Announcing the creation of
The Anti-Prize Book Prize
Founded in late 2007 to further promote literary patronage in the UK and the idea that no good author ever won a prize their insipid prose didn’t deserve, The Anti-Prize Book Prize aims to promote The McCrum Maxim: The Booker genre (which is what it is) has become disproportionately influential on The Way We Read Now.*
Have you discovered a book that you’d like to share? Have you been surprised that it’s not on the shelves of your local bookstore? Surprised that your favourite new book of the past year isn’t being avidly promoted by Richard & Judy? Surprised that when you talk about how amazing this author is, there is an awkward silence that precedes the question: ‘You read? Wow.’
Nominate your book now by posting a comment.
Your favourite new book of the past year:
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must be available in the UK in English.
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fiction or non-fiction.
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may even have (next to) no words at all.
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can be an online/ free publication only.
The winner will be announced on January 1st. This being a public holiday in the UK, announcing a winner on this date saves the losing short-listed authors the embarrassment of having to congratulate the winner after turning up to receive an award which was only being awarded to the author who was most undeservedly overlooked in the first place. It also saves the winner the bus fare.
The winner will be presented an undisclosed ‘found’ object bearing the legend ‘Prize?’ Though some people ‘in the know’ may contend that this is an ironic statement on the nature of competitions and awards for such subjective art as books, in fact, the nature of the prize is intended to reflect the utter worthlessness of the prize itself.
The decision of the judges are final. There is no way they are going beach-combing twice in the same winter.
Presentation of prize by doctored photograph only. Authors may insult the Anti-Prize at their peril.
As all books nominated for the award have to have been read by the nominees – the general public – and cannot include any book that has been long-listed for any award in the previous year** there is every expectation that the winner will be someone you’ve never heard of. There is also the expectation that the winner could receive as few as two votes.
Self-published (paper) books will not be considered. Just because your mum and your dog liked it does not mean that you’re an undeservedly overlooked author.
However, ‘books’ published online will be considered because you’ve saved a tree and we like trees.
All books entered into ‘The Last Competition No Self-Respecting Author Would Ever Want To Win (Or, Far Worse, Lose)’ (TM) must be available in the UK and in English but can be translated works, after all, with publishers being so unwilling to back their most talented authors, there’s naff-all talent left in the UK that isn’t already writing genre while living beyond the M25.
* Used without permission, this quote comes from The Observer Review, 21 October 2007
** To make things fair – and logistically possible – the previous year is defined as December 1st to November 30th. For example, a book published on December 2nd 2006 would be eligible to compete for the award announced on January 1 2008 but a book published on December 2nd 2007 would not because the short-list is announced on December 1st. If in doubt about a book publication date, the final decision will be based on the information publicly available not what the author has been told by their agent/ n-th editor of the year.
