The power of prizes

24.01.12 | Cat MacNeill

The 16th January saw the Society of Young Publishers (SYP) 2012 a.g.m. at Stationers' Hall in London.

This year’s Publishers Question Time debate covered the subject of prizes. The panel was chaired by William Alden, Stationers’ Hall clerk, and comprised: Booksellers Association c.e.o. Tim Godfray; prizes and awards manager at Booktrust Claire Shanahan; prizewinning author Keren David; and editor and co-founder of Slightly Foxed Gail Pirkiss.

The debate opened with the question: "Do literary book prizes encourage diversity in reading, or do the shortlisted books become a more 'intellectual' version of mass-market bestsellers that monopolise book buyers' attention?"

Pirkiss was the first to answer, arguing that only four or five prizes seep into public consciousness, and that the name of the award alone means very little. David, as an author, had the view that prizes take the power away from the supermarket bookseller and the 3-for-2s, and form another reason to buy a book other than price.

Godfray added that there is a noticeable increase in sales in books that win awards, and that prizes make people read books that perhaps they wouldn’t otherwise. He argued there is a lot of diversity in prizes, citing the Costa, which encourages people to read different genres of books.

The next question was: "Is a book prize's longlist an effective sales boost alone?"

Shanahan explained that only a handful of prizes have longlists and that they are a relatively new idea, giving a nod to an author that otherwise wouldn’t have been mentioned. She said that they can lead to promotional opportunities such as reviews by an agent or more money put into the author’s marketing. For an author, a longlisting is a huge confidence boost, which may also give them more precedence to negotiate their next book deal.

Godfray argued that it is the promotional material, not the longlisting itself, that can boost the sales, while David reasoned that authors are ignorant of sales figures; in her eyes it is the longlist recognition itself that gives authors a boost.

Next: "How can you judge something on best of the year if there is no publicity budget to submit? Does this not fall into the powerhouse publishers’ favour and neglect smaller publicity budgets regardless of how good their books may be?"

Godfray defended prize entry fees by explaining that prizes cost a lot to administer, being very time consuming, labour intensive and costly. Publishers gain a lot if they win so it is not unreasonable for them to contribute, he said. Entry cost is also a deterrent, meaning that publishers won’t send in every book they have.

Shanahan works with 11 book prizes and her budgets go into six figures which she commented makes publishing a big economy. Booktrust doesn’t charge an initial entry fee and so publishers only pay if their books get through. She also mentioned that entries are limited for publishers; for example the Orange Prize only allows three books per publisher, so there is not a huge money gap between small and bigger publishers. David also pointed out that big publishers do not enter as many authors as they have more to choose from—so if an author is with a smaller publisher they are more likely to be entered.

Chair William Alden opened a question out to the floor, asking if there were any gaps in the market for prizes. The general consensus was that non-fiction prizes do not get much attention at all, with the headline awards being for fiction, young adult and children’s books.

The SYP’s Ella Kahn mentioned that she thought that prizes for non-fiction perhaps mean more because of this.

The SYP would like to thank Keren David, Gail Pirkiss, Tim Godfray and Claire Shanahan for taking part in the debate, to William Alden for chairing it, and to everyone who attended.
 

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