The Goodreads Choice Awards have rapidly grown into one of the most influential book awards in the world. Authors such as Mark Lawrence have reported that just a nomination in these awards is enough to see interest (and sales) in your books skyrocket. And Winning? Well, that sees your work exposed to around 30-35million dedicated readers as the best book in the genre that you’ve been nominated for that particular year.
I think Mark Lawrence’s point that just a nomination in a category is important to an author is a good one. A book appearing on a “readers’ choice” list gives other readers a certain kind of assurance that the book is pretty good or at least worth their time. This results in readers using such lists to buy books for their “to be read list” and as gifts for their friends and family. To draw upon a personal experience: I don’t read crime AT ALL, but my Mum and Grandma do, so last year I used the Goodreads semi-final Crime Fiction list to buy them two crime books each. Knowing that thousands upon thousands of people had given each of these books a thumbs up meant I felt confident that I wasn’t wasting my money or my relatives’ time with poor books 🙂
This year is quite interesting, because Goodreads had ditched their “Paranormal Fantasy” category and grouped it with the “Fantasy” category. It is probably a good thing because there was some confusion. For example, most people seemed to think “Paranormal Fantasy” was just another way of saying “Paranormal Romance”, but the Dresden Files found itself in there. You may then think that it becomes Urban Fantasy them, but Vicious, Seduction, The Golem And The Jinni and The Ocean At The End of The Lane were all in the “Fantasy” section – so it was pretty confusing.
Anyway, I’ve rambled on long enough. Here are the nominations so far:
Prince of Fools (The Red Queen’s War, #1) by Mark Lawrence
The Emperor’s Blades (Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, #1) by Brian Staveley
Magic Breaks (Kate Daniels, #7) by Ilona Andrews
Night Broken (Mercy Thompson, #8) by Patricia Briggs
The Book of Life (All Souls Trilogy, #3) by Deborah Harkness
The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss
The Witch With No Name (The Hollows, #13) by Kim Harrison
The Magician’s Land (The Magicians, #3) by Lev Grossman
Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, #2) by Brandon Sanderson
Skin Game (The Dresden Files, #15) by Jim Butcher
Traitor’s Blade (The Greatcoats #1) by Sebastien de Castell
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett
The Broken Eye (Lightbringer, #3) by Brent Weeks
Up From the Grave (Night Huntress #7) by Jeaniene Frost
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It is worth noting that Jim Butcher and Deborah Harkness have taken the “Paranormal Fantasy” award before and Brandon Sanderon has taken the “Fantasy” category too. All those guys will have a very good chance of winning this time round, but Patrick Rothfuss – Fantasy’s megastar – is up there too. It’ll be interesting to see how he does, especially as his latest novella – The Slow Regard of Silent Things – received mixed reaction. Lev Grossman is very popular and has done a lot of media work this year, so he could be a dark horse. I’d be surprised if authors such as Katherine Addison, Robert Jackson Bennett or Sebastien de Castell picked up the number of votes needed to progress – but in my opinion these three would rank very highly if this award was done by a panel of judges who were required to read every book (i.e. removing the “popularity” factor). My personal favourite of the above list was Brent Weeks’s entry, closely followed by Mark Lawrence’s. I’m pretty sure the two of them will do quite well: possibly gaining surprise finalist spots.
From the above you can probably see another reason why the “nomination” stage works. Over the years, the Goodreads Awards have been notorious for rewarding the already well known and (sorry to say it) already well off authors. When you look at the winners: Neil Gaiman with The Ocean At The End of The Lane (2013), Stephen King with The Wind Through The Keyhole (2012), George R.R. Martin with A Dance With Dragons (2011), Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson’s with Tower of Midnight (2010) and Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris (2009), you quickly see that the name of the author is even more recognisable than the title of the book. Although a large part of it is down to the authors writing incredible books, I think another part is down to their popularity. Rather than being the “best book”, this competition has turned into the “most read author” and that is kind of a shame.
The thing is, many of these uber-popular books will have been read by the vast majority of fantasy fans or already be on their “to-be-read list” at least. Books that get to the finals or even semi-finals are likely to do pretty well when you consider this – the year Dance of Dragons won, for example, I imagine most Fantasy readers didn’t have their eyes opened to the fact they should be reading that title, but instead would have checked out what else made the finals and pick up one or two of those.
For those unfamiliar, the Goodreads Awards work in stages. This initial period of 15 books will be open for votes from November 3rd to 8th. I believe the 15 books then go down to about 10. The second period, the semifinal round, will follow from November 10th to 15th – probably taking us down to 5. Then, the final round will last from November 17th to November 24th with the winning titles will be unveiled on December 2nd.
What about you guys? How many have you read and what are your thoughts? To vote you can click here.
Jennie Ivins
It’s nice to have a list of books to buy.
haha: agreed!
See, this is one place where I disagree entirely with GR: Paranormal fantasy is COMPLETELY different to Fantasy; and this year’s 15 books show where the division is!
The 4 major PNR writers: Ilona Andrews; Patricia Briggs; Kim Harrison; and Jeaniene Frost, do NOT remotely compare to Mark Lawrence; Brent Weeks, or Robert Jackson Bennett (and, YES, I have read ALL of these !)
So I found this doubly (triply??) difficult to choose from. I haven’t yet got around to reading Harkness, Rothfuss or Butcher; and Sanderson, Grossman, and Staveley are all on my to-buy list; so anyone trying to make a value judgement is stymied (IMHO)!
I could have balanced my choice if I had to choose 3 or 5; but 1 is almost impossible. So (with some regret for some of my favourite authors) I went with Brent Weeks (b/c that one was outstanding!!!! 🙂 )
It is different, but they need to sort out what Paranormal Fantasy is, what Urban Fantasy is, what Fantasy is and so on if they want to revert back to the old system 🙂 I think you are right though, the huge difference in readership means that the winner will come from the genre that has more readers (which I’m guessing is paranormal romance?).
The big problem we have is that it is so damned hard to read so many books in a year 😉 I read about 20-40 a year at the moment (fantasy book – I read a lot more in total), so I can’t honestly say I’ve read all 15 of those. That means I’m not voting so much for the best book, but the book I enjoyed most of the ones I read.
Good choice on the Weeks 😀 😀 😀
I totally agree with you. I was a bit confused when I saw they put in same in the same category Urban Fantasy and Fantasy books.
It’s a tough one…
Sometimes I think it’s a bit unfair, because in order to judge and vote properly, those who cast their vote should have read all the 15 books, so they can say that book was better than the others for a clear reason.
Instead, it occurs that people vote the only book they read and loved, but without having read the others, or worse, I saw some people who have voted the most popular book or author, as you said, without even having read it.
Well, this is just my opinion. 🙂
Yeah – it is that classic public vs panel debate. The problem with panels is that people tend to have a certain taste (i.e. I tend to prefer epic fantasy over urban fantasy – so although I know Jim Butcher is truly loved, I don’t think he’d be any where near as high on my list compared to someone who favours Urban Fantasy, for example).
Yep. Lots of people will vote for authors they like as people despite not having read the book, which is a shame.
It’s a good opinion!
Small correction:
In round 2 the number actually increases to 20 with the write-ins.
In round 3 the field reduces to the 10 finalists.
Ahh, thanks – I was guessing! 🙂
It’s not so small 🙂 Because the 15 official nominees from the first round automatically qualify in the second round and their votes have absolutely no consequence, everybody should write-in their favorite books that are not present among the 15.
But… where is Fool’s Assassin?
Wow. I didn’t think of that – I imagine it’ll get written in as part of the next stage… but wow.
I’ve got to hope Lawrence wins based on his broken empire trilogy – yet to read fools but I’m sure it’ll be excellent.
Can’t believe Abercrombie has been ignored.
As an aside, what a refreshing similarity we have, Marc. I too am a competing MMA fighter who has a massive love of fantasy and creative writing. Nice to know I’m not the only geek with Cauli’s.
Haha – trophies 😀