Hey, My Book Just Won an Award!

My SF action-adventure novel, Beyond Those Distant Stars, published by Mundania Press, recently won AllBooks Review Editor’s Choice Award.  In their judgment, the book was one of the eight best they reviewed in 2009, and while there’s no $$$ prize involved, they plan to promote and advertise the novel in dozens of places.  If you’re interested in checking the book out, visit Amazon and other links, or click on http://www.mundania.com/book.php?title=Beyond+Those+Distant+Stars/

Winning the award has made me think lately of awards in general.  Specifically, what do they mean?  Okay, an award might mean more sales, especially if you promote the book actively and intelligently.  Also, some folks are impressed by awards, even if they don’t understand the details.  The word “Award” carries a certain luster, and I will try to use this modest honor to enlarge my reading audience, which certainly needs to grow.

Despite winning an award, my main point here is that in general, awards don’t mean that much intrinsically.  I think that usually, though not always, fiction awards reflect something else than just merit alone.  Sometimes it’s taste.  People just like the book more, perhaps because of its subject matter, its sexual explicitness, or some trend or quirk it embodies.  Then again, sometimes a book or story wins because the author has more friends and acquaintances who will vote for it, or because he promotes it more energetically and effectively, sometimes dipping into his wallet to do so.  Also, sometimes a book has a bigger, better known publisher, or a story appears in a slick, popular magazine.  You could have one hell of a tale in a small rag and never get noticed.

I’m sure there are other reasons too why merit often gets overlooked or only partly considered.  Whatever the case, it’s not a level playing field out there, folks.  Rarely is the process completely fair.  And when it is—well, I think it’s the exception rather than the rule.

I recall Dustin Hoffman winning an Academy Award and saying in his acceptance speech, that he “refuse[d] to believe” that the other nominees were less worthy.  When we talk about movie awards, other factors are involved in the Awards process.  If the actor has never won before and is a venerable fixture on the Silver Screen, then hey, his time has come.  Younger actors can wait a while to hoist a trophy.  After all, they have a lot more time.  The same occasionally applies to older directors, who may win Best Director or Best Picture awards because of their seniority, and because they have more friends who are qualified to vote.

This year I saw Avatar on a huge IMAX screen in 3D.  I loved it.  It’s a great experience.  But Inglourious Basterds may be an even better picture.  However, I bet that Avatar will carry off more Oscars, including the one for best picture, because of its novelty, hype, and the X or Wow factor.  If Avatar doesn’t win, then other factors that have nothing to do with the movie’s greatness may be at work, such as ingrained prejudice against genre flicks or even the 3D process, which some may see as a cheap gimmick.

So these are my latest thoughts on Awards, which are wonderful to get but which we writers probably care about too much.  On occasion, they may even be a distraction that lures us away from our writing.  Folks, the next time you see a work of fiction or nonfiction that has won an award, whether it be a Stoker, a Hugo, a Nebula, a National Book Award, or even the Nobel Prize itself, stand back a bit, out of the glare of glory, and ask yourself if the award was truly deserved and if it should matter to you at all.