Smyslov_Fan wrote on 12/02/11 at 13:32:25:
Every year, we have a discussion of whether the Chess Pub book of the year should only be an opening book.
The title of the award is "Book of the Year", but the voters generally focus only on opening books. I don't see why we should limit ourselves. This is a chess publishing site. The site does indeed focus on opening books and opening theory, but we also discuss endgames and other aspects of chess. In fact, some of the very best contributions to the forum have been in the endgame section!
Lat year, we discussed two categories, but there weren't enough nominations and some books appeared to cross over from "opening" to "general", so that idea fell through.
I think that rather than limit ourselves by rule, the voters should decide whether an opening book or another book should win. If we continue our tradition, the majority will vote for an opening book anyway.
Actually, the original idea was Boki's, who suggested that because we are an opening site, we vote for an opening book of the year. That is what we did in 2009. In 2010 there was a move towards becoming universal, but ultimately we stuck with opening books. We should resist the urge to change now.
It would be nice for the award to catch on and build up some meaning in the world outside our doors. Quality Chess picked up on it last year on its blog. Maybe others will start to pay attention too. But for that, you need consistency, not changing the ground rules from year to year.
We are an opening forum. We are, as it says at the top of the page, the "Discussion forum for ChessPublishing.Com, the opening theory site."