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
—
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.
