PMC’s Big Book with a Bigger Message Receives IPPY Award
This year’s 21st annual Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPYs) recognized Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot (OVER) as an Outstanding Book of the Year. OVER tied for “Most Likely to Save the Planet.”
Weighing in at over seven pounds, OVER features over 150 heart-wrenching images of the earth’s beauty and destruction. It depicts the realities of today’s inequality – ranging from income to gender to race. The photos are overlaid with powerful quotes and are arranged according to 14 photo essays.
OVER’s provocative photography, emotional resonance, and inspiring messages resulted in 275 unique media articles in more than 50 countries since its release in February 2015. The total circulation count of all known media outlets covering OVER is now over 1.1 billion. A small handful of examples include MSN Germany, Yahoo India, the China Daily News, BBC Mundo, and the Washington Post. Population Media Center partnered with Population Institute and the Foundation for Deep Ecology for the project.
“The Foundation for Deep Ecology had a proven track record of publishing powerful books for stimulating conversation and change,” says Bill Ryerson, Population Media Center President. “We were delighted to work with editor Tom Butler and use this book to get important messages into mainstream media, libraries, classrooms, and living rooms.”
The Independent Publisher’s Book Awards honors the year’s best independently published books from across the globe. It is one the oldest and most established book award operations with the aim of bringing increased recognition to thought provoking, innovative, creative, and exemplary books.
“Everyone should be talking about the challenges presented in OVER,” says Ryerson, “and the very real solutions. Empowering women and girls would help solve today’s most pressing ecological and social challenges, because educated and empowered women can choose when and if to have children – and that impacts the need for natural resources.”
Population Media Center and its sister organization, Population Institute, used OVER to reach an international network of environmental, human health, and human rights activists advocating for global population stabilization through a human-rights enhancing framework: empowering women and girls.
“These are global challenges with many components,” says Ryerson, “but the future depends largely on the investments made right now in women’s rights.”
About Population Media Center
Population Media Center is a nonprofit leader in entertainment-education, dedicated to women’s rights and empowerment, population stabilization, and the environment. For the past two decades, PMC’s entertainment programming has promoted social and cultural change and has helped 500 million people in more than 50 countries.