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If we want book awards to become more sustainable, we need to challenge our fixation on the prize purse.
Despite the prominence of literary prizes in the yearly cycle of publishing, very few writers will say winning a prize is at the pinnacle of their desires. For most the aim is to write the best novel they can. Yet prizes have a disproportionate impact on deciding the writers who remain prominent in the cultural psyche long after their books have been published; especially in the West, where the publishing market is saturated with new works each year, prizes offer a powerful mark of distinction for what might otherwise be an unmanageable deluge of literature.
In other words, prizes perform a useful function as a market signal, one that is usually far more valuable in terms of instant and backlist sales, press and reputational equity than the money on offer (especially considering how long it takes so many authors to write their books). Yet over the past few decades in the UK, the value of the prize purse has come to take on more significance than the reputation of the prize; or rather, nowadays the prestige of many prizes seems to be measured less by the discernment of the judges than the amount of cash on the table.
Of course, money is important – even a small windfall can make the difference between keeping writing and quitting altogether, especially to those from underrepresented backgrounds, especially with cost of living going through the roof. It’s also a reason to celebrate when sponsors from outside the industry show willing to inject some investment into the people who make books, as an acknowledgment of the cultural importance of the trade as well as a much-needed financial boost.
Yes, authors are struggling to sustain careers, but that’s a bigger structural publishing issue that prizes cannot, and should not, be expected to shore up
But it looks like this focus on big bucks is starting to erode the longevity of prizes, a longevity that is in some part what makes one prize worth winning over another. The most evident symptom of this is the anxiety and sometimes disappointment that accompanies the renewal of sponsorship, which can lead to the total collapse of a prize as we’ve recently seen with the Costa Book Prize. Sure, another organisation often picks up the purpose of a dead prize — Rathbone’s has expanded to include the categories that the Costa used to cover — but as with other short-lived prizes, it remains to be seen if the expansion can be sustained.
Surely, if there is a lesson to be learned from the Costa’s demise — which, despite its end, had a major cultural impact — it is that a modest prize purse is a better idea than a sizeable one in a straitened cultural market like the UK, where corporates are notoriously stingy about sponsorship. And yes, authors are struggling to sustain careers, but that’s a bigger structural publishing issue that prizes cannot, and should not, be expected to shore up.
Then there’s the inevitable bargaining over naming rights that sponsors often demand. Changes of name generally dilute the resonance of a prize in the mind of the reading public – which is crucial for driving sales — and corporate naming also has the tendency to reduce the cultural prestige of a prize compared to an association with a celebrated or respected name.
Beyond (although tied to) sponsorship, there also seems to be an unhelpful over-emphasis on awarding prizes for single works. Again, this is totally understandable in the context of a market that depends on big surges of sales for blockbuster books, combined with the draw for a corporate sponsor of a clear, marketable message: we put our weight behind this cool, popular book! But if the aim of prizes is truly to support the industry’s top talent in building sustainable careers, surely more of them should be awarding authors rather than works, particularly those midlist grafters with more than one book under their belt.
It feels like we’re due a serious, clear-eyed reassessment of what prizes are really for, and how their financial and sponsorship models can be engineered to have a greater impact on writers and readers while remaining viable in difficult economic times. Let’s hope some fresh models emerge, and soon.