Awards, and the Folks who Care About Them

By Bob Hughes - Nov 17 , 2010

Tonight is the National Book Awards. You know, when publishers and editors grudgingly don black tie and trudge to an overheated ballroom to nibble at catered food and watch as some demi-celebrity hands out awards for books only a few people have heard of let alone read.

Publishers hate awards ceremonies almost as much as the public ignores who wins book awards.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Well – the awards ceremony circuit is pretty boring to begin with. Sure, it’s a chance to “network,” as if chatting awkwardly at a cocktail party while looking over someone’s shoulder to see if someone less boring or desperate is nearby. And it’s a chance for publishers and editors to lament recent changes in the industry, the decline of civilization as we know, the unfortunate rise of e-everything.

Oh, and there are the authors. Hopeful. Cynical. Maybe really grateful to be among the chosen few whom the elite of the publishing world decide to honor with an award that’s remembered only by agents trying to sell the winning or nominated author’s next book.

Awards are for a person’s CV, and for the chance to get an obit in a big newspaper – because you’ve demonstrated that something about what you’ve done, or about the friends you’ve made or the way you’ve carried yourself, was enough to get people to vote in your general direction. But as we all know, awards are not about the quality.

Can you name who won the last Academy Awards for best actor or actress or film? Can you remember the last winner of the Pulitzer Prize for…anything? How about the National Book Awards? Do you recognize the nominees? And what about the biggie? Who won the Nobel Prize for literature a few weeks ago? If you said Mario Vargas Llosa, congratulations – you can enter trivia contests.

Now, of course, people who win awards are often very talented.

But awards are for the insiders. Not for the readers or the world in general. Of course, it might make a person feel good to see and dismiss (or even like) an award-winning movie (“It must not be as boring as we think, it won an award!”), or to disagree with the received opinion after reading an award-winning book (“I can’t believe they gave this turkey a prize!“).

And, of course, awards are about marketing. Something other than the blurb from a friend of the author to put on the cover.

What about the thousands, the hundreds of thousands, of other authors whose work might be good, but who connect not with critics, or with awards committees, but with the public?

That’s where readers come in, and that’s where communicating with readers comes in. Sure it’s great to get a prize. But it’s better to have an audience, and a platform for your ideas. And to engage that audience with something more than a certificate for having attracted the notice of a coterie of special-interest groups who want to pat themselves on the back for having recognized your worth, even if only a few dozen people actually read what you wrote.