Literary Prizes. Do they Matter?

As an avid reader, the shiny sticker indicating a prize winner on the front of a book can sometimes influence my buying choices, but I will instead often turn a book over or look inside the jacket to determine if it's for me. I know what I like to read and what I'm in the mood for.

However, for casual readers looking for a holiday read or a present for another, this shiny sticker can draw them towards a book that must be good right? It’s won a prize.

There is no denying from a publisher’s perspective that winning one of the most well-known Literary prizes like the Man Booker prize can increase sales. This can be evidenced by one of my favourites, Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, the winner of the 2002 Booker Prize which sold 587 copies the week before the prize was announced and 7,150, the following week; a staggering 1,118% increase. Life of Pi is not alone in these astonishing statistics, the 2003 winner had a 1595% increase, 2004: 940%, 2005: 953%, 2006: 785%, 2007:

1283% and in 2008 a whopping 1635%

increase (data from The Guardian).

It’s a trend every publisher is going to want to be a part of.

Book prizes generally consider books published in the year before the prize award date so a book can have a boost in sales long after its initial release. It’s easy to understand why then that publishers and booksellers capitalise on this by advertising winners, short-listed and even longlisted runners up. Rejuvenated marketing campaigns with dedicated store displays, stickers, and author interviews all reenergize interest in a book which can not only boost immediate sales after prize-winning but can continue to secure earnings for years to come. Some books contribute millions of pounds to ongoing sales like the £5 million Life of Pi earned for Canongate from its 2002 win and 2013.

If I asked a publisher if literary prizes matter, it wouldn’t be a massive surprise if they said yes.

But publishers aren’t the only entity impacted by prizes, Yann Martel was probably happy too considering the Man Booker winner’s prize is £50,000 for the author. CBC quoted him as saying winning The Booker “...feels like winning the lottery…” and he’s not wrong, with thousands of eligible books being published every year it is a lottery. In some cases, literary prizes require a submission fee, the now retired Costa prize, for example, charged publishers £5000 to submit titles, so it's not only a lottery, but it can also be an expensive lottery, excluding many publishers and authors from even taking part. In light of this, despite being beneficial to publishers, is the risk, the cost, the effort of submitting and deciding where to submit even worth it for most publishers and authors? I doubt it, but that’s a topic for another post. If only a small percentage of books with the biggest publishing deals and higher financial backing are going to be entered and considered, do literary prizes matter to the wider publishing industry?

The Man Booker’s big statistics are for the big players in the industry, so for them, it matters, but literary prizes scale across the entire industry. Local prizes such as the Derby Children’s Picture Book Award, run by the Derby Book Festival, can play an important role for small independent publishers, unknown debut authors and the community itself. In this award, schoolteachers choose the shortlist, and the class's pupils vote on the best book, the author and illustrator share a prize of £500. The books must reflect the diversity and modern issues in Britain and be aimed at children 6-7 years old. The award was founded to celebrate the festival's 5th year and aims to inspire “a new generation of readers through books which reflect their own lives and experiences.” This is an impressive and important aim and with over half of the city’s primary schools taking part in 2022, 3309 children voting for winners and over a hundred free diverse books entering schools, I’d say Derby Book Festival’s award matters to the local community and its children just as much as it does to the broader publishing industry.

But how can such a small local prize matter in the wider industry? Well, prizes and activities such as this generate interest in books for children and children are arguably the most important demographic of the industry. Nurturing a love of books in childhood can ripen a person into a lifelong book lover, sorry book buyer, which will ensure the future of books and the people who put them out there.

So, whether you’re picking up a Man Booker Winner or a Derby Children’s Picture Book Winner make no mistake, that shiny sticker does matter to someone somewhere.