content that can be cut and pasted from the Web in an afternoon or two. Nowhere on USA Book News does it say who, if anyone, actually reads the books submitted to the awards; presumably, the winners could be chosen at random.

In short, the National Best Books Awards are vanity book awards, a new twist in the age-old practice of profiting off the dreams of aspiring writers. Ironically, real awards like the NBAs may not be that much better at selling books than the NBBAs. As publishing maven Michael Cader recently told the Wall Street Journal, the fiction nominees for the NBA "tend to be as a group not commercially successful, and the act of being nominated spurs modest commercial interest but tends not to drive sales in any significant quantity."

It's quite possible that someone who wins an NBA tonight will have earned less in royalties from his or her book than JPX Media will make by running a fake-out of the NBAs. There's simply more money in selling services to would-be writers than there is in selling actual books to readers, since the former are rapidly coming to outnumber the latter. And that, certainly, is nothing to celebrate.

Rosin and Bazelon assure readers, "For many of you, this won't much change your experience of reading us. We will have many of the same bloggers and writers, and Hanna and Emily will continue to run the project. The decision is being made for business reasons rather than as an editorial judgment." No layoffs have been confirmed yet, but a business decision that results in only "many of the same bloggers and writers" working for them does suggest that there will be some sad changes as they transition to a "more intimate version of the community we have built." Such is the nature of journalism these days, unfortunately; in even sadder news, Window Media, the country's largest publisher of LGBT newspapers, announced today that it's closing six papers.

On the plus side, innovation and new models are also the nature of journalism today. Editors at the Washington Blade, one of the closing Window Media papers, are already regrouping to plan a new publication -- and Double X, of course, will continue on as a part of Slate. We wish everyone there the very best, and we look forward to reading what comes next. There are worse gigs than being part of a women's issues blog on a larger news and culture site, we can tell you that much. 

9. "Grave Secret" by Charlaine Harris (Berkley)

10. "The Last Song" by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central Publishing)

11. "Southern Lights: A Novel" by Danielle Steel (Delacorte Press)

12. "Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel" by Jeannette Walls (Scribner)

13. "Wolf Hall" by Hilary Mantel (Henry Holt)

14. "A Touch of Dead" by Charlaine Harris (Ace)

15. "Angel Time" by Anne Rice (Knopf)

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. "The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy" by Bill Simmons (Ballantine/ESPN)

2. "SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance" by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner (William Morrow)

3. "Have a Little Faith: A True Story" by Mitch Albom (Hyperion)

4. "What The Dog Saw: And Other Adventures" by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown)

5. "Arguing With Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government" by Glenn Beck (Threshold Editions)

6. "The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl" by Ree Drummond (William Morrow Cookbooks)

7. "Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who Are Curing Cancer--And How to Prevent Getting It in the First Place" by Suzanne Somers (Crown Publishing)

8. "Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System---and Themselves" by Andrew Ross Sorkin (Viking)

9. "True Compass: A Memoir" by Edward M. Kennedy (Twelve)

10. "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown and Company)

11. "Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters" by Chesley B. Sullenberg with Jeffrey Zaslow (William Morrow)

12. "The Conscious Cook: Delicious Meatless Recipes That Will Change the Way You Eat " by Tal Ronnen (Morrow)

13. "Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul: How to Create a New You " by Deepak Chopra (Harmony)

14. "My Life Outside the Ring" by Hulk Hogan with Mark Dagostino (St. Martin's Press)

15. "Jim Cramer's Getting Back To Even" by James J. Cramer with Cliff Mason (Simon & Schuster)

MASS MARKET PAPERBACKS

1. "The Associate" by John Grisham (Dell)

2. "The Untamed Bride" by Stephanie Laurens (Avon)

3. "Cross Country" by James Patterson (Vision)

4. "Deadlock" by Iris Johansen (St. Martin's Paperbacks)

5. "Hot on Her Heels" by Susan Mallery (HQN)

6. "Bound to Shadows" by Keri Arthur (Dell)

7. "Star Wars 501st: an Imperial Commando Novel" by Karin Traviss (LucasBooks)

8. "Angels at Christmas" by Debbie Macomber (Mira)

9. "Your Heart Belongs to Me" by Dean Koontz (Random House)

10. "Queen of Song and Souls" by C.L. Wilson (Leisure Books)

11. "While My Sister Sleeps" by Barbara Delinsky (Anchor)

12. "Heat Lightning" by John Sandford (Berkley)

13. "To Desire a Devil" by Elizabeth Hoyt (Vision)

14. "Scarpetta" by Patricia Cornwell (Berkley)

15. "The Wicked Duke Takes a Wife" by Jillian Hunter (Ballantine Books)

TRADE PAPERBACKS

1. "Bed of Roses" by Nora Roberts (Berkley)

2. "Push" by Sapphire (Vintage)

3. "The Shack" by William P. Young (Windblown Media)

4. "Say You're One of Them" by Uwem Akpan (Little, Brown)

5. "Olive Kitteredge" by Elizabeth Strout (Random House Trade Paperbacks)

6. "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson (Vintage)

7. "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger (Mariner Books)

8. "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (Dial)

9. "The Glass Castle: A Memoir" by Jeannette Walls (Scribner)

10. "The Art of Racing in the Rain" (Garth Stein) (Harper)

11. "Run for Your Life" by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge (Grand Central)

12. "Freakonomics" by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner (Harper Perennial)

13. "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell" by Tucker Max (Citadel)

14. "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" by Jamie Ford (Ballantine Books)

15. "Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time" by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (Penguin)

And of course there was a Twitter hashtag (#fembooks) for those who wanted to express their displeasure in real time. Tweeters pointed out that women buy the majority of books sold in the U.S. and usually make up about half of the authors on any given New York Times Bestseller list. Others complained that classic novels by men get trumpeted as "must reads" while those by women are often pooh-poohed by male readers as "not to my taste." Charlotte Abbott, a literary journalist, floated the idea of an American version of Britain's Orange Prize, which goes to the author of the year's "best full-length novel in English." (American novelists are eligible for the Orange Prize; Marilynne Robinson won it last year for "Home.") That suggestion was greeted with a mixture of enthusiasm and worries about "ghettoization."

What's at issue isn't sales or even access to readers; this is an argument about prestige and critical recognition, an argument best articulated by the novelist and critic Francine Prose in a 1998 article for Harper's magazine. Prose detected a greater reverence for books by men among the nation's literary and critical establishment, which includes reviewers, prize committees and the institutions that bestow grants. She blamed this on a widespread if seldom-stated assumption that "women writers will not write about anything important -- anything truly serious or necessary, revelatory or wise."

Explaining P.W.'s list, editor Louisa Ermelino wrote, "We wanted [it] to reflect what we thought were the top 10 books of the year with no other consideration ... We ignored gender and genre and who had the buzz. We gave fair chance to the 'big' books of the year, but made them stand on their own two feet. It disturbed us when we were done that our list was all male." Yet, according to Miami Herald blogger Connie Ogle, Ermelino sounded less apologetic when quoted in a press release, characterizing the list as not "the most politically correct."

Anyone who's ever had to compile such a list -- and admittedly, there aren't many of us -- will feel an awkward sympathy for the P.W. team. Two years ago, while settling on Salon's picks for the year's best works of fiction, we wound up with five novels by men. This dilemma precipitated a lot of soul-searching, only partially soothed by the reminder that most years the majority of the books on our fiction list are by women authors. Should we swap out one of the titles by a man for another we liked less, simply because it was by a woman? The WILLA wiki implies that the editors of P.W. simply didn't bother to read books by Lorrie Moore, Margaret Atwood or Alice Munro when selecting their list, but that's highly unlikely. Chances are that they (like me) didn't think the Lorrie Moore novel and many others posted to the wiki were up to snuff. Something similar happened at Salon when it came to the fiction of 2007. In the end, unable to find books by women that we liked better than those five novels, we opted for honesty, which we consider the critic's first responsibility.

Without tipping our hand, I'll merely say that it's unlikely Salon will suffer the drubbing P.W. has endured when we run our own 10-best list in early December. But every year we do face a ticklish question: Is it the right thing to gerrymander your list in order to counteract real, long-standing cultural biases, even if that means lying to your readers? What is a 10-best list, after all, if not a record of the books we enjoyed most over the past 12 months? If you insist on a list that's ideally representative of gender, race, class, nationality (i.e., including at least one translation), publisher size (small as well as large), fame, length (short story collections as well as novels), region, genre and so on, you can easily wind up with, say, a list of nine books you kinda like and maybe one you truly love. That's a tepid dish to serve up to readers, and not likely to inspire much enthusiasm, either.

On the other hand, few things are more subjective than judgments about how "great" any given book is. Those real, long-standing cultural biases mentioned above live in the heart of every critic to one degree or another, and we'd be shirking our duty if we didn't try to account for them. Writing off such qualms as mere "political correctness" is, in its own way, just as dishonest as exaggerating your admiration for a book simply because its author is female, or dark-skinned, or from a far-off nation. I don't doubt that P.W.'s editors are entirely sincere when they say their list reflects their unvarnished preferences. Still, the fact that those preferences can't encompass one woman author among 10 books (fiction or nonfiction) picked from the 50,000-plus titles they claim to have sifted through suggests that their horizons might need a bit of deliberate widening.

Fortunately, most years bring enough good books that we're able to choose from a fairly diverse array of candidates. If we adore two novels (or histories, or biographies) to about the same degree, we do take factors like an author's gender or the size of the book's publisher into account -- the same way we try to maintain a mix of literary tones and moods, from the slim, intensely personal memoir to the majestic and well-footnoted doorstop. The key question remains, is the quality of our final list diminished by those decisions, or enriched by them? We like to think that, like us, most readers appreciate some variety in their literary diets.