Eligibility for the Azbee Awards

The Azbee Awards of Excellence competition is open to any English-language, U.S.-based publication (a print magazine, journal, newspaper, website, e-newsletter, blog or digital magazine), whose content is business-to-business oriented (i.e., business, trade, association, professional), its editorial and design staff, and freelancers. ASBPE membership is not required, but members will receive a discount on entry fees. 

Please review the Azbee eligibility rules before entering the competition:

1. ALL entries must be completed via ASBPE's online entry system. 
   • Most entries will require PDF uploads or URLs.
   • The Magazine of the Year category will require hard copies to be mailed to ASBPE after the entry is submitted online.
   • URLs provided must be hosted on the publication's own site. We cannot accept URLs to PDFs or other files hosted on Dropbox, Google Drive or similar sites due to the potential for cybersecurity risk for our awards committee, judges and site guests.
2. All entries must have an original issue or post date in 2024. Entries must have been issued, published, posted, or emailed between Jan. 1, 2024, and Dec. 31, 2024.
3. Daily, weekly, monthly, bimonthly, and quarterly publications are eligible. For eligibility purposes, "publication" refers to the overall brand, not individual issues, posts, products or iterations of that published brand.
4. Entering media in all formats should be independent B2B publications with audiences primarily composed of business and professional people, whose editorial focus is on the information and skills needed by that audience in their professional roles. Under normal circumstances, custom advertising vehicles, no matter how "editorial-like," would not be considered independent. ASBPE reserves the right to reject any entries from publications that do not meet these criteria without refund. 
5. Entrants should avoid submitting the same material across multiple categories, with these exceptions:
   • Work may be entered in both the Design division and the Print, Online or All Content division. For example, a feature article can be submitted to Print Feature Article and Print Article Design.
   • If an article is published both in print and online, please do not submit it to both divisions; only submit the entry to the Print or Online category where it was published first. Entries submitted to an All Content division category may provide both versions (print and web) in their entry.
   • You may submit an article to a single-article category (such as Case Study, Data Journalism or News Analysis) and also submit it as part of an entry to a multi-article category (Feature Series, Single Topic Coverage) and/or full publication category (Magazine of the Year, Publication Redesign), as part of the whole.
   • Components of submissions to any of the Overall Excellence division categories may also be submitted to another category.
6. Some categories limit the number of entries per publication brand or per author. Outside of those categories, there is no limit to the number of unique entries in a given category.
   • The following categories allow only one entry per publication brand: Magazine of the Year, Digital Magazine of the Year, Website of the Year, Project of the Year, Social Media Account of the Year, Editor's Letter or Note, Overall Headline Writing, Publication Design, Publication Redesign, Website Design, Industry News Coverage (both Print & Online divisions), and State of the Industry (both Print & Online divisions).
   • The Email Newsletter of the Year and Email Newsletter Design categories generally allow only one submission per publication brand, unless your publication has more than one newsletter product. Then, you must submit these as separate entries. Email Newsletter of the Year and Email Newsletter Design submissions that include editions from more than one newsletter product will be disqualified.
   • The Regular Column and Thought Leadership categories allow only one entry per author. Publications can submit multiple entries to these categories so long as they are from different authors.
   • The Regular Department category allows only one entry per department.
7. Entries improperly submitted may be rejected. Reasons for rejection include, but are not limited to, not following instructions, not providing requested information and materials (including username/passwords where applicable), or submitting an entry in the wrong category. At the discretion of the judges and awards committee, entries may be moved to other categories. Committee and judge decisions are final. Entry fees are non-refundable.
8. If a password is required to access all or part of an entry, the entrant must provide a username and password to judges that will remain active until June 30, 2025. There is a field to provide this information on the entry form.
9. Persons submitting entries represent that they have the right to do so on behalf of themselves or their organization and that doing so does not violate the rights of any third party, that each entry is an original work and does not infringe upon the intellectual property or other rights of any third party, and that the entrant or the entrant's organization will defend and indemnify ASBPE against claims brought by third parties arising out of ASBPE's use of entry. 
10. Each entrant grants to ASBPE a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, irrevocable right and license to utilize the entry in the Azbee Awards competition, to display all or any portion of any winning entry at any contest awards ceremony or in any promotional materials for the competition, and to include, at ASBPE's sole and exclusive discretion, all or any portion of any winning entry in a published (in digital or other format) compendium of Azbee Award winning entries.
11. See our Entrant FAQs for further details.

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