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Book prizes don't work how you think

rebeccamakkai.substack.com

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Re: Book prizes don't work how you think

#31

Post by xboxnolifes »

code_duck wrote: post #18
m463 wrote: post #8

Sorry, I laughed... :) > I’ve judged prizes both pre-2020, when we were sent stacks of books, and post-2020, when everything had switched to zip drives and online databases. Considered medium-to-high-capacity at the time of its release, Zip disks were originally launched with capacities of 100 megabytes (MB), then 250 MB, and finally 750 MB. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive

I'd guess she probably means USB flash storage devices.

Most certainly. I used to hear people call usb drives zip drives (and thumb drives) a lot ~2 decades ago. Truthfully, I didn't even know zip drives were their own thing until this comment chain. I just though it was an older term for usb drives.

Re: Book prizes don't work how you think

#34

Post by tacostakohashi »

deepsun wrote: post #32

TL;DR: It's not fair. Just like every other competition. If you want to win, you ought to do not just better, but much better than others.

Right, one could make pretty much the same observations about how hiring / promotion decisions are made, how investment decisions are made, and probably any number of other things that people like to pretend are objective/scientific but are actually just a matter of opinion.

Re: Book prizes don't work how you think

#35

Post by shermantanktop »

neponeko wrote: post #14

What cronyism buys you is restarts. Having an enforcer can get you more than the 20 pages. You’ll be read to the end by every judge, and you may not get the award (these are competitive, and even most people with good enforcers aren’t great writers) but you’ll get a thought-out reason if it’s a rejection. You’ll know that everyone tried to find a yes because, while they were allowed to say no and eventually did, not…

This all sounds informed and authoritative. And it’s believable. But can I ask how you came to these conclusions? Did you attempt this? Do you know authors getting 500k every two years?

Re: Book prizes don't work how you think

#36

Post by [deleted] »

imzadi wrote: post #11

I've read for screenwriting contests and it is pretty much the same thing. During the first round of reading, they usually expect you to read a minimum number of pages (usually 20 pages). Only one person will read your script during the first round, so if it doesn't catch their attention you will be cut. During the subsequent rounds you are generally expected to read the whole thing, but most of the worst stuff has a…

[deleted]

Re: Book prizes don't work how you think

#37

Post by atlasunshrugged »

imzadi wrote: post #11

I've read for screenwriting contests and it is pretty much the same thing. During the first round of reading, they usually expect you to read a minimum number of pages (usually 20 pages). Only one person will read your script during the first round, so if it doesn't catch their attention you will be cut. During the subsequent rounds you are generally expected to read the whole thing, but most of the worst stuff has a…

Do you have any recommendations on which screenwriting contests are worth submitting to for a first-time historical fiction screenwriter? I've previously published a nonfiction book and am familiar with that side of things but am brand new to the screenwriting world and there are far more film festivals and competitions than I expected (and almost all seem to charge a submission fee)

Re: Book prizes don't work how you think

#38

Post by apparent »

charcircuit wrote: post #3

>1) Not every judge can look at every single book; and 2) When a judge realizes they don’t love a book, they can put it down. There is room for LLMs to disrupt book judging by being able to read every single book.

I think the last thing most authors would want is to have their book fed into an LLM, word for word, right when it's just come out.

Re: Book prizes don't work how you think

#39

Post by crackercrews »

I think she's missing the point here. First she says:

> Every couple of years, someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about complains publicly that judging panels are picking books based on wokeness or diversity quotas or some other nonsense.

OK, so the judging panels are not picking books based on diversity quotas, cool. But then she admits that the longlists are subject to diversity quotas:

> It’s true that longlists don’t look like they used to. This might have to do with prize committees themselves finally diversifying, which means a broader variety of opinions and tastes. And it might have to do with all of us preferring books that, you know, do not sound like every other book we’ve read.

> It turns out that when we read broadly and fairly, it’s no longer true that 95% of prizes go to straight white men, go figure.

To be honest, I don't pay much attention to book prizes, but I'm well aware of claims that it's not just that "white men don't get 95% of prizes anymore" but rather that in some cases, white men are not included at all, despite making up a fairly large chunk of the population. For example, apparently no white men born in the last 40 years have published literary fiction in the New Yorker. [1]

Are there book prizes with similar track records? I don't know for sure, but I'd imagine that whoever is deciding on publishing at the New Yorker is probably pretty similar to the people handing out book awards.

1: https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-vanishing-white-male-...

Re: Book prizes don't work how you think

#40

Post by deanputney »

crackercrews wrote: post #39

I think she's missing the point here. First she says: > Every couple of years, someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about complains publicly that judging panels are picking books based on wokeness or diversity quotas or some other nonsense. OK, so the judging panels are not picking books based on diversity quotas, cool. But then she admits that the longlists are subject to diversity quotas: > It’s true that…

Neither part of that quote mentions a quota for the longlists. Am I missing something?
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