Books to be submitted for HOHE Award will be open starting February  16, 2017 and the closing deadline will be March 23, 2018 5pm. Within this specific period of time the interested writers, publishers, libraries and any other interested individuals can nominate books online or in person.

In order to be eligible for the award, a book must be written by an Ethiopian citizen, basically for Ethiopian readers, and the period of time the book published should be between September 11, 2017 and September 10, 2018.

Applicants must submit a completed entry form to the organization from February  16, 2017 and the closing deadline will be March 23, 2018. They must then submit three copy of each entered book to the judges in the appropriate category with their application. There is no registration fee.

Each panel reads all of the books submitted in their category. Then each panel will compile a list of 10 shortlists by May 16, 2018. Then there will be a vote to be collected from the public in the process of identifying the finalist 5 books. The public vote will have a 20% weight. Then the five finalist titles, to be announced in June 12, 2017. Then it will be open for  public vote, which accounts 20%, and the remaining 80% vote will be given by judges, then the winner to be announced in the HOHE Awards ceremony to be organised on July 16, 2018. The panel of judges may arrive at these choices using whatever criteria they deem appropriate, as long as they do not conflict with the official award guidelines. The panel of judges will come up with their criteria to select books whom they think have good literary merit, if from the submitted books the judges didn’t find one that meet the minimum standard they will announce that this year the award will not be given.

One finalist from each of the three categories will be announced and the award will be presented at the special ceremony, which will be organised July 2018 at the National Theatre in Addis Ababa.

No one, not even the organizing committee members, learns who the winners are until the day of the Awards Ceremony, which takes place around second week of July 2018 at the National Theatre in Addis Ababa. The panel collectively decides who the winner in the different category will be. Often, this decision has been made ahead of time, but occasionally the panel works to come to a consensus until the very last minute. The panel chair announces the winner at the ceremony that evening. The winner and the vote earned from the judges and from the public will be announced to the public transparently in the event.

Live on the event, the winners in Children Books, Fiction, Poetry are announced the following evening at the HOHE Awards Ceremony, where each winner receives the prize.

Once an author has been a finalist or winner, HOHE Award will keep in touch with both the authors and publishers, promote the authors’ new books and upcoming readings, and invite them to future HOHE Literary Award-related events. All the contestant authors will be members of HOHE awards family, by way of notifying them for interactive engagements either among the authors also with the other programs of HOHE Awards.