Melville House Books

You’ve probably noticed the non-stop hoopla of late: it’s literary award season, starting earlier this month with the awarding in Sweden of the Nobel Prize for literature, followed by the Booker Prize in England and, next month, the National Book Awards in the U.S. and the Goncourt, the Prix Femina and others in France. Still to come beyond that: the Pulitzer and the National Book Critics Circle Awards in America, The Governor General’s Awards in Canada, the Whitbread and the Orange Prize in the U.K., and the IMpac Dublin LIterary Award in Ireland. Then there’s the newly created German Book Prize, meant to be similar to the Booker and the Goncourt. What’s up with all the prizes? Alan Riding, in an International Herald Tribune article, takes a look and decides “while the laureates come away with applause and a check, the true promoters and beneficiaries of this ritual are others. With book sales falling almost everywhere, the publishing industry desperately needs these prizes to create an aura of excitement around the faltering world of fiction. If a publisher’s author wins, all the better for sales. But even without a winner, publishing houses rally around the competition to bolster the book.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.