For the 4th Quarter of 2025, Escala’s Wish earned Second Place in the Firebird Fantasy/Dark Fantasy category, a distinction that highlights the book’s quality and places it among the top-rated indie titles recognized by the Firebird judging panel.
The Firebird Book Awards are issued quarterly and recognize excellence in independent and small-press publishing across a wide range of genres, with an emphasis on strong storytelling, originality, and professional presentation.
How Firebird Book Awards are Different
The entry is a tax-deductible charitable gift.
Firebird has a partnership with Enchanted Makeovers, a 501(c)(3), and other shelters. The entire entry fee is sent to the chairty who uses the money to send fun and colorful handmade pillowcases, children’s books, and pampering room and body spray mists to shelters around the country to make someone’s life just a little bit brighter.
Judging
- Firebird has 23 judges who are published authors, editors, publishing house owners, librarians, audiobook producers, and writing professors
- Two judges meticulously evaluate each book using our scoring system, which assesses the content and the quality of the writing and production.
- All judges evaluate using the same scoring criteria.
- Each book is given a score from 0 to 100.
- The top 3 scores of each category are named as Winners.
- All titles that receive a score of 80 or higher and are not named Winners are named Honorable Recognition in their chosen categories.
